Tournament Organizer Guidance and Best Practices

[cypresspete]

Continuing the discussion from Tournament Organizing Elements:

@ILfish

With the recent controversy of the Miami tournament I thought it might be a good idea to get together the elements of organizing and running a tournament. I have lost about $5,000 over the past 20 years of organizing and running open tournaments, so I have some idea about what not to do. Please feel free to add elements that I have left off, as I am not going to list everything in my list below. Also, there is no significance to the order of my list. #1 on the list is not necessarily what I consider the most important element.

Here is my list to TOE the line in organizing and running a tournament:

1. Mail advertising (especially for large $$ tournaments).
2. Accept Credit Cards if possible.
3. Budget
   3a) Plan for breaking even on the tournament
   3b) Be realistic in your estimates
   3c) Be prepared for a loss on the tournament.
4. Don’t offer free meals
5. Ask for advice from more experienced people (if at all possible).
6. Look at what other tournaments are doing.

I won’t flesh these out, but rather let others do that. I will only say one thing and that is about #4. If you do for some reason decide to offer a free meal make certain to plan it well ahead of time and have it coordinated with your site. I once offered a buffet lunch for the players [mini pizza, min egg rolls, etc.] at a hotel site. I almost didn’t do it, so I signed the contract for the site before also signing for the food. As it turns out the hotel would have given me the $400 spent on food off of the site/room rental if I had arranged for it at the time of the initial contract. I loss $1500 on that tournament, which also happened to be the Guaranteed prize fund. Please note that I am saying it is usually a bad idea to offer a free meal. That is not to say that you should never do it [well maybe], and that is not to say that you can not have something in the way of snacks [i.e. cheap candy] for the players.

The one point I will make is that you should strive to consistantly run your tournaments in the same manner, so player get use to it and know what to expect from a tournament that you are doing.

Best “Chess” Regards,
Larry S. Cohen

PS: It is good to learn form your mistakes, but it is even better to learn from the mistakes of others.

I found this discussion on tournament organizing from a few years back that includes some high-level suggestions (more like an outline that was never fleshed out). The discussion and replies to the original post provide some elaboration and additional ideas. I have also looked at the legacy information on the US Chess website.

What I think would benefit the weekend organizer and those aspiring to organize larger events is a set of best practices covering topics like: how to register as a business (LLC vs DBA), financial/accounting software recommendations, space planning tools, advertising, liability insurance, budget templates, negotiation tips and all the hard-learned lessons from established organizers. I am sure there are more subcategories that I have omitted.

I noticed a WIKI feature in discourse not currently used in the US Chess forum. WIKI seems like a great way to have contributors add and update relevant information in one central repository. Is there a reason not to use the WIKI? or has no one ever explored that feature?

chess builds strong minds!

[nolan]

I think there are things wiki is good for, but much of what is posted in the US Chess forums may not be something that wiki would work for. Perhaps after some discussion on a topic it would be possible to set up another topic as a wiki for people to help build a summary document with the most useful aspects of the thread. (Some threads can run to hundreds of posts, just reading them all is a lot of work.)

There used to be an active cribbage tournament group in Lincoln that held tournaments in the same motel meeting rooms we held some chess tournaments in. The difference is they bundled the registration fee in with a lunch in the motel’s restaurant, which got them the meeting room space for free. I suspect having a planned lunch break also kept the meeting room a bit cleaner, I’ve had to pick up a LOT of trash from players at tournaments from stuff they got at nearby fast food joints.

Whether that would work for chess tournaments is less clear. (Probably not for events with a lot of kids in them, IMHO.)