Hello,
We want to organize a tournament at our Middle School. We have permission to hold it on Saturday, May 21. We have 19 Fri. morning chess players and we would like to invite other schools to come. So far we have a nice chess set donated. We currently have 12 club chess sets and two timers. My son has a timer also. Any suggestions on how to run it would be appreciated. I can scramble around and ask for food donations. Should we keep it free? We would like that, and to build enthusiasim for next year. How do run something when you don’t know how many will registrar? 
Ideas on the number of rounds? How to seat players? We were thinking from 10:00-2:30. How long for the games? Registration 9:30-10:00
All help is appreciated 
Diane Richardson
For inexperienced players, I wouldn’t worry about clocks much, and you can probably figure that the typical round will take around 30 minutes.
I would personally recommend you charge SOMETHING, if only so that you have the ability to buy more chess sets with the proceeds. Plus, charging (or not charging) sets a precedent for the next event.
$5 is a very minimal charge, compare it to lunch at McDonalds, a movie, 3 hours at the roller rink, etc.
With inexperienced players, I worry more about the clocks. I’m not worried about timing of the games, I’m worried about the physical well-being of the clocks. They can be expensive toys for beginners and wind up on the floor and inoperable. I took my son’s Excaliber to a chess club and the top row of liquid crystals don’t show up anymore. I think I’ll put it back in the box and put it on eBay. Do a search for “LNIB” if you want to grab this bargain.
At my son’s school we held some non-rated Saturday tournaments and invited the other schools in the parish. We sent invitations to the schools and had a deadline for registering (somewhere between 3 and 10 days before the tournament), which we stuck to. In the flyers we do not state a time control, number of rounds or a grade/sections breakdown. Each round is paired once all of the games are over, and the next round is started as soon as possible. We start the first round at 9 AM and always finished the awards before noon. We have a flyer that has the rules, common misperceptions, some web site information and a place for a kid to keep track of results. Because it is a non-rated tournament and the kids are not cognizant of all the touch move issues, we only enforce the final third of touch move (when you release the piece your move is over).
There is a snack bar in the skittles area, which provides some additional income to the club.
We have an expert take on all comers in a simul after the awards were done, with each player having to donate $1 to the host school’s club.
I give the parents a quick course on how to read the alphabetical pairing list and how to read the wall charts. We have a table that the kids go to to report their results after their game, and a quick lesson there on how to verify the result with both players works fine.
For the first tournament the entry fee was $3 per player and that included a juice box. That one drew 78 kids, all playing in their first tournament ever, and all coming from schools that had never gone to a chess tournament before. Once we saw the entries we decided to split the tournament into sections of K-2, 3-5 and 6-8. We had a check-in and did the pairings (in WinTD) at 8:45 AM for a 9 AM start. After four rounds we had a perfect score in each section and awarded the trophy and the other place ribbons then. I did put a clock on two games that were running long.
For the second and third tournaments we charged $8 per player, increased the awards, drew 45-60 kids each, and went 5 or 6 rounds. For the later tournaments I used the results in the earlier tournaments to make the equivalent of a local rating for pairing purposes. One tournament had a K-2, 3-4, 5-7 grade breakdown.
If you have on-site registration you may end up getting half of your players arriving at 9:45 AM, which may delay your first round to 10:30 or 11. When the Chicago suburbs here had on-site registration for the USCF rated scholastic tournaments that was a common occurrence. If you do use on-site registration, give yourself at least half an hour between the end of registration and the start of the first round. Plan on posting the pairings far enough in advance of the first round so that all the players (or their parents/coaches) can find their pairings and get to their board before the time you want to start.
When we first moved to only advance registration we had a check-in, but we could never get an accurate report of the players who were actually there (many either forgot to check in themselves or their coach forgot to check them in, and many coaches simply checked in the entire team regardless of whether or not the players were all present). At that time we would often delay the pairing for half an hour or more while adjusting the entries to match the check-in and we still had 75% of the problems we would have had just going with the initial registration. We finally decided to bite the bullet and simply do the pairings and adjust for the no-shows on the floor in the first round.
My personal recommendation would be to have advance registration only and start the initial training of the parents and other schools in a method that makes your planning easier and that gets the first round started on time. Whether or not that will work in your area is something that only you can answer. If there are space limitations then you may need to go to advance registration only and turn away entries once you reach your limit. In this case, returning an entry fee to a no-show may not be correct as that no-show may have kept another player from participating.
If you overlook an advance entry, or if you have a no-show, then in the first round you can re-pair the players with no opponents. That will be a little bit of a burden on the director in the first round, and may make some of the pairings less then perfect, but those are small prices to pay for keeping things moving. That method was used at Supernationals and all the other scholastic Nationals, States and local tournaments I’ve directed at.
If the entry is free and you have advance entry then you might have many people signing up and then failing to appear. A nominal entry fee that is not returned if a player does not show limits the entries to just those that want to come.
For the USCF rated suburban Saturday tournaments (200-500 players) we have a set time for the first round, a set number of rounds and a time control, but the remaining rounds are all on an as available schedule. This allows for the tournament to finish quicker, but it does require food and beverages to be available on site (an additional source of income for the host school).
Diane Richardson:
Glad you want to have a chess tournament. Since it will be the organizers and players first event, do not worry about the event. Its’ a learning curve for the organizers and the players.
Since everyone has no ratings, having the event as a open or a mini swiss would give the TD some problems. If I’m right nobody has been a director before. Have a round robin event, then you can place players that have a common friendship with each other in the same section. Just have a few sections, as a round robin, then you should know the pairings for all the rounds during before the first round.
You’ve gotten lots of good advice, here.
A few nuggets I’ll throw in from our experience in attending/running unrated town tournaments of 100-200 scholastic players…
…definitely charge a small admission fee.
…concessions will make money for your chess club or your PTA.
…don’t forget to plan on a separate skittles area from your competition area.
…divide the kids by grades the first time (K-1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-8) since you don’t have ratings. Then you follow the swiss system: winners play winners and losers play losers. By the end of the day, the kids will have sorted themselves out into some very close games.
…require pre-registration, but please realize a few will show up day of tourney and need to be “plugged in,” or paired on the spot.
…make sure you have adequate adult supervision. We require a coach or parent to be responsible for any kid who attends.
…our experience is we start at 9:30 and finish five rounds by 3 p.m. Awards come after that.
…participating clubs (or schools) bring enough chess boards to “cover” the number of players they’re sending.
…understand that you will have better attendance during wintertime than in the spring, when baseball and soccer beckon!
Good luck and enjoy yourself.
You’ve gotten some very good advice from a number of TDs here who have done this.
Now allow me to weigh in on the side of an observer of many unrated scholastic tournaments
You will need to set a preregistration charge and an on-site registration charge. They should at least be $5 apart in price to discourage those who are “just thinking about” going to a tournament. For a first time event, charge $5 preregistered and $10 at the door.
Plan on ending registration at least 30 minutes before time for first round, and better yet is 45 minutes. I’d rather know registration ends at 9:30 and first round is 10:30 than have registratoin end at 9:30 and wonder why the first game wasn’t played until 10:30 when it was supposed to be 10:00.
Along with that, make sure, if you post round times, that they DO start then. For example, while the pairing process is taking place for first round, some announcements can be made to players in the skittles room, or flyers passed around giving important information. This saves a lot of time when the players are sitting at their board and then have to listen to a TD speech. I’d rather state the game was going to start at 10 and the TD start talking at 9:45 so actual play could start at the posted time. I’ve been to too many events where they had to change time control from G/30 to G/20 for the first two games because they got a late start
The worse part about doing the pairings as soon as a section is finished is the players don’t get a chance to take a break. They have trouble finding time to eat because the pairings are up and they have to go play another game, 2 minutes after finishing their last one. Put up a schedule of round times and stick to it. Otherwise you’ll have both parents and players asking when the next round starts and no one knowing if they have enough time to do anything.
Let the TD direct. There was one event here where the organizers had so many last-minute requests that first round was 30 minutes late. I don’t care how old the kids are, they are going to get restless if made to wait too long, and the parents won’t like it.
If you aren’t going to use clocks, set the time control at G/30 and make sure all games end an hour after the round starts. I don’t see why you can’t use clocks, but you probably won’t have enough players who have them. I’ve never had a clock destroyed at a scholastic tournament when I’ve lent them out, and that includes the recent SuperNationals. BUT! I always make sure I have my name on things, too! That’s how I was able to get my clocks back twice during that event.
Anyway, good luck!
Radishes
Wow! I’m getting a bit nervous. What I have taken in is:
- Pre-register with registration fee and higher day of event registration cost.
- Work on being on time!
Our thoughts were:
9:00-9:45 registration
10:00 first round.
12:00-1:00 lunch
1:00- 3:30
awards following
We might just advertise to rising 6th graders and middle schoolers. Do you suggest opening it up?
We might have 24 regulation chess sets, if we can borrow from the local elementary. But that seems to be the limiting factor.
We are planning on ordering Pizza for lunch and we have Partners in Education (Starbucks, and Publix) we are hoping will help us with items.
I’m glad to have the suggestion that parents must attend. You keep parents in outside area right?
We would like to find a TD. We are not even sure of all the rules! What time control do you suggest? 1 hour rounds 30 minutes each?
Thank you!
Diane Richardson
Try not to have the parents standing over the table, as it is the first time for the parents and players. Some parents would not know how to be spectators. Some parents would give advive, assisting the player, discussing the position, making a claim. Parents are spectators when the game is active, spectators have no privileges during the game.
Have some activity for the parents also, not all parents have the same temperment when they are bored. When having scholastic events, have found the parents (fathers) can be a problem. Having activities for the parents, helps calm down the stess level of a bored alpha male.
Actually, you don’t need to have a lunch break. You can simply have your “pizza/food table” open for three hours, and players will grab a bite between rounds. There will always be at least 15 minutes between the end of the last game, and beginning of next round–certainly enough time for a kid to eat.
To clarify on parent presence: this is why you need a competition area, and a skittles area.
In the competition area, you need a scorekeeper to write down game results and one or two knowledgeable chess people to serve as floor TDs to help with any rules questions. The rest of the parents MUST LEAVE the competition area once the round begins.
Parents stay in the skittles area, and the kids return to the skittles area once they are done with their games.
Around here, competition is typically in the school gym; skittles is typically in the school cafeteria.
If boards are the limiting factor, require people to bring a set with them. Usually tables and chairs are the limiting factor for us.
Not knowing what scholastic chess looks like in your town, I can’t answer which grade levels you should invite. We do K-8. Our criteria for our club is that a kid is welcome at a local unrated tournament if s/he 1) wants to go (as opposed to the parent wanting them to go) 2) knows the rules, 3) is able to checkmate an opponent and 4) can handle losing reasonably well.