What's wrong with Scholastic Chess Tournaments - Part 1

Running Chess Tournaments
1

Scholastic chess has improved quite a bit since I was a scholastic player, but I think we still have a long way to go.

The biggest problem that I see is the way parents and other spectators are treated. Imagine parents at a little league game being told they can’t see the first 30 minutes of the game, have to stand outside the playing area (with no seats or any other provisions being made to accomodate them), can’t video tape the game, etc.

This is just the way parents are treated at most chess tournaments.

I understand the potential for cheating – though I think we spend way too much time worrying about this – but there has to be some better way! I don’t believe parents are prevented from watching their children during spelling bees, for example. I know of no other activity for children that goes to such great lengths.

I had a tournament director point out to me that “spectators have no rights” at chess tournaments and it says so right in the rule book. While I understand this rule (and even agree with it), I don’t think it’s helpful to emphasize this rule or behave in a way that intentionally antagonizes the parents.

If you put forth a minimal amount of effort (for all but the largest tournaments, at least) you can find a playing site where parents can watch their children without much chance of affecting the game’s outcome. School gymnasiums and auditoriums come to mind, for example. Parents & children wouldn’t have much chance to cheat with the parent 100 feet or more from the table, but they WOULD be able to see their child.

If you absolutely must eject parents “en mass”, at LEAST have somewhere for them to go other than the hallway! It’s probably not safe to shove a hundred or more families out into a hallway at the start of a round and it’s certainly not good for their perception of chess as an activity for their children.

I recently overheard a tournament director tell a parent that he couldn’t set up a tripod to videotape his son’s games – even though the camera was well out of the way for the other players, TDs, etc. His reason: the other player’s RIGHT TO PRIVACY! Since when does a competitor at a public event have a right to privacy! I think this proves that “Chess Parents” are among the best behaved and most understanding of people!Try telling that to a parent at soccer game or little league game and you’ll be lucky not to be punched!

Fine, you can say that “spectators have no rights”. But if you emphasize this improperly, it will only hurt chess.

I’ve seen several examples recently where some effort has been made to be more accomodating to the parents – we need to see more of this and see it more consistently. For example, I want to especially praise those involved with the SuperNationals. Parents had a great “skittles” room to go to between rounds (this is the minimum that I would expect at ANY tournament – what can possibly be served by not even giving parents a place to SIT!), there was great (chess related) shopping, lectures, etc.

I realize that not every tournament can make such accomodations as a 5,000 + player event. The problem I note, however, is that the organizers don’t even try to make minimal accomodations.

2

The tournament isn’t for the parents, it’s for the players.

The players LIKE IT when the parents are not permitted in the room during the games, and I think they play better chess then, too.

There’s a scene in “Searching for Bobby Fischer” in which the kids cheer when the parents are thrown out of the room, that’s based on a real incident, though I’ve seen similar things happen at many tournaments.

3

I agree with you, the tournament is for the players and not the parents.

I simply think that more effort needs to be made to accomodate the parents. If the tournament is unpleasant enough for the parents, then they will be reluctant to return.

I fully understand how disruptive some parents can be. They can be that way at little league games or soccer games also. Yet, somehow, those sports really try to make the games enjoyable for the parents. Only if the parent causes a problem is he ejected.

I’m not saying that parents should be allowed to stand over the board watching the game! Only that they should be somewhere within a couple hundred feet!

My daughter was mildly upset at her first tournament where I was required to leave. She would have been reassured if she could still see me (even if I was too far away to see the position on her board). By contrast, she had no problem at all at an earlier tournament when I was sitting across a school cafeteria from her. There should be some way to accomodate the parents WITHOUT letting them disrupt things. It seems that most organizers don’t even make the least effort – a room (with chairs!) outside the tournament hall where the parents won’t be blocking the hallway, emergency access, bathroom access, etc.

I realize that my post sounded rather negative, but I’m really just trying to suggest improvements. I don’t think its proper to ask parents to squat in the floor in a hallway for an hour or more at a time. This isn’t the image we should be working toward.

4

Not all scholastic tournaments are that bad for the parents. The organizer as you say, had a poor site for the parents. The site will limit what the directors/organizers can do for the parents. Not having chairs with limited amount of bathrooms – is a factor of the site not the organizer. I’m sure the organizer did try to make the parents as happy as they can. There has never been a building just built for tournaments. If the site is not ideal for parents and players, the players will come first.

5

I’ve been subjected to this kind of playing site at a USCF NATIONAL SCHOLASTIC OPEN held in an expensive hotel with plenty of unused conference rooms. I’m not going to mention the specific event. The whole reason to start this discussion is that I don’t feel that organizers consistently think about some of these issues that only apply to scholastic chess. I’m sure that if the organizer had thought about the issue (where parents go at the start of the round), they would have made SOME provision.

In spite of the fact that the “USCF NATIONAL SCHOLASTIC CHESS
TOURNAMENT REGULATIONS” specifically require a “skittles” area (rule 3.5.2) there was no such area. When I arrived at the tournament, I thought there was a skittles area, but this room was used to set up a chess “store” instead. I was so happy to see a place to look at (and buy) chess equipment and books that I didn’t even consider objecting. The only complaint I have now is that it would have been nice to have some chairs – somewhere.

I strongly feel that most organizers and directors truly care about chess and the welfare of the players. Some things (that they don’t have to worry about with adults) just seem to get missed because they’re not used to thinking about them.

6

I think most organizers try to have a place for the parents to be. I’ve been to many scholastic events where the parents are usually asked to stay in the skittles room and not be in the playing area at all, and I think this is right and proper.

I wouldn’t want the parents in the playing area myself because one, they are sometimes harder to keep quiet than the kids, and two, their kids might very well be nervous with a parent hanging around. Even when parents have been told to stay out of the playing area, I’ve seen them opening the doors into the area so they could catch a glimpse of their kids. Doing this is disruptive to everyone who is playing.

As for myself, I’ve learned I can’t watch my son play. Makes me nervous when I see him make some weak moves!

As for the skittles room at SuperNationals, I for one wish they had been closer to the palying area. I wore myself out going from one end to the other trying to make sure my students had what they needed!

Radishes

7

Tanstaafl, the points you raise are worth discussing. However, alleviating them will be difficult unless a site is designed with a chess-tournament like event in mind. At the bottom of this post is one example of a site that answered most of your concerns.

Although I haven’t organized a scholastic event, I’ve directed at more than 150 over the past two decades, and I consider events that have 300 players to be mid-sized and less than 200 players to be small. There are pros and cons to different types of venues. There are also pros and cons to different levels of spectating opportunities.

Physical sports events often have kids receiving verbal assistance from coaches and parents and older players receive in-game verbal assistance or signals from coaches. Such assistance is not usually considered cheating, and thus does not raise tempers as much as a parent or coach going onto the field of play to physically assist the players. On the other hand, chess explicitly rules any verbal assistance as being against the rules, and verbal assistance can interfere in the game just as much as physical assistance can in a physical sporting event. Chess thus requires more care to prevent both cheating due to verbal assistance (or signals) and the appearance of such cheating. Prior to going to a closed floor for scholastic events I had the opportunity for scores of problems related to spectator-related accusations of cheating. In almost every case tempers were flaring over the appearance of cheating rather than over actual cheating. One of the more extreme cases involved an event at a high school gym with only the balcony open to spectators, where the low-rated parent of a high-rated kid was accused of being able to see the board 100 feet away and signal the kid as to the best moves to make, and when the kid eventually lost a game the accusation made to the chief director was that the parent signalled the kid to lose just to throw off suspicion. Another was at a national event where a parent 75 feet away from a board and with other games interfering with the line of sight, accused his child’s opponent of violating the touch move rule by touching a piece and then not actually picking it up and moving it.

At my son’s little league games parents are expected to stand outside the playing area, and often have to provide their own chairs.
Chess tournaments require so much space for the players and boards that the average school gym that we use would have to double in size just to allow parents to be unacceptably close to the games.
One reason hallways get crowded is because parents are understandably reluctant to go any farther away and thus require their kids (particularly in the K-3 sections) to walk unattended for any distance. It is difficult to find two adjacent rooms that are large enough for one to hold the players and another to hold the parents.

The Pittsburgh elementary had a two-story convention center where the second story had accessible windows which people could use to look down on the participants. That helped parents keep an eye on their kids, but is not available at many venues.

As a venue a school has advantages of: usually being a dedicated site for the duration of the tournament without non-tournament related visitors; generally having a gym that can have enough light for the games; generally having a cafeteria for down time and impromptu skittles; often having classrooms that can be used as team rooms for players, coaches and parents (if the teachers at the school are willing); often having an area other than the playing room where trophies can be awarded; often being cheaper than hotels even after factoring in the custodian costs; generally not having a problem being able to get quick and cheap food available for the participants and parents and coaches. Some disadvantages are: difficulty in getting to a hotel room to rest between rounds; necessity of driving to and from the site during the days of a multi-day event; possibly having a lack of parking space for even smaller events; a lack of space for larger tournaments (we used a large high school for a 740 player K-8 event, and would have had trouble fitting more than another hundred players in).

As a venue, a hotel has advantages of: making the trip from room to playing hall much easier; often having multiple meeting rooms to make it easier to partition off activities that do not need a ballroom (i.e. the bookstore, the director’s room, etc.); often having a pool for players to burn off energy while waiting for their teammates to finish a round; sometimes providing the ballroom for free if the hotel sells enough room-nights (care must be taken here - one event at a metropolitan hotel was about 10 room-nights away from getting a free ballroom and then the host hotel made an offer to guests that had many switch from the chess-rate to a breakfast-rate to receive a free continental breakfast and pay $3 LESS per night - between that and the last minute cancellation by teams that had reserved and thus locked up rooms and then switched to more distant but cheaper hotels, the tournament ended up with an unexpected $5,000 bill for the ballroom). Some disadvantages are: getting the hotel staff to understand how a chess tournament is different from other events that need a ballroom; team rooms and skittles areas being more expensive than at schools; sometimes not having any place for getting a quick bite to eat between the end of one round and the start of the next; hotels not being as physically kid-accommodating as schools; the temporary unavailability of conference rooms due to their already being booked for a portion of one day of the event; the greater existence of the stranger-danger issue.

We had one K-8 state championship in a relatively small town in downstate Illinois. Even though the tournament had about 60% of the normal turnout it actually was a great fundraiser for the organizer and was enjoyable for the players and parents. The town had a convention center with a few hotels in very easy walking distance around it and the hotels made the convention center available gratis (the hotels made their money on the room nights, and the lack of competition for the rooms meant that the hotels were almost dedicated to providing for the tournament). The convention center was split into two adjacent large rooms, one being the tournament hall 441 players (it could have accommodated over 700) and the other being the skittles and concessions area for the parents to stay at.

8

I agree about watching the game – it would drive me crazy to watch too closely. I like to watch my daughter play from a distance – across the room would be ideal – I don’t try to follow each move. I like to see that she’s comfortable, having fun, etc. I’m thinking that a school Gym would be ideal for a small to medium event. Make the parents stay on the bleachers, rather than hovering over the games. I’d settle for being able to look through a glass door (so I wouldn’t have to open it and disturb the players). Just call me a nervous parent, I guess.

In defense of SuperNationals skittles room, it was right next to the section of youngest players (K-1?), and the players actually exited the playing room directly to where their parents were waiting in the skittles room. Of course every section couldn’t be located that close, but they picked the most important section for that placement. If every tournament was as well thought-out as the SuperNationals, more than half my complaints would be eliminated. IF you’re going to kick the parents out, the SuperNationals K-1 section and skittles room were an OK combination.

9

I’ve been to several conventions at Opryland other than SuperNationals, nothing is close by in that hotel!

It was over 3/4 of a mile from the TD room to my sleeping room, for example. The TD room and Chess Central were too far apart to be able to share the computer network and that caused problems during registration.

I think SuperNationals could have been a bit better organized for space, hopefully the USCF learned a few things this year and will heed those lessons the next time around.

Part of it is the layout of that hotel, but 5000 participants are going to take up a LOT of space no matter where the tournament is held, making some things far away even if they’re only a couple of ballrooms away.

There aren’t that many hotels with enough meeting and sleeping space in the same building to hold a SuperNationals, either. Las Vegas has a few places big enough, but that’s probably not a city parents would want their kids going to for a chess tournament.

Large meeting sites that don’t have [enough] attached hotels mean lots of buses and problems because the kids can’t go back to their hotel room. (Not that you could get from the playing hall to most rooms at Opryland in less than 15 minutes.)

10

jwiewel,

I do understand the difficulty of finding an ideal playing site for a scholastic tournament. If every scholastic tournament organizer simply TRIED to better take parents into account I’d be happy.

I understand the concerns about cheating (and the perception of cheating when it’s not taking place), but are we letting the fringe dictate policy to us? Controlling cheating is an important consideration, but it shouldn’t be the ONLY consideration. Yes, I know chess is different in this respect than other sports (though I have heard that it’s against the rules for parents to shout directions at their kids during youth soccer games), but what about other “mental” competitions like spelling bees? Parents are usually allowed to watch these, aren’t they?

As a TD, maybe you can answer: why couldn’t a parent videotape their child? (camera set up on a tripod, out of the way of players and TDs) I heard this ruling at two separate national tournaments, so this isn’t just an isolated aberation.

11

Please define ‘out of the way’ and then think about how hard that is to achieve at most chess tournaments. Put a tripod at the end of a row of tables and you deny the TD the best place to monitor multiple games at time control. You also then have the camera in the aisle where it will be in the way and could easily get knocked over.

Then consider what it would be like in a playing room with several hundred kids and a hundred or more video cameras.

Spelling bees are usually in theatres with thousands of seats and a couple dozen kids on the stage performing one at a time. Chess tournaments aren’t at all comparable.

The closest thing I’ve seen to a good solution to this was the year they held the National Elementary in the basketball arena at Arizona State University. The kids were on the arena floor, the parents could sit in the bleachers and watch their kids, though they’d have needed pretty strong binoculars to follow the games.

I also find it rather ironic that there’s a thread going complaining about the high costs of scholastic chess tournaments and another proposing things that will increase the space requirements for those tournaments. Space is not free.

12

The chess rulebook doesn’t cover videotaping. I’m guessing that the privacy issue cited as the reason was the true reason, and that the increase in number and size of lawsuits caused that reason to be given. I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know whether there are any precedents that would or would not make a TD susceptible to being sued by the opponent’s parent or by parents of other nearby players that may also end up getting taped. Since it is an indoor event, I don’t know if any precedents regarding sporting events would apply. Particularly with K-3 sections, some parents get very defensive about their kids’ pictures being taken. Since it is a rare tournament in this area where parents are even close enough to videotape, I haven’t had to make such a ruling. If there are any lawyers reading this, they may want to indicate whether or not it is legally risky to allow videotaping.

Having gone through the transition from mostly open floors to mostly closed floors, I can say that the parents at the time (and who thus experienced both types of floors) ended up favoring the closed floor by a margin of about 3 to 1.

I haven’t been to a spelling bee but I’m guessing that it is much easier to monitor for signals and other cheating attempts when there is only one active participant at a time. Thus there is less of a chance of the suspicion of cheating.

My following percentages are based on somewhat fuzzy memory, but when the floors were open there were generally accusations of spectator cheating involving about 1-2% of the games (which would be 7-15 accusations in a 300-player one-day tournament), and each accusation had about a 10-20% chance of having tempers flare enough to significantly disrupt the tournament and 5-25% chance of causing the “perpetrator” or “victim” to get pulled from the tournament by a parent upset over the confrontation. I once spent 10-15 minutes alleviating the fears of a fourth grade girl who was publicly berated by a parent who was absolutely convinced of the accuracy of his actually unjust accusation. Kids are less able to handle such confrontations well, and removing the perception of cheating made for a much nicer environment for the kids to play their games in. Almost always, the accusation of cheating was unfounded (as a non-paid TD in a non-rated event for inexperienced kids, one parent some distance from me accused me of cheating when I replaced a rook on a board in the K-2 section with a queen, but calmed down when I said the upside-down rook was the second queen on the board and I wanted to make sure that if it accidentally got knocked over then it would still be treated as a queen when it was picked up). The rare times when a spectator actually did do something wrong, it was almost always an involuntary reaction to a bad move by their own kid, and their reaction increased the chances that the bad move would be punished. In two decades I think I’ve only had to actually penalize or forfeit a scholastic player once or twice for spectator-related cheating.

13

nolan, you make a good point, but:

In one case the TD actually said the reason for the ruling was the privacy of the other player!

In the other case, I saw the camera set-up and it was back from the table by several feet (the room was very comfortably sized for the number of players) and was not in the central isle. At a pre-tournament briefing, the TD told all that spectating was restricted to the center isle. If I remember correctly, there was 8 feet or more from the edge of the table to the wall and the tripod was right next to the wall. I didn’t see it get in anyone’s way, even with the crowd that was present in the room before the rounds started. Of course, since the parent had to take the tripod down, it could always be argued that it COULD have gotten in the way later. I really don’t think that would have though.

It wasn’t my camera, and I don’t really have that strong a feeling on the subject. My primary objection is that it seemed to be part of a pattern of “spectators have no rights” being used to provide knee-jerk rejections of reasonable requests.

14

jwiewel, I just don’t see privacy as being a legitimate concern. It’s a competition that is open to the public and to the press (this was a NATIONAL OPEN). No one would try such an objection at little league, t-ball, youth soccer, etc.

I’m sure that removing parents from the playing room makes things run smoother UNLESS there are unusually accomodating facilities available. I suspect that more accomodating facilities can be had more frequently if this became a priority for the organizer.

I think the gains would justify the effort of finding better facilities. I’m glad to hear other opinions, however, since it shows me that some thought HAS been put into the issues.

15

And when YOUR kid comes out and says, “This camera was there and it made me nervous, so I lost”, how would you feel?

Do you suppose the Little League would let you set your camera up behind the pitcher’s mound? It won’t be in the way much!

One of my life dreams is to be able to run a LARGE scholastic tournament where the parents are not only kept out of the playing hall but banned from the site for the day. I bet the kids would:

  1. Behave better
  2. Play better chess
  3. Have a much more enjoyable day

If someone has the money, it would be possible (with a lot of advance planning) to get electronic boards and have all the games available on monitors in another room.

16

As far as videotaping goes, I’m guessing that the concern wasn’t simply privacy as much as the risk of being sued for allowing a violation of privacy. Since I am not a lawyer I’ll have to let others that are more qualified state whether or not that is a legitimate concern. I hadn’t considered the issue before today, but I would hope that there was a realistic answer before the next national scholastic.

Since cameras ARE allowed at most tournaments, I am guessing that a legal opinion would be that allowing videotaping does not make a TD vulnerable to lawsuits. In the absence of that opinion, some TDs will be very reluctant to risk having to spend thousands of dollars defending against a lawsuit.

The potential privacy concerns of parents are often driven by some paranoia, and I am not about to state how much of that paranoia is unjustifiable and how much is healthy concern. When paranoia is involved the reaction may be much greater than you might otherwise expect. I am guessing that newspapers and magazines that publish pictures of kids with their names still need releases signed by the parents, so the parents would not need to be paranoid about the press. There is a level of parental fear nowadays over the possibility that their kids’ pictures and names may be placed on the internet. I do know that relatives of mine were very upset to discover that pictures of their kids at school functions had been placed on the school’s internet site (even without actually naming the kids involved), and their primary fear was the potential of molesters seeing the pictures and the location the kids spend a portion of their time at. A non-media-related videotaper might cause some parents to wonder which boards are actually being taped, whether or not the taper can check the pairing sheets to determine the names of the players, and what the taper will do with the tape. The risk is probably similar to the risk from still photos, but newer technology is generally considered more suspect and more plausible for susceptibility to litigation.

17

If the parents are close enough to see their child some will be close enough to see the game. Imagine how many extra TD’s you’d have to have just to field the complaints from parents that the child’s opponent did something illegal.

It’s hard enough to officiate 2500 games without having parents there.

I remember back in 1992 I played in Kentucky at the National High School Championships. I guess the coaches were let in back then, although maybe our coach was in because he’s a Senior TD. Anyway, one of my opponents made an illegal move against me that I didn’t notice and my coach saw it happen. He knew the rules though and kept his mouth shut until after the game when he told me about it.

Somehow I think several thousand spectating parents wouldn’t be able to stay quiet like that in similar situations.

18

Having the parent or the coach at the tables, is much harder to check for cheating. Some coach/parent can wink, grab their noise, ect., just to tell the player to ask for a draw, ect… Other parents would even point out the best moves, question the claims of the other player. There is no way to have one director over one board.

The closer the parents are to the boards, the greater the tempers get between the parents. If you have 2500 boards going on, with the parents around the tables. It would not take long before some parents get into a fight. There are parents more into tournament chess then the scholastic player.

Still recall performing a non-rated scholastic event. Only prize was a trophy worth around $2.95. The fathers were doing the scorekeeping, and they were pointing out non-checkmates and touch moves. When I told the fathers it was up to the players to make a claim not them. One got so upset he told me and the other father he was thinking of going to his car and get his handgun. If he can get that violent for a non-rated scholastic tournament for a trophy … hate to see him at the Supernationals! Can understand why the directors/organizers want the parents away from the boards.

19

Hello Douglas Forsythe,

Your handgun-comment experience is a bit more extreme than my experiences, but is otherwise not at all surprising given the circumstances. In my experience, having the floor generally closed has usually segregated the confrontations to areas away from the kids, and at national scholastics I’ve been personally physically threatened only a couple of times, both out of earshot of any players. Most comments are made hastily and are not actually intended to be carried out. I would hope that the comment in your case was made away from the kids, as kids are less able to differentiate between comments that are likely versus unlikely to be true threats.

As you say, there simply are not enough directors available to have one watching each board (or even one for each table of three boards). Since some parents new to chess tournaments actually expect that level of supervision and are very surprised not to see it, issues occur over perceived violations of the rules. I’ve watched some “problem games” over the years, have had to work hard to get the right angle to view some touch move issues, and can’t remember how often a parent 40 feet away has been able to clearly see the occurence of something I had to be 5 feet away from to determine that it didn’t actually occur (often related to a hand hovering over, but not quite actually touching, a piece).

20

It was away from the kids. It was a wake up call. The scholastic parents are not all that bad. Its’ a fine line being a parent, speaking and doing something in behalf of the child. Most parents would perform this act so much it becomes second nature for them. During the chess game, the scholastic player has to stand up for themselves not the parents.

The reason why scholastic players make so many common errors, touch move, illegal moves, ect… It has become so natural for them to get away with it. The kids are not doing it to be cheating, most have never been told it was wrong. Sure, scholastic players at the Supernationals will have better skills then the scholastic players at their local school. The parent, the coach … or the director should not change the out come of the game. If one player does not know or understand to make a claim on the spot, the player will learn to understand the rules and stand up for themselves the next time.

If the parents or the coach or the directors inform the players of one bad move or illegal move during the game. That would not make the players become independent thinkers. If someone steps into the game, just to point out a move or illegal move, even if you win the victory will be bitter sweet. Telling someone how to win the game, or make a claim for them, would be cheating both players. As there is no way I can claim to win a game on my own, when someone made a claim on my behalf. Can understand why the organizers want the parents away from the boards.