When I was playing several years ago, I depended on TLAs to find tournaments. I don’t think I ever went to a tournament that wasn’t in the back of the Chess Life magazine.
Now I’m finding that most chess tournaments aren’t in Chess Life or the on-line TLAs. I’m not just talking tiny tournaments either. It seems that the great majority of scholastic tournaments are never put in TLAs. Even some decent-sized regular tournaments aren’t listed. Recently I found:
– The 2006 Rea Hayes Open in Chattanooga, TN (March 18 &19)
– The Arkansas Open (February 25 & 26), and
– The St. Louis Open (sometime in April).
I would consider going to any of these tournaments, but none of these are in TLAs. It’s become something of a effort to find tournaments now – I need to check 5 or 6 state web sites to be sure I haven’t missed something. Are organizers so apathetic they can’t send in an announcement? Do they feel it’s not worth the expense? Am I missing something?
On a related subject, I’ve seen the on-line TLA for the world open for several weeks now. The US Open is the next month after the world open and I can’t find any details about it. A long tournament like the US Open takes some vacation planning – the more lead-time the better for me! How come the CCA has put forth the effort to get their tournament advertised, but the USCF’s most prestigious open tournament isn’t listed yet? Is there somewhere to get details that I’ve missed? An on-line full-page ad for each national tournament would cost the USCF next to nothing – why aren’t they out there? (or have I just missed them?). I don’t see how it would hurt to run the ads months or even a year in advance of the tournament!
When we get the new free online TLA service running, I think you’ll see a big increase in the number of TLAs available online. There are still several adiminstrative issues to resolve, I’ll be in Tennessee next week and hope to clean up some of them.
I did a comparison against the rated events list a while back and concluded that only about 25% of the events we rate have TLAs in the magazine.
I think another 50% could benefit from a TLA, perhaps if they’re free (except for a few minutes to fill out the form) organizers will utilize the online TLA service. If a few minutes work brings in even ONE additional player, it has probably paid off!
About 25% of the events we rate are ones that IMHO would not benefit from having a TLA, online or in print, even for free, because they’re not open to the typical USCF member. (Matches, schools, invitational tournaments, etc.)
The copy for the TLA for the US Open is still being proofed, it should be up on the website next week. Apparently not all the details were finalized until last week.
The free on-line TLAs sound like a great service to the USCF members. Now if we can just convince everyone to use them. I find it hard to believe that most tournaments wouldn’t benefit from a PAID advertisement. FREE ones sound like an almost universal benefit!
Actually, I think every event would benefit from a TLA – even those you mention that wouldn’t draw additional players. Free publicity is important. There may be others that would like to know about the tournaments than potential players! If I knew about a local scholastic tournament, for example, I might go as a spectator to meet other parents, organizers, etc. even if my daughter wasn’t allowed to play. News media might like to know. Other schools might like to know (they might not be aware that there are schools they could arrange matches with). Organizers need to be more proactive about promoting chess and TLAs are cheap advertising that might bring some needed attention.
I’d encourage organizers to also include links to their web pages. The CCAs web site isn’t very well laid out, but all the information I could ask for about their tournaments is there somewhere.
Thanks by the way for the info on the US Open – I’ll be looking for the TLA. With 6 months to plan for it I may just be able to take some time off!
I’ve noticed too the increase in non-TLA tourneys. A lot of these are however advertised in state web sites. It would be great if the USCF got in touch with the major state web sites and worked out some way to pull together as many TLAs as possible.
Maybe what could be done is have the USCF run a TLA Calendar like the one at masschess.org and allow people to view it by state(s), and every chess organization and club web site that wanted too could have links to the forms to enter TLAs and to view them.
I guess it’s just dreaming, but it would be great to have an authoritative ist of tournaments nationwide…
I more or less agree, but there is a downside – the filling of pages in Chess Life, a national magazine, with TLAs for tiny events of purely local interest. Of course, this does not apply to web pages. The USCF’s problem there is timeliness (you really want someone updating such pages on a daily basis). Does this justify hiring and paying a full time employee? That’s the sort of question on which a responsible EB would be spending its time.
The on-line space is so cheap it’s probably not worth charging for. The TLA’s in Chess Life would only appear if paid for. Sounds like a good compromise to me. Why would the USCF need to hire somebody to update TLAs that organizers or TDs could enter themselves?
I don’t think there’s such a thing as tournaments of “purely local” interest. Where I live, I have to drive over 2 hours MINIMUM to get to a tournament. There are dozens of small cities within that radius. If one of them were to have a tournament, I’d very much like to see it listed in a TLA. I used to travel heavily on business – knowing when there’s going to be a small tournament in an area I’m visiting would have been great. IF the local organizers had bothered to list it in a TLA.
Just the fact that the tournaments are out there would be good to know. Having all these tournaments show up in TLAs builds a sense of community.
Allowing people to post things without supervision can be a big problem. For example, I know some organizers who, given the opportunity, would flood the page with verbose and repetitive announcements of utterly trivial events. There are also quite a few who have no notion of how to structure a TLA (hiding the site halfway down the page, for example). It is possible that Mike can come up with a technological solution to the latter (some form of template), but the former will always require human oversight.
In principle I agree, and in the old days (pre-Fischer), Chess Life could accomodate almost all the tournaments without straining. But, for example, will a 60-year-old player in Minnesota be interested in seeing the announcement of a one-day scholastic in a suburb of El Paso?
That’s a valid point about the TLAs getting too verbose. Really all I’d like to see in a list is the name of the tournament, city, and date. All the other info should only show up if a link is selected. Since the info wouldn’t interfere with seeing the other TLAs, they can be as long and informative as needed. Best would be a link to a nicely formatted page on the organizer’s own web site, but there’s really no need to limit the listing as long as all the information is hidden until an interested viewer clicks on the link
Chess Life TLAs, of course, would be PAID advertisements. So the advertiser would only get the amount of space that they were willing to pay for.
Yes!, a 60-year-old player in Minnesota may be interested in seeing the one-day scholastic in El Paso. 60-year-olds frequently have grand-children – and while he might not have any relatives in El Paso, it’s always useful to have extra information available. (I can picture a phone call to the local school system, for example, “they have nice scholastic tournaments in El Paso, why don’t we have them here?”). The point is that for on-line ads there’s no need to limit things. With computer software to organize the information, there’s no such thing as too many TLAs. When nolan gets the on-line TLA service running, I’ll bet the system will be able to handle many times the current number of TLAs.
What would be cool is if you could sort through the TLAs for tournaments of interest to you. Sort by distance from your house, length of time control, scholastic vs. regular, etc. That would probably be a lot more work, but we’ll eventually be there. Remember that all the TLA info will be on a computer. Computers are great tools for organizing and accessing info. For TLAs, I say the more info the better! Why limit it?
The beta test version of the online TLA form has been available to affiliates in the TD/Affiliate Support Area for months.
It is highly structured, which is probably both its strongest point and biggest problem. (Glenn Petersen still thinks TLAs cannot be structured and remain flexible enough to cover the wide variety of events people offer.)
Because it is highly structured, it should be possible for players to search for events based on a variety of criteria, as suggested.
It will require some oversight on the USCF’s part to review and release online TLAs, mostly checking for inappropriate language or for events that cannot be permitted. (I could not submit an event on behalf of my local chess club and call it the ‘US Championship’, for example, and I probably shouldn’t be allowed to submit the ‘JOE BLOE IS AN IDIOT OPEN’ either.)
My guess is that each TLA will take 1-2 minutes to review and release. For those that are also going in Chess Life, this may wind up with a small a time savings over the office having to key the entire TLA.
In a busy month, the USCF rates about 800 events, most months it’s more like 600. Let’s suppose that 25% of these would never have an online TLA. That leaves 600 TLAs to review and release in the the busiest month.
If the review process winds up taking 1000 minutes/month, that’s still less than an hour a day.
Who is to say that these tournaments won’t be in a TLA? Anything after the 15th of the month goes in that month’s Chess Life, so the Arkansas Open could be advertised in the Feb Chess Life. I have a tournament on March 25th that I am putting 2 months advertising in, and it will run in the Feb and March issues. Who is to say at this point that the Rea Hayes Open and the St. Louis Open won’t have 2 months advertising also?
I had been surprised that my listing wasn’t in the online section yet, but I was told that they update monthly when the print version goes out.
You may be right – maybe I shold have picked tournaments that had already taken place as my examples. There are plenty of them to choose from.
I’m surprised they aren’t already on-line if they’re going to be listed. If you look at the web pages, they show (at the bottom of the page) when the page was updated. The “Grand Prix” listing was updated Jan 10th. Admittedly the others could show up later, but wouldn’t the Arkansas Open have already shown up? (I figured the magazine lead-time would be longer than this) I guess my expectations are warped by seeing TLAs already on-line for tournaments in April, May, and June.
BTW why don’t the on-line TLAs get updated more often? I assume it’s probably a manpower limitation, but I’d think it’d be nearly as efficient to update the pages as the TLAs are received.
I asked that question: I was told that they get entered as a monthly batch at the same time the TLA goes to Chess Life. I agree that it would be nice to process as they go, but hopefully it will soon be a moot point once the affiliates start doing all of the online TLA’s.
This must be a policy they don’t always follow. (not that I’m complaining either way, just curious)
The Illinois page was updated on Jan 19, Colorado on Jan 20, most other state pages on Dec 18, and the Grand Prix page on Jan 10. I had figured they waited until they had a handful of TLAs and then updated the affected states.
(BTW I noticed that the info is still out-of-date on the Chicago Open even though the page was updated on Jan 19 – I assume the organizer hasn’t updated the USCF yet, just their own web page.)
Hey Nolan, this OT, but how is Glenn doing nowadays? I know he was hospitalized a few months ago (a lot of us New Jersey players signed a get well card for him), and I was just hoping that he is feeling better now.
There can be a simple reason why larger tournaments are not going with the TLA’s. The state associations are doing a better job with their own websites … their own publishings. True, not all states have a website … some states go with quarters … others every other month.
The point of the TLA’s are to draw members from outside the state … not to draw them from within the state - unless you have a weak state association. If you have a great state association … with positive access for the directors to post tournaments on the state website … why spend the capital on a TLA.
Even with Michigan … it is very uncommon to get someone from outside the state to play chess. Even with the Michigan Chess Association that will spend the money for the TLA’s, most of these tournaments are going to be one or two hours away from the Michigan - Ohio or the Michigan - Indiana border. If they came from the Michigan - Wisconsin border … that should be a 12 hour drive.
Only in special case … will a TLA work for the organizer.
Glenn is doing well enough that he’s coming in to the NY office several days a week again.
Though we still get organizers who scream like crazy if there are any problems with their TLA, I think we pushed most of them out of the magazine due first to higher prices and then due to poor service.
I got invoved in the the whole website thing in the first place because I was looking for information on playing in tournaments and discovered that the local clubs were not posting a website through USCF. The one website that is posting is appearently promoting k-12 scholastic chess. For that I give them very high marks.
Today I expect small, low fee, local tournaments to be posted on a local club website, or state affiliate. I would look to USCF for anouncements of tournaments that expect to draw numbers of players and have a substantial fee. This is my unrealistic expectation only.
I just can’t see relying on the state association to promote chess tournaments, especially for those of us that live in rural areas. When you live near the edge of the state, what do you do – check five different state web sites? (Off subject, but it would be nice if the USCF had a page of links to the state association’s web pages)
dmforsythe, you don’t think TLAs work?? I’d bet a whole lot of chess players rely PRIMARILY on TLAs for finding tournmants. A big part of the country lives in areas without local organized chess activities. MY first introduction to the USCF and organized chess came in a 1-page ad in a CHESS BOOK, not from a non-existant local tournament. Without a TLA in Chess Life I’d have never known of tournaments regular people could play in.
I’m sure the situation is better for people that live in big cities like Chicago, but you need NATIONAL tournament promotion for the best reach into the rural areas. Chess Life (and especially the TLAs) have been my primary link to organized chess. Maybe, with the internet, there are other ways to get the information today – but like a lot of chess players, I’m a creature of habit and TLAs in Chess Life are all I had for several years.
Plus, my state (Illinois) just doesn’t seem to be doing much except for the north half of the state. I’d guess that the state association thinks Springfield is on the state’s sourthern border. I haven’t seen a TLA for an Illinois tournament within 4 hours of my home, and it’s further for a lot of people. I haven’t seen a single flyer or announcement for any Illinois tournaments at any of the out-of-state tournaments I’ve gone to in KY, MO, or TN (funny that rural TN tournaments are held closer to my home than any in Illinois).
Of course I could quit complaining and hold a tournament myself – no I can’t quit complaining, where would the fun be in that? I am thinking of having a tournament myself though. If I do, you can be sure there’ll be a TLA.
I am thinking of having a tournament myself though. If I do, you can be sure there’ll be a TLA.