Wildcard Prize Idea

Running Chess Tournaments
21

NOW you’re getting somewhere – I think.

In practice, I’m guessing you would perform the following steps:

A. Decide how much extra prize money to give away. (This amount could be equal to the extra entry fee income, or a pre-set percentage of it, such as 70%.)

B. See what the highest score is among non-prize-winners, and count the number of non-prize-winners in this score group.

C. Divide A by B to determine what each player’s wild-card prize is.

D. Reduce C, as necessary, in order to fit your criteria 3 and 4.

Should work, but I have the following questions:

  1. How effective will it be in making your tournament more attractive in advance? Players may have a hard time figuring out ahead of time what’s in it for them. On the other hand, you’re spreading good will – a player who wins some of this extra loot will feel good and come back next time.

  2. What if there is a 7-way tie for class D? This could reduce the wild-card prize to a trivial amount. (Of course, occasionally the organizer deserves a little extra money too.)

Bill Smythe

22

Bill,

I’d say yes to the first question. To the second question, I generally use b/40 with a $140 class prize for a $35 entry fee. If there was a 7 way tie for first place, I think the wildcard winner(s) would be ok with $20, as they would have otherwise won nothing.

Thanks for your reply

23

Good show. If your smallest (undivided) prize is $140, then you needn’t worry about fragmentation making the wild-card prize insignificant.

Bill Smythe