Volume 40, Number 1
Making Better
Tournaments
by Christofer Peterson
In 2011 and 2012 I help put on some
events for the Denver Chess Club, including the largely successful Denver Open.
When I first started running tournaments,
I kind of followed the same general formula that was used by my predecessor. It
didn’t take very long for me to realize
that the structure of these tournaments
were not conducive to an exciting or enjoyable tournament atmosphere. The
whole point of a tournament is to breed
competition which generates exciting, fun
chess.
Colorado Chess Informant
scare participants away. Granted we had a
slightly smaller attendance (5 players
less), we gave out a huge amount in prizes (over $3000).
The Colorado Open was a success only
because of its large attendance, over 120
players, but it was a complete train wreck
as far as the prizes available. The entry
fee was $50, with 120 or so players, that
is a very large sum of money to give out
as prizes. However, the money spent to
bring in GM Yermolinsky and the cost of
the site forced the prizes of the Colorado
Open to be LESS than 50% of all entries.
I only consider a tournament a success
overall if it gave out at least 80% prizes
and stayed in the black financially. With
that, you do not want your site location to
absorb most of the money for prizes.
I feel that tournaments in Colorado have
definitely been lacking in this
inherent competitiveness. The
competition between individual players has been tremendous. With the recent addition
of Eric Montany to the Master’s circle that much is evident. This competition was
bred between the players, not
by the tournaments the games
were played in. I won’t name
names and I won’t point finger s but quite a few of the
tournaments do very little to
encourage the cut throat chess
we all love to watch.
Low entry fees result in at
least two of three things: low prizes, poor
location, or low out-of-state attendance.
The entry fee does not necessarily directly affect attendance over all, as shown by
the 2011 and 2012 Denver Opens. Rather,
high entry fees can attract a larger player
pool if it can pull from out of state. The
key factor for bringing those out-of-state
players is high prizes, which a $20 entry
fee is not going to generate.
Most tournaments have an entry fee between $20 and $50. These tournaments
are affordable but they have a kind of
strangle hold monopoly on the tournament scene. The 2012 Denver Open had
an entry fee of $75 (with pretty large discounts for various cases). When I first
started talking about how much the entry
fee was going to be, I got a largely negative reaction. People thought it would
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A great example of a tournament that had
a poor location was the 2012 Colorado
Closed. Most of the invitees were not
from Colorado Springs, most were from
Denver or Boulder or Fort Collins. This
made the entire weekend quite a bit awkward for the players. Fred Spell and Joe
Fromme found an excellent location at
the Inn at Palmer Divide, a little off the
beaten path, but still a good location.
Their tournaments there are usually a
success, although I don’t know the financials behind them. Monetary restrictions
make it hard to find a good place to run a
tournament but overall, the tournament
cannot be successful without a good location. If the choice is between running
tournaments in a slum with a low entry
fee, or an amazing hotel with a higher
entry fee, I would MUCH rather play in
www.colorado-chess.com
January 2013
the high entry fee tournament. Having the
higher entry fee enables higher prizes
which attracts the out of state talent.
Colorado is in desperate need of out of
state chess players! The rating pool is
stagnant in Colorado, only one person has
breached Master in YEARS. I don’t know
the numbers as far as how quickly people
are gaining rating points, but it cannot be
very fast. It is a big achievement for players to go up classes because it happens so
rarely in Colorado. If we can get an influx
of class players, experts, and masters into
the chess scene, I would imagine everyone’s rating would increase and the overall quality of play would dramatically
increase. The only way to attract out of
state players is to host large tournaments
with large prize funds. The Denver Open
saw four players from out of state, so $75
is not a high enough entry fee
to attract those players. A once
a year tournament of $150 or
$200 entry fee is probably
necessary.
Once the tournament has been
finalized, it is up to the tournament director(s) to run the
tournament. TD’s are tremendously important and it is a
big task. I know now, how
stressful it can be and encourage anyone who hasn’t run a
tournament to give it a try.
You will earn a new respect
for what people like Jerry
Maier, Richard “Buck”
Buchannan, and Fred Spell are doing,
even if you don’t particularly like their
events. Without pointing names or fingers, I have noticed a precise reluctance
for TD’s to play their role - Customer
Service.
The players in your tournament are your
customers. You should treat them with
respect and do everything in your power
to make their tournament smooth and
without incident. Here are a couple easily
avoidable examples:
At the Colorado Quick Championship,
the night before the main event, quite a
few players wanted to register for the
Colorado Open. Instead of accepting registrations at that time, which would have
been inconvenient for the TD’s, they told
them to register in the morning. This
caused a huge rush for registrations