30-01-2012, 10:30 PM
Running a chess tournament is all about balancing the books in the eyes of most organisers.
We’ve already had arguments for and against different prizes in different sections. Without getting into that again the ‘logical’ thing to do is to allocate prizes as a proportion of the entry fees per section. Adopting the policies of the beloved Maggie Thatcher means that an organiser then drops the section that loses the most money.
Let’s do some simple maths £20 entry fee. 1st Prize £150, 2nd £100, 3rd £50
100 entries Total income= £2000. Expenditure with 4 sections prize fund=£1200 Grading £250 Hall hire £500. Incidental costs £150 = £100 loss
But drop the top section lose 10 entries and suddenly the maths makes sense!
Income £1800 Expenditure Prize fund £900 grading £225 and you’re making a profit with 10 fewer players.
But what if you reduce the rating band of the second tournament (as suggested above), won’t that help balance the numbers per tournament? Actually no. Despite the fact that most players do so for fun part of the fun comes from having a number of tough/close games. The lower rated don’t enter in the same numbers because they are on a hiding to nothing, the middle players don’t enter because of the yo-yo effect (lose to a high grade/beat a dud/lose to high grade/beat a dud/finally play a game) and the strong players don’t enter because they have no competition. Result – an even smaller entry.
The solution – lots of players and narrow grading bands. Now if only I knew how to achieve that!!
We’ve already had arguments for and against different prizes in different sections. Without getting into that again the ‘logical’ thing to do is to allocate prizes as a proportion of the entry fees per section. Adopting the policies of the beloved Maggie Thatcher means that an organiser then drops the section that loses the most money.
Let’s do some simple maths £20 entry fee. 1st Prize £150, 2nd £100, 3rd £50
100 entries Total income= £2000. Expenditure with 4 sections prize fund=£1200 Grading £250 Hall hire £500. Incidental costs £150 = £100 loss
But drop the top section lose 10 entries and suddenly the maths makes sense!
Income £1800 Expenditure Prize fund £900 grading £225 and you’re making a profit with 10 fewer players.
But what if you reduce the rating band of the second tournament (as suggested above), won’t that help balance the numbers per tournament? Actually no. Despite the fact that most players do so for fun part of the fun comes from having a number of tough/close games. The lower rated don’t enter in the same numbers because they are on a hiding to nothing, the middle players don’t enter because of the yo-yo effect (lose to a high grade/beat a dud/lose to high grade/beat a dud/finally play a game) and the strong players don’t enter because they have no competition. Result – an even smaller entry.
The solution – lots of players and narrow grading bands. Now if only I knew how to achieve that!!