Submitted by Alan Hodge
September 3, 2002
corrected 9-21-2002 MK - unused trophy refund
Complete details are provided in the Registration 8-26.xls file. Summary data are as follows:
Entry fees collected $1,200.00
Sales of sets and scorebooks 123.00
Total program income $1,323.00
Miscellaneous operating expenses $ 511.10
Sets and scorebooks 123.00
TD Fee 100.00
Prizes
299.74
Total
expenses $1,033.74
Net Program Income $ 289.16
USCF dues received and remitted totaled $299 for 23 one-year memberships.
The Summer 2002 Program did not experience the growth that was hoped for and expected in moving the program to Thursday nights. The total number of participants was 54, the same as in 2001 (if the one no-show in 2001 is disregarded), although average attendance per night increased slightly to 34.7. Pertinent data are shown below.
|
|
2000 |
2001 |
2002 |
|
Total participants |
27 |
54 |
54 |
|
Average per night* |
18.4 |
33.4 |
34.7 |
|
Percentage of players
attending on 8 or more dates |
51.9 |
49.1 |
38.9 |
*Tuesdays
in 2000 and 2001, Thursdays in 2002.
In 2002 the program concluded with a Sunday afternoon tournament, which was open only to persons who had played in at least one of the Thursday events. A total of 22 players played in the Sunday tournament.
It is not known how much the move from Tuesday to Thursday affected the level of participation. In the case of one family (Fenn/Bohn), play in the regular Tuesday night events was a better fit for Calvin, while the summer program was more suitable for Nate. Caroline Fenn had two concerns: the inconvenience of coming to the club on two nights each week, and whether the level of competition would be satisfactory for Calvin if they came only on Thursdays. In the event both boys did play in Tournament 2 and were intending to play in Tournament 3 as well, but were prevented from the latter by illness. In another case, Jack Rice played on only two nights, but this was clearly not because the family was in attendance also on Tuesdays, since A.J. was not playing on Tuesdays during this period. I am not aware of any instance of a player not being able to play on Thursdays because of a conflicting commitment, although, of course, there could be such instances of which I am unaware. My conclusion is that the move to Thursday was essentially immaterial to the number of players involved.
I believe a more important factor regarding participation is turnover among players. Of the 54 players who played in the 2001 program, only 25 played also in 2002. Only five players played in all three years. The absence of a handful of players (e.g., Jason Stoll, Greg Siciliano) is explained by the fact that they have advanced to a more serious level of chess, and the level of competition and time controls offered by the summer program are unattractive to them. However, the evidence suggests that a far larger number of players have either stopped playing chess altogether, or for whatever reason have declined to play again in the summer program. Despite the very positive feedback that I have consistently received about the program, it seems prudent to project future growth only while factoring in attrition at 50% or more from one year to the next.
Moving the program to Thursday nights had several benefits. Conducting the program when there was little or no other activity in the Senior Center not only provided more than ample space for both players and their accompanying adults (and their cars), but also removed from the Tuesday night events the considerable noise and distraction inherent to a scholastic tournament. An unexpected benefit was that the Senior Center staff graciously made available to me the use of both bulletin boards in the back of the tournament room. I suggest that you pursue with the staff keeping these boards for the club’s use, so that you can spread out the material you have posted currently and even post more items of interest.
In the “familiarity breeds contempt” vein, however, I observed that as the summer progressed, the kids increasingly got out Senior Center games to amuse themselves in between chess games. While I don’t have any particular objection to this, it did add to my burden in closing up, in that I had to pick up games and spend more time putting the lounge back in order. I’m not at all sure that all the right pieces, cards and paraphernalia got back into the right boxes, or that the games got put back into the right places. There is a potential risk here of irritating the Senior Center staff or patrons for whose use these items are there. To give credit where it is due, on the other hand, I only once had to break up a pool game; otherwise the “no pool” rule was well adhered to.
The 2002 program confirmed what we established by experiment in 2001, that for the most part two games a night is the right format and that G/30 is the right time control. What sections there should be remains problematical. As in past years, the 2002 program did not attract many players above 500. Although Tournament 1 had four sections, the upper sections were too small to work well; in Tournaments 2, 3 and 4 I reduced the number of sections through combination and redefinition.
The program must come to terms with what appears to be a reliable trend: as players age, they tend either to improve and move on to “more serious” venues or to stop playing chess. For that reason I believe it will always be difficult to populate a truly rich open section in a G/30 format, or to attract enough players to populate three (or even two) sections above 500. The summer program seems to be most successful as a venue for introducing novice players to the game and for giving less experienced players a fun and relatively informal venue to get comfortable with tournament chess and to improve their game. (And, I might add, an opportunity to educate their parents on the rudiments of tournament chess in a more congenial context than they are likely to find elsewhere.) Unless the program has something more to offer the more advanced scholastic players, perhaps it should explicitly limit its focus to the under 1000 set.
Offering one game per night at G/60 might attract some additional advanced scholastic players. If it does, it will be worth the complications it introduces into the program format. Still, there is no guarantee that enough additional scholastic players will show up to populate a really competitive and interesting open section (or even that the pool of such scholastic players is large enough to make this possible). An additional measure that might help is to make such a G/60 section open to all K-12 players (not limited to those under 15). This might attract a few more players who would take advantage of the opportunity for more tournament games in a format similar to MACA’s qualifier and championship tournaments. Still, it must be recognized that the high school section of any MACA scholastic tournament is invariably much the smallest, so again there is a question of whether there are even enough players to attract. Taking this idea one step further, there was some discussion recently about whether the club should sponsor a G/60 event or section for adult players. The Board might consider incorporating such an event into the summer program, so that the summer program would not be for scholastic/K-12 players only. The objectives would be (1) to attract a larger number of advanced scholastic players by offering a larger and more competitive open section, (2) to enlarge the pool of players from which the program could draw participants, and (3) to provide a venue for less experienced adults to play in a less challenging/demanding environment than the Tuesday night arena. It is fair to acknowledge, however, that even novice adult players might not be attracted to such an event. In 2000, when the program was aimed at scholastics and adults, only one adult registered, and even novice adults might be disinclined to play “kids”.
In the 2002 program I tried another experiment: an afternoon tournament reserved for summer program participants. This attracted only 22 of the 54 participants. (Although 30 registered in total, four did not show up, in addition to four who withdrew in advance.) We understood the risk of holding such a tournament on the last weekend before school started, and my suspicion is that even if we opened it up to scholastics who did not otherwise play in the summer program, attendance would not have been affected materially. My opinion is that we should not do this again.
In three years I have experimented with a variety of prize structures. The whole topic of prizes in scholastic tournaments has been the subject of much debate, especially recently as MACA defines its new season of tournaments. What I offer here is a very personal view. First, the positives.
·
As previously, the medals appeared to be well received.
These were more a token or memento of participation than a prize as such, with
50 of 54 participants getting one. A practical concern with medals for the
future, however, is that there are not many distinct chess medal designs. In
fact, I know of only two, and I have used them both now. Coming up with
distinct prizes/mementos each year will be a challenge.
· Other prizes included a year’s membership in MACA and free entry into Tournament 4, both conceived to be incentives to encourage kids to play more chess. Whether these prizes had or will have the intended effect I can’t say. The only evidence to date is not encouraging: only six of nine players who won the free entry prize actually played in Tournament 4, but this is probably not a fair test in view of their likely reasons for skipping Tournament 4.
Now for the negatives.
·
A $50 cash prize was offered with a very high bar. The
bar (14 points out of 18) was set not with the intention that no one would win
it, but it does reflect the ambivalence I felt about having a cash prize at
all. In fact, three players came quite close to winning it (13.5, 13.5 and
13.0), and some have argued that the cash prize, in some amount or other,
should be awarded even though no one hit the 14 mark. I will not recite or
summarize here the various arguments that have been expressed in this
connection; I will only express my opinion that cash prizes should not be
offered in scholastic tournaments at all. I would opt for lower entry fees, if
the program is intended only to be self-sustaining, or to use the income to
enhance the club’s scholastic chess program otherwise as opportunity allows.
· Trophies were offered only in Tournament 4, but the sections were too small for a really differentiating competition, making the awarding of trophies complicated and to a degree arbitrary. (Tie break methods provided an unsatisfactory resolution in some cases, even though five were applied.) Moreover, although six girl’s trophies were on offer, four were not awarded because there was only one girl above 500, and she let it be known beforehand that she did not wish to be given a girl’s trophy. (As it turns out, she won the first-place trophy.) The only two girls in the U500 section each won a trophy, even though they finished eighth and ninth out of nine players. As I indicated above, I would recommend against repeating this type of tournament as part of the summer program, but even if such a tournament is offered again, trophies should be limited to the top three places per section or eliminated altogether, and only in the expectation that every section will be well populated. In any case, there should be no girls’ trophies.
How to account for byes has always been a minor problem. Many scholastic players and their parents do not have the experience (or maturity) to make an advance bye request system practicable. In 2000 I tried the club’s usual “sign up or call in advance” procedures, with little success. In 2001 I abandoned that in favor of taking roll every night. This was largely effective but delayed our start each night by several minutes. In 2002 I modified the 2001 approach by posting wall charts each night, on which the players checked off their names as they arrived at the club; only players who were checked in got paired. This worked pretty well; in fact, the players caught on and complied to a greater degree than I expected. There were the usual foibles to watch out for (players checking in on the standings posted on the same bulletin board, instead of on the wall chart, despite the “check in on this sheet” note), and some few players frequently arrived just at 7:30. But there were also instances of players or their parents actually calling to advise that they would be late or absent. Overall, accounting for players who were present and giving byes to those who were absent went rather quickly and effectively. Rounds were delayed more by announcements, when there were any to be made, than by trying to figure out who was there to be paired. No doubt someone could improve on this procedure, but I believe it works well enough.
While I remain convinced of the benefit of making available large amounts of carefully presented information, as we did with the Handbook, I am also convinced that only a small minority of the parents ever actually read this document, even in part. Nevertheless, there are a few essential things that all parents simply must know and agree to (including no pool, and various aspects of player behavior). These do not have to do with the nature and intricacies of tournament chess so much as they are the “terms and conditions” of a kid’s participation in the program. One item in particular to be covered would be the parents’ collective responsibility to supervise the kids outside the tournament room (given that the only MCC person likely to be there is the TD, who will not be able to supervise outside the tournament room), including enforcing the “no pool” and other rules, and cleaning up their kids’ share of the trash, games, etc., before leaving. The Board might consider reducing these essentials to a single piece of paper and having each parent sign it as part of the registration process.
I did not conduct a survey of the 2002 participants, but I encouraged parents and players who wished to make comments to do so by way of email to the club. A few have done so.
While it was thoughtful and appreciated that the Senior Center made two bulletin boards available to me, this was less than an ideal solution. The noise generated by kids as they congregated around these bulletin boards to get their pairings or discuss the information posted on them was a continual irritation. It would reduce the noise level somewhat if standings and pairings could be posted in the hallway. This would also make it more convenient for parents and other interested persons to see what was happening in the tournament without going into the main tournament room.
The noise level generally was a continual problem. A few observations are in order. (1) Many players, especially younger ones, have not developed the social sense of understanding that noise is sometimes not OK, much less the particular chess etiquette that reflects a practical respect for other players. They act typically almost as though they are the only ones in the room — or at least as though it doesn’t matter to them that anyone else is in the room. (2) Any number of requests, shushings, appeals and even solicitations to parents to help will have only a partial and short-term effect, and if repeated these lose their effect and collectively threaten to detract from the accommodating environment we are trying to provide. (3) Most scholastic players seem to have a much higher tolerance for noise than the typical adult player, yet still there were some complaints from players about the noise level.
The apparent solution is to put sections in different rooms. There are a couple of alternatives for this. The U500 section, as it includes the culprits responsible for most of the noise, can be put in a room by itself. But if there is a G/60 section, it makes sense that this section be in a separate room, since it will then not also be disturbed in mid-game by a presumed middle section (U800 or so) starting the second of two G/30 games.
The obvious drawback is the additional strain on the tournament director to keep an eye on two rooms, or alternatively the need to find the TD an assistant to take on some of this responsibility — always a challenge when volunteers are in short supply. This also presumes that another room will be available, which should not be taken for granted.
I am available to the MCC to answer any follow-up questions or offer my viewpoint whenever it is solicited. My email address will continue to be alan.hodge@accenture.com , even after I move to Cincinnati. Since I will be in Massachusetts until Christmas, more or less, I can be reached until then at 617-454-4444 (work) or 508-786-9764 (home).