I have accepted with a heavy heart a lot of changes done by NMCO administration that does not promote chess in our state. But now enough is enough! I have participated in the 3 major tournaments Memorial, Albuquerque open and the Nm open since 1998 missing few for being out of town, but now I feel I have to speak up!!
Why $ 60 entry fee? Why 3 day tournament without option to play in 2 day format?
Why capping the entry in the top section to 1900 rating and charge extra $40.00 just to play in that section. It feels as we are getting over our heads with all the changes.
And most important question of all, why the chess community has no says in these changes?!!!
The questions I have raised are not only mine, they are shared by many people in the chess community.
Appeasing masters and high rated chess player is one thing, but charging players up to $100.00 to play in a tournament that unlikely will win anything is outrageous to say the least. I have not ever posted a complaint on the form before, but i feel this is going too far and needs to stop.
Thanks for listening.
Ramzi.
Ramzi,
Thank you for writing this. It gives me a chance to put some things in writing to document the thinking of the NMCO board this last year. If not for your comment I almost certainly would not be doing this. Everyone deserves to know the reasoning behind why things were done. Even though the entire board has voted for these changes I was the origin of most of the ideas, and they probably would have never happened if I had not brought them up and championed them. All of these things were done to try to promote chess in New Mexico and make our tournaments better. There was never any other reason.
The NMCO board meets, most of the time anyway, on the first Tuesday of the month. Anyone can come to the meetings, and some people do show up. The notice is posted on the calendar on the website. I would strongly advise calling or emailing someone though before deciding to attend. This year we decided that the NMCO board members would wear special t-shirts to the tournaments so that we could be easily recognized and then questioned about what was going on and suggestions could be made. In addition all board members consciously went out of their way to ask people, at the tournaments and whenever else they saw them, about specific tournaments, the location, etc., and possibilities for the future tournaments.
We have raised the entry fees this year. Our entry fees, before this year, were lower than entry fees, accounting for inflation, than 1983 when I moved here. A lot lower, and lower than all surrounding states. Attendance is up this year, overall. As a result we have been able to increase the prizes and pay for the annual (non-tournament) NMCO expenses without threatening the solvency of NMCO. Based on concerns I have heard from other board members this is a big deal, and something that has driven previous board decisions toward very cautious approaches to running tournaments.
Some people want to “play up” regardless of the cost or the chance to win money. They just want every chance they can get to play people rated higher than themselves. The chance of winning a prize does not enter into their thinking. I played in a small tournament a few weeks ago where I was the third-lowest rated player. I ended up playing you the last round (and losing of course!), and paid $100 for the privilege of doing that. I had no hallucinations about the possibility of winning a prize. I had a good time and would do it again. Probably.
Nevertheless, the board has decided to try something to ameliorate this possible fiscal issue and encourage people to keep coming back. We have sent out notices for $10 off coupons to people that played in the Albuquerque Open that did not win a prize but had a positive (3.0 or more) score. Additionally, we also sent out $10 coupons to anyone, including ties, who had the lowest score in their section and completed the tournament. These coupons can be applied to the NM Open, regardless of the section they are playing in. We are continuing this for the NM Open (see the tournament announcement) and intend to keep doing this. There were some practical issues to solve, mostly involving how to administer the entry fees and coupons. Joey Troy, our webmaster, went out of his way to change the method by which people electronically register so that the coupons could be used. For the two people who got coupons who normally register by check Joey let them know how to use the coupon.
For several reasons we moved the NM Open to November, and then, since it was a three-day weekend (for a lot of people anyway), we decided to ask around and find out what the sentiment was for a three day top section for the championship, and whether or not to open the championship up to out of state people. Interestingly, the split was about half and half for the number of days. Some people did not want to spend three days playing in a tournament. Others thought three days with two games per day was a better format, and then having longer time controls would bring in some out of state players. A few people thought having a three day tournament with an option to play just two days and merge the groups was a good idea. After talking to several tournament directors we determined that would be difficult to do for a relatively small tournament, considering the other sections that were also playing, and keeping things quiet would be a challenge. So we chose not to do that. Thus we decided to have a three day tournament with longer time controls and a two day tournament with a top section that had relaxed rating minimums. The three day tournament would have a guaranteed prize fund. Both tournaments would have the same entry fee ($10/game), but the “play-up” fee for the three day tournament would be slightly higher ($6.67/game versus $4.00/game). After the announcement was posted two people asked me about the possibility of letting senior people whose rating was recently over 1900 play in the three day tournament without paying the “play-up” fee. So we amended the announcement to let people play in the three day tournament if their rating had been over 1900 in the last two years or had ever been over 2000. As a result, I am expecting some people in the three day tournament that we were not counting on.
Also, in anticipation of this, we held a NM Closed Championship in Las Cruces this summer. We invited the top twenty New Mexico players, and the winner would be our in-state champion. This allowed us to open up the NM Open Championship to people from out of state.
We now have a section in the NM Open for highly rated players that spans three days with longer time controls and a guaranteed top prize; a two day section for highly rated players that has slightly faster time controls; two sections for middle-rated players; a section for lower-rated players; and, three scholastic sections based on their grade instead of rating (due to comments we have received over the last year and experience among board members with scholastic tournaments) that takes place on one day. In addition we are allowing people to play up in a manner that takes into account both the lower-rated and higher-rated players desires in as reasonable a manner as we know how. This includes allowing scholastic players to play in the non-scholastic sections based on their rating rather than their grade in school. That totals eight sections. It seems, to me anyway, that covers just about everyone in New Mexico as best as we practically can, given the historical attendance and the attendance this calendar year.
This is not perfect. It never will be. For example, not everyone gets the 10th of November off even though it is a federal holiday. We have adjusted our thinking on each tournament this year based on the previous ones. We had such a good scholastic turnout for the Senior Open last January, for example, that we planned on having scholastic one day sections both on Saturday and Sunday for the next tournament. That did not work out at all. We are having the scholastic sections play on Sunday this November, rather than the usual Saturday because a number of people have mentioned that there is soccer on Saturdays in the fall, but not on Sunday.
Everything that has been done, including limiting registrations on the day of the tournament, has been done with the intent to make the tournaments better. I have even allowed people to call me as late as 10 pm the night before tournaments to register. This seems to happen a lot with the scholastic sections. But, as I said in the beginning, nothing is perfect, and sometimes only just barely tolerable apparently.
In summary, I have to admit if I weren’t tournament organizer, and director for most of the tournaments, this year would have been almost like last year. So if these changes are deemed by the members to not promote chess in our state I will gladly step down as organizer in November. In fact, I won’t just step down, I will run away from the post!
Best regards,
Peter