According to an online source NBA player Derrick Rose is planning to run a “Chesstival” at Resorts World [Las Vegas] July 7-8 of this year. I have not visited the web site, so I have no idea if this is to be a USCF rated event. It is suppose to be a $147,500 prize fund event, with a $7500 entry fee. The source article does mention that Rose got into chess in junior high school while in the Chicago Public Schools system.
My estimate is that if he can get 30 people to pay the $7500 entry that he should make a profit. Usually when you see chess events that need 30 players to make a profit [or just break even] it is a club or small tournament with more like a $7.50 entry fee.
i’m told $10,000 buy-ins are not unusual in poker tournaments, but there are a lot more people willing to enter those, and as I understand it just like free GM entries in chess tournament not everyone has to pay the full buy-in.
Unless the prizes are structured so that class players have a chance of making money, are there really over 30 GMs who might be willing to pony up $7500? A non-GM has basically zero chance of finishing in the top 5 of an event with more than a handful of GMs in it, so class prizes are what they’d basically be playing for.
This sounds kind of like the HB Global or Millionaire Open all over again, and with likely the same results for the event sponsors.
The Chesstival does not overlap the World Open. The World Open will finish on July 4, and the Chesstival is set for July 7-8. And as far as the sponsors go, assuming Derrick Rose is financing it, any loss will just be a tax write-off for him. His salary for playing basketball is given as $14,520,730 per year, so I think he can afford to lose whatever this thing may lose.
Some poker players have “investors” who split the winnings. (And there have been pro golfers and tennis players who also have been supported by people in their early years when they were playing in low budget events in return for a share of the money if they hit it big, and there have been some lawsuits when it came time to collect). I don’t know how common an arrangement like that is in chess since there are so few players who can actually cash in $$$. The attempt to replicate the “World Series of Poker” type of entry fee/prize fund has failed rather miserably in chess since a player of modest talent has effectively no chance of winning even a single game vs a GM much less running through a whole gauntlet of them. OTOH, whoever wins a poker tournament over 6000 opponents probably has to be lucky maybe 10 times----with 6000 players, someone is going to have a lucky streak and a player of modest talent can always hope that that will be them (and obviously many do hope that).
