Club Quick at $5

Chess Clubs
1

Helping out a very small chess club called the Jackson Chess Club in Jackson Michigan. In the past year have gotten the membership to be more active, with the youth and also the adult players with the quick events at the club and the Jackson Action tournaments. WOuld say that 80% of the membership of the Jackson Chess Club are current members of the USCF.

Double Round Robin Event
Time control: G/10 no time delay
First round at 7.30 pm untill finnished
Register 6.30 till 7.20 pm no late registering after the first round
Entry fee $5 no prize fund all profits go to the club fund
Double Round Robin event with a section of 6 to 10 people.

Even if it was sent in on paper at 40 cents per game must take into the fact you have two people that pay for the game making the cost for one person down to 20 cents per game. 20 X 25 = 500 or $5. As you have 24 games to break even and 25 is a odd number for a double round robin drop it down to 24 games. As it is a double round robin cut 24 in half to get 12 people for one person to play, then you do not play yourself you can have 13 people in a section to break even if you do not have a prize fund.

If you have more then 13 people in a section, then you will start to lose money for this event. As 13 people in a section would need to play 24 games, most people would start to hate to play that many games. If you break the section into 6 to 10 players in a section, even if you have 10 people in a section that would still be only 18 games.

Earnest,
Douglas M. Forsythe, Local TD
12313120

2

Hmm, wouldn’t a double round robin with 10 players mean each player is playing 18 games? At 20 minutes per game (10 minutes per player), this would take 6 hours, ending at 1:30 a.m. I hope your club meets on a Friday or Saturday!

My only other suggestion would be that you play at game/8 with a 3-second delay, in games played with delay-capable clocks. This takes about the same amount of time as game/10 with no delay, and avoids ridiculous finishes. Game/8 with 3 seconds is still legal as Quick, because the time in minutes (8) plus the delay in seconds (3) exceeds the minimum required 10.

Bill Smythe

3

Your right that it would be a very late event, even if it went down to a round robin event at G/10 would shorten the amount of time. Still working out the bugs with this event, as a great deal of the time we do play a number of quick chess games at the club, even have a 20 game match during the Jakson Chess Club. At this time there are a number of people that just joined the federation that still do not have a established USCF rating for classical or quick.

Could go down to G/7 (t/d3) all the way to G/9 (t/d3), then rule 14H claim of insufficient losing chances in sudden death is not available with a time delay clock. There are a number of reason for not liking the time delay clock, my first real time delay clock (1999) was and still is a Chronos, have fallen out of the enjoyment of the clock. Only use the CH-A1 or for a second time control CH-A2 as both players can see the 5 seconds on the clock, the other parts of the clock will show the flashing dots between the hour minutes and seconds or the up and down bar. The reason for not liking them as the owner of the clock can give himself/herself a time delay of 6 or a few seconds more on their clock or have less then the 5 seconds on the other players clock. Or just have it set for both sides of the board were ever he/she wants it or the other player wants the clock to face as it is simple to preset a chronos for 12 different settings.

True, most tournament players would know that there is very little to gain from adding a few seconds to there clock or for taking a second off the other players time delay. Then again it is still cheating.

Earnest,
Douglas M. Forsythe, local td

4

If your round-robin is organized as a “play-whoever-you-can-find-at-any-time”, the event might finish sooner than if you use the Crenshaw-Berger tables (in chapter 12 of the 5th edition rulebook) to determine the order of play. Each player, on finishing a game (or pair of games), can look around for somebody else not playing at the moment. “Are you in the tournament?” “I sure am.” “Would you like to play our game(s) now?” “Sure.” No TD prompting necessary.

If you decide to hold only a single round-robin instead of a double, you can use the age-old round-robin color scheme:

Odd-vs-odd or even-vs-even: Larger number has white. (E.g. 9 has white vs 5. 4 has white vs 2.)

Odd-vs-even: Smaller number has white. (E.g. 3 has white vs 8.)

“Numbers” refer to pairing numbers, not ratings. They should be in random order, or registration order (first player to register is number 1). They should not be in rating order, because then #1 would always have white vs #2.

As to possible cheating with the delay, on the Chronos you can use mode CH-A1 (on the switchless models) or CH-A2 (on the older models with a switch on the bottom). In these modes, the delay is displayed as a digit, rather than as a flashing hyphen, so that any attempt to cheat would be noticed immediately.

Of course you should not allow Insufficient Losing Chances claims in games with the delay, and this is one of the best arguments for using the delay. If you prefer, you could announce that, even in games without the delay, ILC claims will not be allowed – this will put some (highly appropriate) pressure on the players to furnish, and use, delay-capable clocks. If, on the other hand, you want to be idealistic in the opposite direction, you could respond to virtually any ILC claim by substituting a delay clock (after deducting appropriately from the claimant’s time, of course).

Bill Smythe