I am looking at ideas to increase attendance at The Asheboro Open.
One idea on the table is a discounted entry fee for scholastic players.
I do not want to have a special “scholastic” section, though. I want to
put players in the sections where they actually belong.
Example: Rather than $25.00 entry fee, scholastic players would pay just $15.00. In the event they win a prize, $10.00 will be deducted from the prize to cover the reduced entry fee.
One note: at The Asheboro Open, we equalize our prize money for everyone. If there are two sections, both pay the same prize fund. We feel like this is the most fair to all players.
Of course, reducing the entry fee for scholastic players could potentially reduce the total prize fund. On the other hand, more players means more prize fund–so I think these two extremes balance each other out.
I need opinions! Is it fair to offer reduced entry for scholastic players if they are in the general player pool? I tend to think it is fair, as long as players know this in advance.
An idea we have tried with modest success is to let junior players in for a lower EF ($10 instead of $30), but not be eligible for cash prizes (small trophies for the top five).
Another idea to consider if you have a based-on prize fund is to count the reduced EFs for kids as only a partial entry against the total based on numbers.
For example: A TLA could read: $1000 b/50, Jr. EF counts 60%of full entry towards based-on total , EF $25, Jr EF $15.
Why 60%? Well, 15/25 = .6 = 60 %. So, if 30 adults pay $25 and 10 Juniors pay $15 your based-on number is 30 + 6 (.6 x 10) = 36. The organizer is required to pay out 72 percent of the $1000 b/50 or $720. If the reduced EF counts for a full based-on EF than the organizer is required to pay out 80%, or $800, of the $1000 because 40 players attended the event.
If you go this route it is important to advertise how the discounted EF counts against the total Based-on number.
Kansas has some strange rules regarding eligibility for the scholastic state championship that I don’t understand, so when I ran a tournament there recently I gave youth and scholastic members the option to play for trophy only for a reduced entry fee. The KCA is doing something similar for the Kansas Open in July. No one took me up on the offer, though.
One organizer was so worried about this policy that even though he charged full price for the scholastic members to play in the tournament, the most he would give them for a prize was return of their entry fee.
If the scholastic players are playing for the same prize money, I don’t feel it is fair to be charging them less than the other players. To help encourage developing and new players, I like to have a lower entry fee for the lowest section and unrated players.
While in my scenario, the scholastic players would compete for the same prize–the entry difference would be deducted from any prize.
This makes it similar to the GM or IMs play free idea, but in reverse almost.
I do think you’ve discovered the biggest beef that players might have.
Perhaps I should limit it to scholastic players below a certain strength?
The purpose of this new policy would be to draw more players, but I’m
not really interested in attracting a bunch of extremely young and rowdy players. There are quite a few 1400 & Up scholastic players in our area, though, and that’s who the policy would target.
It is often the case that young people get discounts on things. I don’t think the majority of adults would have a problem with the policy–especially if winners had the rest of the entry fee deducted from any prize money they get.
In practice, I’m hoping this will increase participation and prize funds overall.
I’m afraid that offering a “trophies only” section to scholastic players would be difficult, and would unwisely segregate scholastic players from the general population.
As always, I do appreciate all input both positive and negative on this issue.
I don’t know anywhere near enough about your player base to know how many complaints you would have giving a chance for full prizes to somebody who entered with an initially discounted entry fee. Even if you subtract the discount from an awarded prize, you still have a situation where one player risked $25 for a $100 prize and a 4-for-1 return while another player risked $15 (25-10) for a $90 prize (100-10) and a 6-for-1 return.
Some players will be happy to see a larger and hopefully more competitive tournament (I include myself in that group, but I never went to tournaments expecting to win prizes anyway) while others will be upset at having to not only face more opponents and risk their ratings against underrated juniors, but do it with the juniors getting a discount.
The apparently easy-sounding solution is to have discounted juniors that pay 60% of the entry fee be eligible for only 60% of the prize (non-discounted juniors would be eligible for the full prize) with the balance being added back to the lower prizes (open or class), but trying to actually implement that could be Excedrin headache number 742 and a third.
I’ve seen tournaments charge juniors the full entry fee and also provide scholastic trophies. That gives juniors an additional incentive to play without making adults feel like they are getting an entry fee break. It has had mixed success in some tournaments here.
I’ve seen multi-section tournaments give juniors a discount only if they play up a section. That allows class players to feel that if they have to compete for money against an underrated junior that received a discount, at least they are competing against such underrated juniors whose strength is still low enough that the adults are competitive with them. It also gives the under-rated juniors more appropriate competition and helps them develop their skills more than if the are playing in the lower sections. It doesn’t sound like your tournament would have enough sections to make this a viable option. A question to toss to the forum would be whether or not anybody has ever seen juniors pay a discount and then get treated as being in a higher class for prize determination (either with or without the discount being deducted from the prize). The wall chart can look strange unless you assign them a rating in the higher class, but such an assignment could distort the pairings too much unless the player truly is stronger and there is some evidence of that strength (for instance, an Illinois High School senior could have a near-USCF-equivalent Illinois-Chess-Coaches-Association rating of 1635 and a dormant four-year-old USCF rating of 1043, where a case might be made that the player should be treated as a 1635 for both pairing and prize purposes).
Here in Missouri we’ve had a couple of events where scholastic players are given the option of paying half the entry fee and they are competing for half the prize fund. They can also choose to pay the full EF in order to compete for the full prize fund.
This keeps the math simple - each scholastic entry counts as half a person in the based-on calculations. So, if we have 40 full-price EFs and 10 half-price (scholastic), then we have a b/45 event (even though 50 people participated).
So, a player who chooses the half-price option is cutting his prize to LESS than half of what it would have been, because in addition to the direct halving, he is also reducing (slightly) the total prize fund.
I’m not sure that it works out like that. If a player is paying half entry, they are only counting as half an entrant. therefore the prize fund would still work out. So you could have 39.5 entries in a tournament. If your prizes were based on 40, then you can cut your prize fund because you didn’t get enough players (even though, technically, you have over 40 people playing)…
Taking a simple example:
$500 Prize fund based on 50 entries at $10 each (the organizer has a free site and is donating the time and rating fee - maybe a club-member-only event). There is a $300 first place and a $200 second place.
There are 49 adults and 1 discounted junior, so 49.5 are counted (99%). That reduces first to $297 and second to $198 ($495 prize fund covered by 49 $10 entries and 1 $5 entry).
The junior wins second and gets 50% of the $198, or $99.
Thus the reduction in the prize fund means that the junior does get slightly less than half of the prize that would have been won if a full entry had been paid by the player.
The logic looks to be reasonable and consistent.
I’m not sure what you do with the $99 that was held out of the junior’s pay-out. In this case it is trivial to simply create a third place prize, but other prize fund structures would get more complex. Easiest is if the organizer simply keeps it, but that might cause some consternation.
I think this is one of those cases where the entry fee design is in conflict with the prize payout policy, and possibly even with USCF rules.
It seems unfair to argue that the organizer should have to pay out 100% of the prizes if the organizer isn’t getting 100% of the entry fees.
It also seems unfair that players could get MORE than the advertised prize amounts because of some other player who was ineligible for a portion of some prize.
However, the organizer who wants to avoid this dilemma has an obvious solution, DON"T COMPLICATE THE ENTRY FEE OR PRIZE STRUCTURE IN THE FIRST PLACE!
The idea was to get more scholastic players to play in “adult” tournaments, which is a problem in Missouri. If a half-cost entrant wins prize money, anything over what he is eligible for goes to the next person (3rd place).
It isn’t. There might be a problem if you had a based-on prize fund, but it is permissible to count reduced-EF as fractional players (with advance notice).
However, your approach can lead to awkward complications in determining the prizes. I think a better method is to let the kids pay a low entry fee and either not be eligible for prizes, or be eligible only for some extra trophies.
I didn’t say it was against the rules, but it may result in conflicting rules as to how to pay out the prizes. (There was a ‘how do we allocate these prizes’ thread a few weeks ago that illustrated the kind of problem a TD can create with the prize payouts if the turnout or final standings aren’t what he anticipated.)
The goal of getting more kids to play up in adult sections is admirable, but I tend to agree with John Hillery that there are other ways to handle the prize fund issues. (In some states young players, especially high school students, might wind up losing their eligibiity to compete in sports if they win ANY cash prizes, even from a chess tournament.)
