As has been noted in the Forums on numerous occasions, US Chess now rates around 11,000 tournaments a year. Here’s a table showing events rated over the last 10 calendar years:
The above table includes around 350 online events on ICC and chess.com and another 175 or so foreign events that get FIDE adjustments. Roughly 100 events are coded as pure matches each year. But that still leaves around 11,000 events in calendar 2017.
It appears that no more than 2000 events have a TLA (possibly more like 1500), though another 200 or so may have an online TLA (which is free, incidentally.)
How are the rest of these tournament promoted?
Recently I suggested that US Chess could start contacting organizers and chief TDs of events shortly after they’re rated and provide them with a link to a survey about their event, where questions such as how it was promoted, whether it paid cash prizes, whether it had a based/on prize, etc. could be asked.
We could also place a link in the crosstable pages to let tournament participants fill our a survey about the event, including how they heard about it.
But would people use either of these? (If not, it might not be worth the time, effort and cost to build and maintain them.)
If you’re an organizer/TD or an active player, would YOU use them?
I expect only a few would take the time. Our club uses our club website mchess.freehostia.com , the clearinghouse for our area, and flyers to promote events which are placed at the Pittsburgh Chess League and at other sites. As word of mouth goes around, our tournaments have grown in size and strength. We emphasize much less expensive events than are normally promoted in TLAs on the USCF website.
Ahem — Nolan, there is a reason I and any other TD can never upload a perfect tournament rating files. There’s always an error
Error: TLA Information Missiing… Just saying I thought there should be data on “how it was promoted”.
The other questions are more about tournament format which it might work for one area but not all. Of course, the suggested short-handed time controls shows the most popular anyways: “G/30;d5’, ‘40/60,SD/30;d5’, 'G/90;+15”.
The reason the TLA field was added had to do with office creating awards (eg, the Junior Grand Prix) for which having a TLA was a prerequisite.
The reason that the submitting TD needs to fill in the TLA field is because no reasonable default exists. Until we know the sponsoring affiliate and the dates, we can’t present a list of events that had a TLA.
If the submitting organizer didn’t have to answer the question in order for the event to pass validation, would anyone answer it after the fact? Probably not.
I get the reason and even understood it before, but I do find it amusing that when you first upload an event, the affiliate gets an email that there was an “error” with the event. The TD does as well, which is fine. Then the affiliate never gets a new email that the event was “corrected”. The TD does, however.
Most affiliates know to ignore this email, but I get questions on it every now and then, especially new affiliates. There, is of course, a practical reason for that email. It lets an affiliate know that someone uploaded an event for them. Perhaps an “error” email, though isn’t the best way to do it.
I work with so many different affiliates that a couple of times I’ve forgotten to change the affiliate ID in WinTD before generating the rating report. I’ve always caught it right after uploading, but it irks me a little that the wrong affiliate got that automatic email before I had a chance to fix it.
Anyway, that’s a little aside. Back to the regular topic:
I tend to only use TLAs for larger events or cash prize events. It seems like overkill for smaller local events. Perhaps it’s not. I don’t know. Similarly I’ll use the email blast for larger events. For smaller ones, I’ll use my own email database, flyers, etc. Since I’m in Illinois, all the events are posted on the Illinois Chess Association website. Most players know to look for events there.
The affiliate only gets ONE email about an event, when it is first uploaded. Since the typical event is validated anywhere from 2 to 20 times, sending the affiliate an email every time would probably not be very well received. The primary reason for sending one AT ALL is to ensure that the affiliate knows what events it is being used as the submitting affiliate for, since we have had problems in the past with affiliate not knowing that they were ‘behind’ some events.
While some of that was due to TDs using an affiliate’s ID without permission, many if not most TDs are authorized to direct events for more than one affiliate, so there still remains the possibility that an affiliate is used for an event it did not authorize. It also lets the affiliate know when the TD starts to work on submitting the event, since affiliates get at least some of the heat from players when events are submitted tardily.
IF TDs and organizers were diligent about filling out a survey on their events, we might be able to persuade the office to let us change the default answer on the TLA question, if there was another way the office could check on which events are JGP qualifiers. (I don’t think we can eliminate it completely, we also need it for things like validating waivers for the National Chess Day events, and that has to be done prior to submititng the event.)
If US Chess changes the upload specs, then they would probably have to support THREE sets of upload specs, the original specs (which date back to the 90’s), the draft specs from about 2005 and whatever someone comes up with for a new set of specs. It might require TDs to buy an upgraded version of their software of choice to gain access to the third format.
And that doesn’t deal with the TLA issue, because the office still needs to know which TLA matches up with the event, and that’s not something either WinTD or SwisSys would know.
I’m not sure that a predefined format for a survey is a good idea, either, as there may be new promotional vehicles in the future that don’t exist today. (If the survey form had been created in 1991, would it have included websites or Facebook?) And the office might want to change the questions from time to time.
Could the survey (and the TLA question) be added to the release or payment forms? Possibly, but how would the 5% or so of events that are not submitted online answer the survey questions?
Just saying I thought there should be data on “how it was promoted”.