This made me wonder what process Steve uses to register players on site. And then I wondered what process other TDs use.
Way back before I was a TD the person that TDed our local tournaments simply had a yellow legal pad with numbers down the side and headers of Name,USCF ID, Rating, Address etc. This process did tend to result in lines as players waited to fill out the one form.
Now we have Individual forms forms for each player to fill out. This way we simply ask as the individual approaches, “Are you preregistered?” If yes then unless we have a noted that we need some specific piece of information we simply say “OK, you’re good to go.” If no then we say “Fill out one of these forms.”
They then fill out the form and pay.
Usually we always have two people doing registration. One person will handle the money etc and one will take the filled out forms and enter that information into the computer.
It would also be interesting to see what other TDs put on their forms and how they lay them out.
Our process in Bloomington/Normal IL also seems to work well. We only allow pre-registered players to play the first round. Those who are not pre-registered are allowed to register, but receive a first round bye (1/2 point)
Of course these are rather large scholastic tournaments. We do check out all pre - registrations and if their USCF membership is not in order - first round bye and registration paid before second round. If not - they don’t play.
Scholastic K-8 tournaments in IL can do this. This partially arose from parents and coaches complaining about the delay caused by last-minute registrations (which took longer to process last century). Also there were multiple tournaments that put a maximum player count on their registrations and actually TURNED AWAY ADVANCE REGISTRATIONS once that maximum was reached (the sites could not accommodate more). I remember Jerry Esposito calling schools that had already registered for his Albright school tournaments to see if the coaches could REDUCE the players they were bringing so that spots were opened up for additional schools to bring players.
Now it has reached the point where advance-registration-only is expected because everybody does it that way in the K-8 scholastics here.
Larger adult tournaments would take a significant financial hit if they attempted it. The entry fee structure is already set to give an incentive to those players who do register early but there are a number of people who would rather pay more on site and not have to worry about making a prior commitment in case things come up (heck, I would do that back when I had more time to actually play in tournaments - it makes sense if you are working at a job where you risked receiving only short notice that you would be needed to work part of the weekend).
Schools are used to advance registration. When they take students to the annual state music competitions, everybody has to pre-register for the categories they’ll be competing in.
Polly, you’re into competitive sports, are the sports you’re involved in ones where competitors can sign up the day of the competition? I don’t think many marathons do it that way anymore, for example, even the ones that don’t have strict qualification times.
Nebraska has an annual state-wide athletic festival, the Cornhusker State Games, with over 11,000 athletes participating in some 50 sports, including chess. With few exceptions, no onsite registration is allowed.