What do you value most when comparing scholastic chess tournaments? This is really something that only you can decide for yourself, but I have a few ideas for you to consider.
As someone who has played in many scholastic chess tournaments in my day, there are six characteristics that I have come to value most above everything else. These characteristics can be uniformly applied to most scholastic chess tournaments (especially in-person events) and are of such nature that every scholastic player should expect them from their tournaments. Concurrently, they are also such that it is feasible for most organizers to apply them to their scholastic tournaments, even though they often do not. The six characteristics are as follows:-
- Integrity. By integrity, I do not simply mean that the organizer and his staff are honest folks who conduct their dealings in integrity, as important as that surely is. Rather, what I mean is that the tournament itself is painted with integrity. I appreciate it when the director takes enforcing the rules seriously and when the pairings are carefully produced according to those rules.
- Transparency. It is paramount that an organizer cares about making his registrants fully aware about the tournament rather than keeping them in the dark about important details. A good sign in this regard is when you can find pages of detail about the particularities of the tournament online rather than just a simplified waybill. As a component of this, it is also ideal for the director to be willing and ready to answer your questions, including taking the time so that you understand what you need to know.
- Affordability. There is nothing wrong with making a profit (and it might even be wrong not to). However, organizers should seek to ensure that their entry fees are affordable for most families. Not everyone can pay $45 or $60, especially as when you have three or four children, those entry fees really add up. I also appreciate it when organizers decide to reward students who register early by giving them substantially lower entry fees than late entrants (why should someone registering two months in advance pay the same as someone registering three days prior?).
- Rating-Based Sections. Most of us are not masters and should not be expected to play like them. It is annoying when organizers structure their events so that beginners play advanced players, which makes no sense at all! Unfortunately, many scholastic events do this by dividing their tournaments into sections based on age or grade. What they fail to realize is that neither age nor grade is a good determinant of one’s playing ability. Children defeat seniors all the time, so this premise must be true. Therefore, a quality scholastic tournament should, if the quantity of registrations allow, be divided into sections based on rating, such as: Open, U1200, U600 and Unrated. This way, most everyone plays opponents around the level of their abilities, so instead of being crushed by players trice their rating, they can have a fighting chance of winning prizes if they put the effort in.
- Inclusivity: It is never fun being excluded for no valid reason, but that often happens with scholastic tournaments. Qualifications for individuals are usually sufficiently inclusive. The catch is that if you want to compete as part of a team, your team must be a school and that school must have enough players in a particular section to have a winning chance of team prizes. If you belong to a school with a large chess club, you are in luck. The problem with this policy is that many students do not belong to schools that have a large body of scholastic chess players, especially homeschoolers and rural students. If scholastic chess clubs were allowed to compete, many more students would be empowered to be a part of team chess, something usually reserved to students privileged to attend a school with a substantial chess body. Alas, scholastic chess clubs are often excluded from team competitions. I appreciate an organizer who decides to be inclusive in his team admissions and allow scholastic chess clubs to compete.
- Equality. Is it not annoying when a tournament charges everyone the same entry fees (regardless of section) but pays out more prizes per capita to the sections with higher rated players than lower? It really is, especially if you are in one of the sections with the lower rated players. If you have to pay the same entry fee no matter which section you play in, would it not make sense for the organizer to issue the same prizes per capita to each section? Unfortunately, the reality is that this injustice happens all the time, ranging from vast championships in Dallas and Houston to small club-level tournaments in Waco. People should get what they pay for, but alas, they often do not. I appreciate it when an organizer cares about treating each of his sections equally, especially when he issues the same amount of prizes per capita.
You now have my ideas about what some of the characteristics are for a quality scholastic chess tournament. Notably, you will find that our tournaments comply with all of these characteristics and even surpass them. Although many of our competitors so often seem to be floundering to provide these core characteristics (other than integrity), we are ready and willing to give them to you and for a good price too! If you are interested in learning more about our upcoming tournaments, please visit our Tournaments page. With that, it is my hope that, armed with the six characteristics in mind, you are now better equipped to choose scholastic chess tournaments from the bewildering maze of options that lies before you.