I have actually organized tournaments at a castle it’s not easy since castles aren’t usually in urban areas it’s hard to get people to make the trip before you have become a known for creating great experiences for the players. I created this sort of of social equity by running tournaments at my house where people would play on the 3rd floor and I would have the main floor set up for skittles and the yard would have a tent and tables and chairs a giant chess sets but the main thing that I did was cook for everyone what that did was create a situation where people hung out between rounds a got to know each other instead for just racing off to get food. Before I stopped doing them I was getting 30/40 people to my house to play or just hangout it even got super strong a lot of times with a few masters and a handful of of experts! I would say if you don’t see the tournament you want make it!
Columbus ohio the castle is called piatt castle it’s about 50 minutes from Columbus there’s also a place in south Ohio called Ravenwood castle that is basically everything you want! But there’s a few castles around Ohio that could be interesting there’s one in Loveland Ohio that could be interesting (near Cincinnati) if you have any questions or if I can be of any assistance you can email me egittrich@gmail.com
This is a smart take, as usual. I especially like the non-gratuitous shots at the registration aesthetics. So on point. The whole enterprise is ripe for someone with time and money to come along, operate at scale (always the issue in US chess), and drag matters into the 21st century, even as something intangible will be lost. Maybe chess.com can form a subsidiary, chess.rl (as in Real Life), which doesn't actually exist as a top-level domain, but I like how it sounds....
I wonder how age dynamics feed the status quo; I also wonder how the cooperative nature of D&D as opposed to the zero-sum nature of chess skews the participant sample. I would also bet that the percentage of casual players who attend four-day D&D events is vanishingly small.
So much of the chess tournament scene in the US consists of hyper-competitive scholastic players, and often very young scholastic players, many of whom are focused and driven, even if much of the focus and drive comes from their parents. D&D, meanwhile, is a curious mix of Gen X and Millennial adults colliding with Stranger-Things-boom kids, and surely it's the former who drive events like D&D in a Castle.
All of this is fun to discuss but largely academic to me, as I'm of an age and temperament that liked chess better when it was small, when it was a serious intellectual enterprise of you wanted it to be but was ultimately just a board game. I feel that now it takes itself very seriously indeed, perhaps unsurprising given the amount of money involved. Listening to DR talk about anti-cheating measures at chessdotcom the other day, you would have thought he was talking about heart surgery or feeding the hungry. Something similar has happened in baseball, etc. And if you thiknk things are bad now, just wait until gambling comes. You'll have on-screen, in-game parlays and prop bets. It's a brave new world.
I agree that the presence of kids plays a huge role in the overall vibe. I think we need to make space for kids to crush us competitively, while still recognizing that a lot of adults want a social experience that doesn't include kids. For a given event, organizers have to choose whether to emphasize competition or experience.
I am loving this series of posts on the state of US chess tournaments. At my local casual-play chess club, which meets at a bar on the same night as karaoke (!!!), I've met countless people who love playing chess OTB but recoil in horror whenever I gently suggest they attend a tournament. They balk at many of the things you've touched on in the last few weeks: the excessively long time controls, the punishing schedules, and the overall unpleasantness of spending a weekend in a dingy hotel with a pack of smelly dorks. If attending a chess tournament were not merely an ordeal to be endured, I bet I could convince many of those hesitant chess-lovers to take the plunge. I hope that your post serves as an inspiration to aspiring tournament directors across the country.
The US Go Congress (https://gocongress.org) is a similar model. It's a week-long event held in a different city every year, usually on some college campus. Cost is a few hundred dollars and the campus housing/food offered is serviceable but cheap (I usually upgrade to a hotel + restaurants). The Open is a six-round tournament, one long game every morning, and the afternoons and evenings are filled with side tournaments, professional lectures / simuls / game reviews, etc. Wednesday is a break day where people can sight-see or play in a separate one-day rapid tournament. Attendance is a few hundred people. It's so much more relaxed and enjoyable than the usual multi-day chess tournament. Not all chess tournaments can be like this (and only one Go tournament in the US is), but there's probably room for at least one!
There’s a lot of room for innovation in chess tournaments. Charlotte Chess Center brought the idea of “spend more money to make more money” to the chess tournament business - their entry fees are higher, but they provide all equipment (and it’s pretty nice), they are well-staffed, the website is great and the rounds always start on time. By all appearances, they’ve been very successful. So I think it’s somewhat proven that chess players are willing to spend more on a nicer experience, and these ideas could work!
Agreed on Charlotte Chess Center. I played in my first CCC-sponsored tournament two weeks ago. Some examples of (at least arguably) better UX: (1) Letting WGM Belenkaya stream on a DGT board, (2) ALTO tournaments [which I learned about from Nate's blog], (3) 21st Century on-line registration, e.g. https://www.charlottechesscenter.org/events (4) Well-staffed with helpful TDs and support team.
Some good insights, but most chess players couldn't possibly afford to pay thousands to play in a chess tournament, nor in my opinion should they have to.
As for having more side events, maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't like side events. When I am in the midst of a tournament, which is already demanding enough, I don't have the energy or desire to play speed chess or bughouse or even attend a free lecture. Of course I'm an older player now, but I never liked distractions during tournaments.
I do have a funny story about a free lecture over 20 years ago at the National Open in Las Vegas. On day one of the tournament I got crushed by GM Shabalov who played a queen sacrifice I never saw coming to force a quick checkmate. This must have been round 1 because I was a nobody Expert and I think Shabalov might even have been US champion at the time--definitely in his prime. The next day GM Ron Henley, who had been Karpov's second for multiple matches, gave a free lecture. I didn't go but two of my friends did. Afterward they came to find me and couldn't stop laughing. Henley had presented two games to the audience: a clash from the recent world championship match, and my loss to Shabalov.
I have actually organized tournaments at a castle it’s not easy since castles aren’t usually in urban areas it’s hard to get people to make the trip before you have become a known for creating great experiences for the players. I created this sort of of social equity by running tournaments at my house where people would play on the 3rd floor and I would have the main floor set up for skittles and the yard would have a tent and tables and chairs a giant chess sets but the main thing that I did was cook for everyone what that did was create a situation where people hung out between rounds a got to know each other instead for just racing off to get food. Before I stopped doing them I was getting 30/40 people to my house to play or just hangout it even got super strong a lot of times with a few masters and a handful of of experts! I would say if you don’t see the tournament you want make it!
Wow, this is great! Where do you live?
Columbus ohio the castle is called piatt castle it’s about 50 minutes from Columbus there’s also a place in south Ohio called Ravenwood castle that is basically everything you want! But there’s a few castles around Ohio that could be interesting there’s one in Loveland Ohio that could be interesting (near Cincinnati) if you have any questions or if I can be of any assistance you can email me egittrich@gmail.com
Amazing, Ravenwood looks fantastic!
This is a smart take, as usual. I especially like the non-gratuitous shots at the registration aesthetics. So on point. The whole enterprise is ripe for someone with time and money to come along, operate at scale (always the issue in US chess), and drag matters into the 21st century, even as something intangible will be lost. Maybe chess.com can form a subsidiary, chess.rl (as in Real Life), which doesn't actually exist as a top-level domain, but I like how it sounds....
I wonder how age dynamics feed the status quo; I also wonder how the cooperative nature of D&D as opposed to the zero-sum nature of chess skews the participant sample. I would also bet that the percentage of casual players who attend four-day D&D events is vanishingly small.
So much of the chess tournament scene in the US consists of hyper-competitive scholastic players, and often very young scholastic players, many of whom are focused and driven, even if much of the focus and drive comes from their parents. D&D, meanwhile, is a curious mix of Gen X and Millennial adults colliding with Stranger-Things-boom kids, and surely it's the former who drive events like D&D in a Castle.
All of this is fun to discuss but largely academic to me, as I'm of an age and temperament that liked chess better when it was small, when it was a serious intellectual enterprise of you wanted it to be but was ultimately just a board game. I feel that now it takes itself very seriously indeed, perhaps unsurprising given the amount of money involved. Listening to DR talk about anti-cheating measures at chessdotcom the other day, you would have thought he was talking about heart surgery or feeding the hungry. Something similar has happened in baseball, etc. And if you thiknk things are bad now, just wait until gambling comes. You'll have on-screen, in-game parlays and prop bets. It's a brave new world.
I agree that the presence of kids plays a huge role in the overall vibe. I think we need to make space for kids to crush us competitively, while still recognizing that a lot of adults want a social experience that doesn't include kids. For a given event, organizers have to choose whether to emphasize competition or experience.
I am loving this series of posts on the state of US chess tournaments. At my local casual-play chess club, which meets at a bar on the same night as karaoke (!!!), I've met countless people who love playing chess OTB but recoil in horror whenever I gently suggest they attend a tournament. They balk at many of the things you've touched on in the last few weeks: the excessively long time controls, the punishing schedules, and the overall unpleasantness of spending a weekend in a dingy hotel with a pack of smelly dorks. If attending a chess tournament were not merely an ordeal to be endured, I bet I could convince many of those hesitant chess-lovers to take the plunge. I hope that your post serves as an inspiration to aspiring tournament directors across the country.
These potential players are currently invisible to organizers, because they're not showing up at tournaments.
The US Go Congress (https://gocongress.org) is a similar model. It's a week-long event held in a different city every year, usually on some college campus. Cost is a few hundred dollars and the campus housing/food offered is serviceable but cheap (I usually upgrade to a hotel + restaurants). The Open is a six-round tournament, one long game every morning, and the afternoons and evenings are filled with side tournaments, professional lectures / simuls / game reviews, etc. Wednesday is a break day where people can sight-see or play in a separate one-day rapid tournament. Attendance is a few hundred people. It's so much more relaxed and enjoyable than the usual multi-day chess tournament. Not all chess tournaments can be like this (and only one Go tournament in the US is), but there's probably room for at least one!
I really like the idea of a chess festival or ChessCon, as opposed to only a tournament.
There’s a lot of room for innovation in chess tournaments. Charlotte Chess Center brought the idea of “spend more money to make more money” to the chess tournament business - their entry fees are higher, but they provide all equipment (and it’s pretty nice), they are well-staffed, the website is great and the rounds always start on time. By all appearances, they’ve been very successful. So I think it’s somewhat proven that chess players are willing to spend more on a nicer experience, and these ideas could work!
Agreed on Charlotte Chess Center. I played in my first CCC-sponsored tournament two weeks ago. Some examples of (at least arguably) better UX: (1) Letting WGM Belenkaya stream on a DGT board, (2) ALTO tournaments [which I learned about from Nate's blog], (3) 21st Century on-line registration, e.g. https://www.charlottechesscenter.org/events (4) Well-staffed with helpful TDs and support team.
Yeah, those websites are hilarious. As if nothing has changed since the 90s.
Some good insights, but most chess players couldn't possibly afford to pay thousands to play in a chess tournament, nor in my opinion should they have to.
As for having more side events, maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't like side events. When I am in the midst of a tournament, which is already demanding enough, I don't have the energy or desire to play speed chess or bughouse or even attend a free lecture. Of course I'm an older player now, but I never liked distractions during tournaments.
I do have a funny story about a free lecture over 20 years ago at the National Open in Las Vegas. On day one of the tournament I got crushed by GM Shabalov who played a queen sacrifice I never saw coming to force a quick checkmate. This must have been round 1 because I was a nobody Expert and I think Shabalov might even have been US champion at the time--definitely in his prime. The next day GM Ron Henley, who had been Karpov's second for multiple matches, gave a free lecture. I didn't go but two of my friends did. Afterward they came to find me and couldn't stop laughing. Henley had presented two games to the audience: a clash from the recent world championship match, and my loss to Shabalov.
I agree that CCA's website looks abominable.
Well, the beauty of side events is that they're completely optional.
Chess.com could take back the name DungeonDad if they wanted to.
If you want it, ask for it. There is a process for claiming abandoned user names. I did it last year, and it's very straightforward.
While dungeondad might be taken on chess.com, it looks like the name DungeonDaddy is not. Just saying...
You are a minor celebrity in the chess world. Why don't you organize a tournament?
Maybe I will!