Out shopping a while back, passed by a kids shogi (Japanese chess) tournament held in a hotel lobby.

Nice idea - had a clown entertaining the kids while the organisers were tidying up and sorting out the prizes.

Also some dude giving a simul to keep others occupied.

MNb, your suggestion would not only mortally wound opening preparation (no idea why that's a bad thing anyway), it would also kill all ambition in the opening.

(Tho, there could easily be a strategy of trying to fatally weaken each side, hence a new type of opening strategy.)

Markovich wrote on 04/08/10 at 15:09:04:

I can't agree with this. I can see no need for a cake.

"Extra" awards like these should be minor things - maybe a small gift certificate for a chess vendor or something, not a big trophy or decent cash prize. But at large adult tournaments, I've seen awards for youngest player and oldest player in the same tournament (5 years old and 84, as I recall), longest trip to the tourney site (an opponent of mine from Washington state won this at the Florida state championship one year), and top female in the open section (she didn't also win the tourney, though). 

Also, upset prizes are common, though they usually end up going to players in the lowest section, as kids with a 400 rating beat other kids with a 900 rating, while the rest of us are in sections divided by 200 point breaks, and you can only "play up" one section, so there's never more than a 399 point margin in our sections. There's also the "brilliancy" prizes, judged by a strong master or grandmaster.

I've also seen drawings for random book prizes, where they just pick player names out of a hat for no obvious reason. I like that, because it's fair. 

Costume contests for Halloween are always a good idea - for both kids and adults.

Indeed, why bother with the chess at all!

Small tournament for adults.
All will know each other quite well.
A 'cosy' tournament!

Some ideas I've seen/heard of:

- chess problem competition. 
- "who can set up the starting position fastest-competition", some people can do this really fast.
- youngest competitor-award
- I have jokingly suggested using jerseys like in the Tour de France, i.e. yellow jersey for the leader, green jersey for best timetrouble player, polka dot jersey for most moves made, for a tournament. Funny, but impractical and maybe not suited for a serious tournament. I didn't happen, anyway.

TicklyTim wrote on 04/08/10 at 09:57:30:


English/Irish tournaments seem to be better at this than others. I've seen or heard about stuff like awards for strangest appearance - though it's more like drawing attention to players who stand out in some way, so these awards are usually the other way around - the arrangers notice somebody for doing something and then give him/her an award for at the closing. Could be as simple as "longest daily commuter".

Another idea I've seen was to allow people to form teams before the tournament, which sounded like a good idea but I don't know how it turned out...

Anyway, up here in the nordic region these kind of "extra things" are virtually non-existent - every tournament is usually arranged exactly like it was last year, which could be one reason why so many stop playing chess up here.