You're kind of right, Jack, except that tournaments with good appearance fees and poor, or zero, prize money can be damaging to our Elo ratings, as we would be less motivated than the norm hunters we were up against ( and it is mostly 'norm tournaments' which distribute the funds that way).IM Jack Rudd wrote: ↑Mon Feb 11, 2019 8:56 pmMy experience of low-level pros (the likes of Hebden, Arkell etc) is that they tend to be loss-averse when it comes to tournament chess, and you can get them far cheaper by putting money into a conditions fund than you can by putting it into a prize fund. If that dynamic repeats itself at higher levels, it's a very good explanation for apparently low prize funds.
As a more general point, I'll just copy and paste what I wrote on Davide Nastasio's post on his facebook wall, on this subject:
These figures are totally misleading to anyone glancing casually at them. Prize money is only a tiny fraction of the income of most GMs. To get a better idea, you can add appearance money, simul fees, team chess, books and articles, broadcasting, private sponsorship, coaching and a whole load of other stuff under the umbrella of 'creative endeavours'.