English Chess Forum

I was wondering what are average numbers for congresses. I recently played in the Middlesbrough congress which had 106 players, and understand for the North East this is a good turnout. I know congresses like Scarborough and Blackpool can attract more; but what is a typical number for other parts of the country.

Cheers

Brian Robinson

The Worcestershire Open recently attracted 110 players, I believe. The Warwickshire Open has about 120. The Staffordshire Congress has about 80, but it has no Open section. The Birmingham Rapidplay will have 100+ too. So the Greater Birmingham area tends to get average over 100 for its congresses.

Here in Oxford our Congress tends to attract about 80-100 players, while our Rapidplay tends to be a bit lower, around 50-70. The Rapidplay has, as far as I remember, only had two sections - an Open and something like an U160/170. I suspect it may be a good idea to change to three sections, so that's something we're going to look at for this year's. A related question to the original is: what are the typical section numbers / sizes around the country?

Eoin Devane wrote:Here in Oxford our Congress tends to attract about 80-100 players, while our Rapidplay tends to be a bit lower, around 50-70. The Rapidplay has, as far as I remember, only had two sections - an Open and something like an U160/170. I suspect it may be a good idea to change to three sections, so that's something we're going to look at for this year's. A related question to the original is: what are the typical section numbers / sizes around the country?

More sections = more entries, though you have to juggle prizes and have enough controllers.

Golders Green Rapidplay has four sections, has had 120 players in the last few events and you can see the crosstables going back years here if you want to see how it's grown and the size of each graded section.

http://goldersgreenchess.blogspot.com/2 ... ments.html

Adam Raoof wrote:More sections = more entries, though you have to juggle prizes and have enough controllers.

That was roughly my thinking. Hopefully we'll be able to sort it out and have three sections this time around - I think that's the arrangement that makes most sense for us here.

Adam Raoof wrote: More sections = more entries

There comes a time when that logic breaks down. Would having 21 sections get more entries than having 20?

Alex Holowczak wrote:

Adam Raoof wrote: More sections = more entries

There comes a time when that logic breaks down. Would having 21 sections get more entries than having 20?

Assuming that you get at least one entry per section, then yes! However you might then have to merge some of the sections...

I don't think analysing the average number of players in a congress is very meaningful. Thus the event with which I was administratively concerned that had the greatest number of staff had just two players, Kasparov and Karpov. The Evening Standard Islington Open of 1973 had 1500 and two completely separate venues, but far fewer staff.
What is interesting is what changes can be made to increase the number of players.
Location is clearly important, but not always under the control of the organiser. Would the e2e4 events attract many more players if located in more central London? For the weekend tournment I am sure yes, all other things being equal - which they would not be due to a huge increase in the cost of the venue. But for the 9 round events Sean puts on, I suspect not.
Quality of the event is highly important.
Publicity.
and so on.
Stewart Reuben