Making a living running chess tournaments?

[Joey Stewart]

I was thinking recently how it seems like every chess tournament that happens now fills up to maximum capacity within days, demand for chess has never been higher.

Do you think it is therefore possible to run tournaments as a full time profession now if you take a salary from the entry fees or are the margins too low once you have paid the blood money for the venue hire equipment etc ?

[Roger de Coverly]

Do you think it is therefore possible to run tournaments as a full time profession now if you take a salary from the entry fees or are the margins too low once you have paid the blood money for the venue hire equipment etc ?

I suspect there are some organisers attempting this on a part time basis at least.

Key observations would be that they run a lot of tournaments at a monthly or quarterly frequency.
Entry fees are high and prizes low.

The "traditional" tournaments, by which I mean those run once a year by a local team with perhaps a hired in guest arbiter, do mostly seem well supported.

[Tim Spanton]

Presumably we are talking about England/Britain here as the Continent surely already has full-time chess organisers in the shape of CzechTour, ChessOrg, First Saturday, etc

[IM Jack Rudd]

Equipment hire generally isn't much of a concern, because typically the organizer will either make it a one-off expense by buying it, or bring in either a guest arbiter or a bookstall operator who brings it. Venue hire is a bigger problem.

[David York]

I agree that venue hire costs can be a killer.

Just a thought on equipment though.
If you want a DGT boards set up then again cost is considerable.

In the US players take their own boards, pieces and clocks to tournaments.
Has anyone tried to set up such an event in the UK?

I have a chess 'everyday carry' because I enjoy sitting at a board waiting for a random opponent.

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Sometimes my carry is tournament quality, though I do favour silicone boards and pieces. If every chess player in the country carried around their own equipment, it would not only make tournaments easier to run but could make chess a more visible outdoor (and in pub) sport.

[Roger de Coverly]

Has anyone tried to set up such an event in the UK?

The Irish used to run their tournaments this way, which the USCF does or did as well.

Cue endless disputes about non-standard equipment, clocks not supporting the preferred time control, rules about what to do if no equipment is present at the start of the round etc.

So in the UK, I think not.

It also ups the cost for new entrants to the tournament scene. Not only do they have to pay an entry fee and ECF membership, but also the costs of a tournament standard board, set and timer.

[Ian Thompson]

Cue endless disputes about non-standard equipment, clocks not supporting the preferred time control, rules about what to do if no equipment is present at the start of the round etc.

I'm sure the USCF rulebook would cover all of that, so their rules could be copied. For clocks, they had rules about time limits that said it would be all moves in X minutes if neither player's clock could do increments or delays, as well as rules about which player's clock would be used if they both had one and couldn't agree on which one to use.

I've always thought it would be easy to cheat with an analogue clock by setting your clock to run slowly and your opponent's to run fast. With digital clocks there must be concerns that the clock could be tampered with and used to cheat in other ways.

[Alex McFarlane]

FIDE rated US tournaments now normally supply equipment. This does not mean that it is standardised. There were 3 different types of clock used in the World Schools Team Championship in Washington all supplied by a US organiser. One particular clock was only used in matches controlled by a selection of the US arbiters familiar with them. I still have no idea how to add 2 minutes to one of those clocks without actually resetting it as if setting an initial weird time control. I'm not sure I could do that in the required time.

The bring your own clock mentality is restricted mainly, if not exclusively, to non-FIDE rated events but even at those the organiser/arbiter would have a handful of clocks to loan to games without suitable 'timers'. It is also common for one of the players on a nearby board to lend theirs if not in use. I heard of one player who did this to get annoyed when his game was interrupted by the borrower asking him to add two minutes to one side following an illegal move.

[Chris Goodall]

No you can't make a living running chess tournaments in England. I like to think of the "Chess GDP" of an area. What does the average player who goes to two local congresses spend playing chess every year - £100 or so? In a medium sized county where there are 400 active adult players, that gives you a Chess GDP of £40k. If you managed to capture 50% of every chess transaction in that county, divert it to your own bank account, you would be earning £20k a year, less than you'd earn working in Asda.

Chess is an amateur game in England. I'm sorry, I don't make the rules.