There are a lot of good things going on in the Canberra chess scene these days. The O2C Doeberl Cup attracted record numbers, and the ANU Open had a 50% increase over last years entries. ACT Juniors continue to excel, with the last two Australian Junior Champions coming from Canberra. The ACT Junior Chess League even contributed over $1000 to the ACF Olympiad appeal, attracting 100+ players to a fund raising event. A number of strong players have moved to the city in the past year enabling Street Chess (and some clubs) to attract a number of 2100+ players to their tournaments. And the efforts of the ANU Chess Club and Street Chess have even managed to bring a number of players in the 20-40 year age group into the game, which had been a previous concern. The only big cloud is the inability of the ACTCA to do something as fundamental as organising their own AGM (which may depress some), but otherwise ACT Chess is doing quite well.
However this growth in participation isn't matched by a growth in arbiters! Today at Street Chess I ran into a problem (basically of my own making). A couple of the regular tournament managers (Shervin Rafizadeh and Stephen Mugford) were away, which I knew in advance. But I failed to check if anyone else would do it, assuming that someone else would step in, if they had to.
At 11:15 am (15 minutes past the starting time) I get a phone call saying that the tournament had plenty of players, but no one to run it! At the time I was engaged with my regular Saturday morning coaching group (which normally finishes around 11:30), so making my apologies, and leaving in the most capable hands of Peter Simpson, I sped off towards the city.
By the time I got there (11:40am) the players had organised themselves and had just begun the first round. Fortunately for me, Mario Palma had stepped into the breach, at least to get the first round started, although he wasn't sure if he knew enough to run the rest. More fortunately for me (and the tournament) this was the weekend that Andrew Greenwood (who had previously been an arbiter at the 1999-2000 Australian Champions plus various ACT events), decided to fly in from Chicago (where he now lives) to play. As I had a prior engagement in the afternoon, I was able to get the two of them to look after the event, which I assume then ran without a hitch.
This long introduction leads to my question. While I'm sure most chessplayers want nothing more than to play chess, and not be burdened with the expectation of running a tournament, should players have an understanding of the rules sufficient to organise a small tournament (in an emergency)?
Or to put it another way, is being a 'chessplayer' just about knowing the rules of the game or should it be more than that?
(NB I'm not criticising the players who took part in today's event, as they had a reasonable expectation that an event organiser would be present)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Could they do it? The only problem I can see is that the ability to run a chess tournament comes fairly naturally if you have "helped out" at an event.
Helpers can learn useful skills like:
How to collect equipment from several locations & deliver & carry it all into the venue - solo;
How to set up boards and pieces whilst observed by others who set up one board and then start analysing last week's game at it;
How to set clocks:
How to enter players into swiss perfect who didn't enter in advance and will later want to whinge about the late start;
How to collect results and do pairings (for those wanting the "advanced" course please start with junior events where children may play incorrect colours or even incorrect opponents);
You will have achieved Grandmaster "organiser" level if technical difficulty will leave you in need of having to - successfully - improvise at short notice with pairing cards;
Dispute resolution (level one - adults whinging about what the correct pairings would be if only they were in charge and level two - children in various degrees of tantrums over exactly who touched what and whether having two white bishops makes it more or less likely that they could have legally captured the Queen);
And so very much more with determining prizes, managing complaints (with a smile because they are always so fair & balanced), organising the publicity, smoothing the squabbles and going home last afterwards 'cos you really don't mind ...
However, in the simplest sense there's no excuse for anyone who has been to more than a handful of events not acquainting themselves with the basics of how the pairings etc work. But gender works against chess where learned organisational & administrative helplessness is inexorably linked to the y chromosome. :0)
Post a Comment