good stuff FG, any wildcat entries for up and coming youngsters - a shortcut?

and FG. what rating system do you recommend?

Hi,

The Australian chess scene needs change. The old models are failing and there needs to be a revamp of how the tournament scene is organised in Australia. Why? Because chess has become increasingly commercialised and with the large numbers of juniors playing chess we owe them a brighter future.

This increased professionalisation of chess has led to an economic boom for coaching, which should be supported by a thriving active chess culture.

How can we make chess better?

Well the ACF needs to take on aleadership role. It needs to assume economic responsibility for forging a thriving tournament scene. We need BIG tournaments. And we need better prizemoney for the players.

Basically I would start with Ten-Twenty tournaments a year (the numbers may be more). They could be any tournament but I would start with this basic list although this is completely arbitrary.

Australian Championship
Doeberl
Begonia
SIO
Victorian State Championship
NSW State Championship
WA State Championship
NSW Championship
QLD State Championship
SA State Championship
Tasmania State Championship

I would leave the successful weekender structures alone, but all the State and National championships need structural change.

The starting premise is that every event needs guaranteed $10,000 prizemoney. The Australian championship should have $50,000 guaranteed.
Therefore the ACF ought to budget $150,000 every year for Australian chess tournaments. This should be feasible with entry fees and sponsorship.


All State Championships should be 2 week events. 24 players, 2 games per day, 2 rest days. Half the field qualify from order of merit the previous year ie Top 12, the other half qualify from reserve satellites held throughout the year either locally,state or national. Everyone pays the same amount to play, no exceptions.

There should be no rating seeding.
There should be no restriction on geographical residence
Titles should be awarded to the winner of the event, regardless of who it is and where they live.
Every game should be televised live on the internet for sponsorship purposes.

Top 6 get automatic seats into the Australian Championship!

The Australian Championship
There should only be one way of entering and playing the event.
Automatic qualification from the tournament scene.

Therefore we would have about 60 players.
This ought to be a three week event, 2 games per day. I would prefer 1 game per day but we have to be practical with time considerations.

Week 1 48 qualifiers divided into 4 groups. Top 3 in each group gets through to Week 2. The rest are out.
Week 2 The best 12/60 qualifiers from the tournament scene annual order of merit join with our other 12 week 1 players.
Two games every day for 12 days.
Winner gets $25,000
the rest gets split up in some reasonable manner.

Rinse and repeat every year.
Ditch ratings and ditch selection as criteria.
Choose the best 6 overall performers as Olympiad representatives.

Truthfully, I think it is possible. But some organisation, preferably the ACF, needs to take economic responsibility for its success. I have no problem with a privateer running such an idea either so long as the ACf gets them to commit to running the events professionally.

Please discuss,
cheers,

The Australian chess scene needs change.

KB must be bursting at the seams to be saying something

After posting in the shoutbox, and thinking about it a little, I've come to the conclusion that the biggest challenge to Australian chess is geographic. Even the east coast states with their high population density cover vast geographic areas.

So while I agree with FG7 that a whole heap more can be done, I'm beginning to think that it needs to be localised. The same model that FG7 proposes for Australia would work equally well for one of the larger states. To take my home state of Victoria, for instance, we have a population about the same size as Denmark, Slovakia and Finland, and a larger population than countries such as Norway, Croatia, Georgia, Latvia and Estonia. So we have the manpower and the population density to achieve what these countries have.

However, we don't have the same chess infrastructure, the same chess culture and history, the neighboring strong countries and the sponsorship that these countries have generated. The question is, do we want to compete qualititively with these countries that we emulate quantitively? If so, the only way I can see it happening is professionalisation of the administrative group who would become full time officials paid to develop the game. This would include a general manager, a chess development officer, and a funds coordinator. These people should be paid to coordinate chess, develop chess talent, and bring in revenue and sponsorship to the organisation.

The other major thing is to get everyone pulling in the same direction for the betterment of chess generally, clubs, players, organisers, private companies etc. Wouldn't it be great if players of my strength and FG7 could coach players under an agreed system to a certain strength and then those juniors with the most talent could be taken over by the Speck's, Jamieson's and Johanson's?

David Beaumont has made an excellent post but where is the serious discussion and real action? I watch with great anticipation!