Ashley's Million-dollar chess tourney - but bring your own clocks

Well, there truly is a sucker born every minute. If you take a quick gander at the already-entered lists, hopeless patzers have ponied up their $1000 entry fee (no typo there, folks) for the thrill of playing in the same room as such chess stalwarts as Alex Fishbein and Gregory Kaidanov.

A cool grand would buy you about 6 hours of private instruction with any grandmaster in the country, which seems to your ever-lovin' TMB a much better way to spend your chess dollars.

Sure, someone will win something...but after you factor the flight, rooms, and, uh, expenses of lovely Las Vegas, this is a sucker's play like chess has never seen. Anyone know what Maurice Ashley is making off this?  At least he'll go home smiling.

Oh yeah...bring your own clocks. Despite all the promises of top-level staffing, dress codes, and elegant playing conditions, they couldn't manage the clocks. CHEESE.

TMB

I doubt he'll make much with $1m guaranteed and 91 entrants currently.

I'm sure they have sponsors, and I'm equally sure Ashley's honorarium has already been banked.

Wouldn't the sponsors want advertising on the website? Amy Lee seems to be bankrolling it.

Oh no! You have dared to say something negative about the most holy 2400ish chessplayer in the world. He's the messiah for many. Maurice Ashley walks on water, didn't you know that? Everyone is supposed to bow down to the #38 player in New York. Get ready to be called prejudiced by jonesmurphy, it's just a matter of time.

p.s. I'm not a hater, hope it's successful.

Yeah, I hope it's successful too. But Ashley is supposed to held up on a pedestal for all to worship, or else...............

I hope it's an abject failure. This tournament is an affront to amateur chess. We have a hard enough time drumming up interest in the game without promoting elite, absurdly over-priced tournaments that will fill the coffers of a few grandmasters to the (deserved) expense of a bunch of morons.

If I was Ashley I'd take the check and let them run my photo on the ads too, but I wouldn't be proud of it...nor should he.

Three things you can do with $1000 that are infinitely superior, morally and practically, than registering for the Millionaire Chess Tournament.

1) Donate it all to Save the Tigers. Tigers are vanishing in the world, but 2400-level chess players are cropping up everywhere. Ask yourself what you'd rather see go extinct: Siberian tigers or ex-patriated European grandmasters.

2) Sponsor a local chess club in your local school. $1000 buys a lot of boards, clocks, and maybe even a year's stipend for an over-worked chess-playing teacher to sponsor the club.

3) Go to Wal-Mart, spend it all on canned and packaged food, and drive it over to your local soup kitchen. I guarantee you will feel a lot better about yourself than you will by watching Alexander Shabalov picking up his $20,000 prize check, 5% of which you contributed.

Would you please provide transation details on all of your purchases for the past year so we can determine if you should have spent it more wisely? If not, please don't comment on others' spending choices.

The only transaction I'm truly proud of is my Eric Fleet standee. I think I have the only one east of the Pecos!

This tournament sends the wrong message about chess. We should not be endorsing amateur tournaments that cost this much. A lot of people are going to be suckered into this and a very few people will profit greatly.

Is that the one I signed?

It does seem a ridiculous amount of money to pay, just to play a few games of chess.

As for bringing your own equipment, that smacks of poor planning and corner-cutting.

I'm with the OP: don't encourage this sort of sharp practice, or it will become the future.

The commentary on the last three tournaments (provided by chess.com) has been full of good analysis, lively and full of fun. The commentary on the current US championship provided by friend Ashley is so dull I have not managed more than five minutes at a time so far.

That said your diatribes against the million dollar tournament are a bit weird. The thing draws on the poker tournaments currently enjoying a big vogue. Whether it will work for chess has yet to be seen and, I imagine, most of us would guess it won't. But having a go to see if maybe it might work seems OK to me. Why you are so sour about it you don't explain.

What your posts mainly suggest is that for some reason you are jealous.

Hey, I want one. Where can I get one? Maybe a bobble head. I'm speaking of the standee.

I bet Maurice Ashley bobble heads would sell well at the tournament. Maybe 5 or 6 would sell.

Truly, it's a new level of low in organized US chess.  There are those of us, many of us really, who gamely pony up our $165 or whatever for the closest Bill Goichberg affair...usually some 7 game marathon spread out over four days at the local Sheraton.

We gear up for it, play our best...and if we are lucky and good we might win 4-5 games. It's usually not enough to win cash, but maybe sometimes we win something back...enough to pay for all the hotel food, gasoline, and Internet minutes we burned on our iDevice.

But this "millionaire" event is asking for $1000 entry fee for essentially the same experience. The vast majority of players will not win a thing, but play the SAME set of games against the SAME kind of players. There will be nothing more exceptional or educational about this experience than the one you'd get at a local Open.

TMB

People usually have to bring their own equipment anyway, but yeah $1000 is quite a bit up front, especially in this economy.  Have to save where you can in a country where people are underpaid and everything is overpriced. 

>for some reason you are jealous<

Only of your fab rear end, Johnny...but then I'm not alone there :)

I'm all for it. If people want to spend their money in a tournament to try for a million, it's their choice. Not one person is having their arm twisted. As for prize money, the tournament doesn't go on unless it has 1,000 registrants, correct? 1,000x1,000 is 1,000,000 so he's not losing a penny. I'm completely ok with that. I think if he can pull it off, it's a smart business decision, so good for him.

If I were him, I'd have classes of players, A, B, etc so different levels can all win (big) money.