Chess Tournament in my company...

Hi world,

I have to organize a Chess Tournament for Christmas in my office, and it's going to be my first time. I don't know if any of you have had experience organizing this kind of events for your own company / the company you work for. It would help a lot if you could write down your experience and some tips, please.

I only have two days (two fridays, from 16h to 20h approximately), and my company has nearly 800 employees. Still, I think that I'll be lucky if 24 of them are interested in the tournament.

I have lots of questions: e.g. How many simultaneous games should there be? ; How many time per move / game? etc etc etc. Anything that you can think of it's going to be valuable information for me.

Thanks a lot in advance! 

I don't have any expirience, but it sounds like you target group will be casual chess players. So apart from a quick introduction at the beginning of the tournament (you should definitely explain rules like en passant, stalemate, touchmove, and how to use a clock-most players won't be familiar with them) you should also go for a lower time limit-my suggestion would be 20 minutes per player, per game. Beginners are unlikely to need more time than that.

So with the time you state, that works out to eight or nine rounds.

Thanks for your comment Puchiko. Yes, I'm planning to make an introduction to make sure everyone understands the rules. 20 minutes seems ok: blitz wouldn't be ok for people not used to chess clocks. You've given me a couple of good tips here, thanks a lot mate 

Ei Villy, ha estat un plaer coneixer-te a la trobada del Team. Com va anar el torneig?

I am planning a tournament for the coffee house I go to and have been looking into this topic myself. If you have no experience running a tournament, go to the chess.com's "resources" link and download a tournament manager. I am currently using Vega.  It basically does all the thinking for you by figuring out the pairings and color distribution.  Mess with it and run a pretend tourmament just to get the hang of the features.  If possible, try to have a Swiss system tournament so that no one is knocked-out and gets to play all of the rounds. 

http://www.chess.com/download/view/vega-tournament-manager

Off the cusp: for 64 people maximum, you should need around 6 rounds. 32 people maximum, you should need around 5 rounds. 16 people maximum, 4 rounds. 

If all else fails, you could try using one of those "Sweet 16" college basketball type brackets.

http://www.blankplayoffbracket.com/

Be sure to encourage your coworkers to PRE-register so you could have an idea of how many rounds you might need.

Hey man, this is really cool. I didn't know that there were tournament managers! Thanks a lot, this will surely help :-)

Please post how your tourmament went from your, the tournament director's, point of view.

Nice idea. Such activities should be promoted and maybe even consider to make it a permanent tournament. Once or maybe twice a year. If people are interested, you may even ask for some money to buy some medals or at least some diplomas. 

These things make people even more competitive.

I hope it was a succes.

Yes, I think this is something good for large companies. Still, my tournament had to be postponed owing to the fact that almost half of the people who were to play were sacked from the company . These are hard times.

I hope to organize it around June. I'll share my experience with you in every stage.

Thanks and see you around 

I want to suggest something similar to my company. Create a chess tournament will be fun. Do you have a sample letter about this. How can I come out with this idea?