Millionaire Chess 3

  You want honest chess? Pay 10 bucks to enter a quad that pays $25 to win and you'll not have to worry about cheaters or sandbagger's.

  No tournament I know of requires photo ID. Yes, I've spoken to players that have admitted to playing under someone else's name whose rating was hundreds of points lower for the easy money.

  When we accept that athlete's cheat for money why do we pretend to be shocked when chess player's do?

yes, of course. i never said anything against that.

chriswainscott said it's impossible to make a norm with a forfeit win and i corrected him. he (or his friend) said 8 round norms are useless and i corrected him by pointing out examples where they aren't. 

that's all.

how many players were missing their final 9 round norm because they got a first round bye?

Trying?

The only thing being tried is a new promoter making an attempt to exploit the amature / hobby players by making personal profit.

Ashley has not spoken a single word, except that he wants your money next year.

Where has he said if a profit were made, he'd return a single dime back to improving the sport?

By "chess.com", I meant not the company, but chess.com members or, more specifically, posters in this and a few other threads. I just like to engage in argument and debate and possibly correct misunderstandings or misconceptions about something I am interested in or support -- hence, the many detailed posts responding to various people and points. Maybe I was just supposed to stay silent or ignore a poster when I had a real disagreement with his point(s)? In any case, I will be leaving this forum soon. I don't like the environment in these threads.

Well, they've been trying for two years already and they're not exactly succeeding. And just because something is diferent doesn't mean it's better; imho the MC is worse.

The only change they're really trying to adopt is the promoters earning more money. That money has to come from somewhere: the participants. For them to fall for this, MC threw all kinds of glitter and magic words around trying to fool them.

So no, it's not "but at least they are trying, yes?", but "hopefully they stop trying this nonsense soon and we can get back to actually trying to help chess" for me.

Before you go, I'll ask again. What are your arguements that MCO is good for chess?

royalprobe

I was curious about what the fuss was about.  Title norms are something that don't impact me, so I know little about them other than they exist.

If anything, they seem to be trying to do the opposite.  They are offering a better prize fund to entry fee ratio than any other big tournament.

From newsletter..The 3rd Millionaire Chess Open will also see an interesting innovation that many players will find exciting. Anyone who has a 50% score or worse after 4 rounds can pay to participate in a new ‘Redemption Jackpot’ and have their final three rounds count for something. While a low score near the end of the tournament usually means frustration and regret, players will now have the chance to fight to the very end with the real possibility for winning a prize if they finish strong. The rules will be more thoroughly explained when the website opens March 1st.

So, MCO wants to entice 50 % of the players to pony up more money 1/2 thru the tournament, in the hopes of winning money.

Sound like a rebuy in texas hold-em? Their sole objective is to squeeze every penny out the the hobby players.

selam

Only as long as they're having too few participants. For their initial plan, they would have had a goal of 1500+ participants. Which would leave more money to the promoters than other big opens.

Getting the participants is next to impossible though for a simple reason: anyone expecting to be in the lower 50% of his or her section will not expect to earn any prize money anyway. They just pay and never earn anything.

So for them it's more a matter of how much will it cost to participate in a nice atmosphere and meet titled players there ?

And the answer is: the cost will be far lower at some other big open for having pretty much the same amount of fun. Which is why MC will never have as many players as they're hoping for.

Also, prize fund to entry fee ratio is only then a viable argument if participants have a fair chance at that prize pool. Sandbaggers attracted by MC acting in an almost professional manner foul up that idea. The prize pool actually available to non-sandbaggers is much lower.

Let me try to summarize the main arguments I see:

1. A big, prestigious, and exciting open tournament such as MCO attracts formerly active players who have been away from the game for a long time (sometimes decades), sometimes because they found traditional tournaments unprofessional or boring. Some of these players may start playing regularly again because their interest in chess has been rekindled. It also attracts new players, such as scholastic players, whose parents are looking for an event such as MCO to get their kids excited about the game/sport and give them an unforgettable and possibly life-changing experience.

2. MCO is one of the few events and MC is one of the few companies that have the potential to attract mainstream media coverage and attention and eventually get the event/game on TV (this might take a few years, but I believe it's definitely quite possible). This will allow chess and its events to reach a much wider audience, thereby stimulating growth in both young and older players. Remember that the Fischer boom happened partly because they actually had chess on TV (and on the front page of newspapers) back then.

3. Some chess players crave large open tournaments with big prizes, not just small local tournaments with no prizes or small prizes. First, some players, like me, play chess OTB regularly but would also love the chance to win a big prize once or twice a year by doing what we love well! I personally don't play chess for money, and the vast majority of chess players don't, either, but that doesn't mean that some of us not would not appreciate the opportunity to earn some good money by doing well in a tournament! MCO is one of the very few tournaments during the year that it makes sense for me to travel to, as the prize fund is large enough to justify the expenses. Second, many chess players do not play at their local chess club or in other events regularly, choosing only to enter a big tournament once or twice a year. A classy and big event such as MCO has the potential to get this group of players excited about the game again, motivating them to start playing chess OTB regularly (for example, to train and improve for the next MCO or simply to meet their stringent rating rules).

I hope that helps.

seems like a new form of sandbagging will arise. loosing the first rounds on purpose and just go for the redemption jackpot (if the jackpot prizes are decent)

1) Nice idea, but it hasn't been working for the first 2 years now.

2) So they themselves thought, yes. Feel free to research for yourself what happened to both their own documentary and their negotiations with a studio. Which they even had a press release about before it all turned into nothing.

3) As participant numbers clearly show, it doesn't attract enough of these players. Do some reasearch on the numbers of actually active USCF players and how many of them you'd need to attract. We discussed this in the past and came to the conclusion they never did any serious analysis of the potential market for their event.

>I would appreciate your not slandering me.<

You are an ANONYMOUS FORUM POSTER. 

You could be one, two, or five people. You could be using three different aliases in this discussion, including those who argue against you. You could be me. You have NO IDENTITY that has any legal standing. 

This is about the funniest thing I've read yet on chess.com. Anonymous posters demanding they not be "slandered."

And yes, chess.com's promotion of MC is just one of many who have jumped on board. It's been one massive love-fest for this tournament throughout the chess world, except for one contrarian forum thread. 

You make quite a few 'assumptions" about the desires of chess players Kingandmate. Not everyone is of the same mind. Seems almost as if thoughts are being implemented into the public's mind.

Very similiar to MC'S newsletter stating their "interesting innovation" will be exciting for the players. I find nothing exciting about it. Seems just another ploy at "deceiving " most into believing they have an equal chanch to win.

2nd. Attract TV coverage? Nonsense. The only TV coverage will be restricted to the elite players.

3. Crave big tournaments? You betcha. The ones who know how to manipulate ratings and sandbag their ratings love it.

 I've already stated my response to this. Please read that and stop repeating this argument.

The high prize/entry fee ratio is the result of misjudgment on MC's part.  If you look at Amy's early postings, her logic was:  The USCF has 80,000 members; half of them are adults, and at least 4% of the adults will enter the MC open.

What she missed is that the USCF has only 16,000 active adult members.  MC more or less got the 4%, but it was far less than had been anticipated.  If they had gotten the anticipated 1600+, there would have probably been a nice profit for them.