OTB match play.....a possibility for amateurs?

You know I was thinking the other day that its a shame that the only OTB chess amateurs have access to are swiss style tournaments or occasionally a blitz round robin or some quad. What all these events have in common is that the players generally dont know who they are playing against until the day of the event.

*

What I think would be cool is if amateurs could play in a world championship style match against someone that would mean something....meaning a 12 game match or something similar where you know who your opponent will be months in advanced and each player hires coaches to help them prepare. Maybe a classical time control like G 2hours or something would be unrealistic since people dont have that much free time in todays world but how about G30? 6 games a day for 2 days or something similar?

*

One issue maybe is that for someone to devote that much energy in preparation, the match needs to have some significance. Could bragging rights be enough? There are state championships in most states that include trophies for many different levels of players...from master level all the way down to class D in many cases. How about the champions from 2 neighboring states play matches? Another interesting idea would be a quad from 4 states in a given region....like in my area it could be Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Tennessee....the champions from each section would play...kind of like an invitational for class players.

*

Or am I dreaming? Maybe my imagination went crazy from reading too many books.....like Don Quixote?

I've thought of that many years ago but never tried to set it up. The only way to attach any real meaning to it would be to bet significant money on it. 

Funny. I wonder why my soccer team of ten people can't play World Cup or some similar tournament.

yeah....since I made this post I sort of gave up on the idea. I still think it would be an interesting idea but is probably too much of a headache to even try to set up. Also if you think about it you can kind of live out a fantasy of a professional player if you compete in tournaments like the world open since players prepare pretty hard for those events because of the prize money involved.

It's very doable. My local club runs 3-round G/20;d5 tournaments every Tuesday and recently two players approached the TD and asked to be paired in an Extra Games section in which to play one classical game.

What you are talking there sounds more like a glorified training game to me. The idea I had in mind was a match between two players who have won the state championship in their respective states. The match would be arranged months in advanced and the players would work with coaches to prepare against a specific opponent. The idea is for amateurs to have the experience of a world championship style match, which I think could be very interesting but the problem is for it to be a world championship match kind of experience the result would need to mean something either by a large prize fund or some kind of title attached to it with a lot of publicity.....maybe both would actually be necessary.

*

On the other hand if you go for the tournament experience a lot of this is already in place. Maybe not the amateur championship title but the prize fund at some tournaments is quite large and there is plenty of publicity with chess life interviewing the winners and publishing their games. Also with the large prize fund it can be expected that the players will be very well prepared...many are probably preparing for months for a particular tournament....which would be the situation I would want for a match.