Research for a Story (Fiction)

This questionnaire is for a story that I want to tell and I’d like to have realistic characters reactions. All answers welcome.

Set up: You’ve learned that a chess club has formed in a larger metropolitan area of a larger city. You are interested in joining and learn that they’re establishing a match play league, similar to how the UFC operates. They will provide cash payments for things like winning and exciting games. There is a different way to score game results to encourage things like winning and losing over draws.

Section I

Knowing this is designed to be outside of the “normal” chess competition, would you be interested in a match play only league? 

Assuming the payouts were reasonable enough, would you be interested in participating for a long term?

If you weren’t on the road to being top rated, would you be interested in signing a contract with this club? (The contract would be a minimum number of matches over the course of a prescribed number of years, or just the match requirements)

Are you more or less enticed knowing that there would be promotional efforts being made to make this more into a spectator sport?

Section II

If you were given a “base salary” in the contract mentioned in Section I, are you more or less likely to sign with the club?

The scoring changes would be White Win = 3, Black Win = 3.5, Loss = 1, and Draw = 0.5. What are your thoughts about this?

There would be divisions to keep similarly rated players grouped together working towards divisional championships, but no rating information would be published on any public area or kept by the club, would you have an issue with this? (This is designed to remove the 1300 vs 1100 match being mentally gifted to the 1300… like two fighters, ratings wouldn’t be kept)

If this wasn’t sanctioned (or at all attached) to the national chess federation, would this alter your desire to participate? (You are not barred from participating in national federation activities, but the expectation of the club is that their events come first… due to needing scheduling ahead of time)

Section III

If games were limited to 10-15 total minutes, how does this alter your perception of what has already been revealed in earlier sections?

Standard matches would be one game as white, one as black, with a 5 minute game with random colors to tie break. Would this interest you?

If the club utilized only Chess960, would this be better or worse knowing all the information in other sections?

Section IV (final section)

Would you want to see these events?

Do you think that you know non-competitive chess players who would be interested in seeing these events?

If you were aware that “big names” or special attractions accompanied each event, would this make it more or less enticing to want to be at the event?

What would you change about any of the above questions to make the scenario more likely to succeed?

Thanks for participating and I’ll elaborate where needed as questions arise.

Write the typical story where the player (main protagonist) conspires with opponent to split the wins, then have the player betray his opponent to win big and start his run from the chess mob boss.

Uh, no.