beer.
tournament
You could have them each pay in like $5 or something then pay 1st-2nd-3rd $30-$5-$5 or just all $40 to the winner. Also have you thought about if you're going to do it like a knockout tournament, maybe all in one day, or you could make a cross table and have each person play everyone else and have it take a little longer.
You could also do it like a swiss tournament, first just random pairings, but then winners play winners, losers play losers, then in the next round the people with 2 wins are paired, people with 1 win are paired, etc. After, lets say 4, round you have a winner. Also this way you also get a 2nd, 3rd etc place.
Also time control, are you going to use chess clocks at all? If so set a time limit, G/30 or G/60 or whatever you want.
So you have money (or not) , the type of pairings , and a time limit or not. This info should take up one line on a sign up sheet, print it out and have them sign up. You can set a date before or after you get names.
If it's an everyone plays everyone once type of competition then maybe just make a cross table where they can sign up (like a graph with players names on the left and numbers on the top, if player one beats player 5 then in player 1's row he gets a "W" in his 5th column, while player 5 gets a "L" in his first column) put it somewhere and have them record the result as they find time to play -- when everyone is done add up the wins :)
I have 8 guys that want to play in a tournament at work. I would like some advice on how to go about getting it going. Any suggestions?