Today marks the start of a new academic school year, and so
I started thinking why don’t I start something new with Charlie’s Chess
Club.
When I took up the game of chess again (a few years back), I
was playing in almost every event that came up, and a buddy of mine told me I
was leading the New Mexico Cup. I didn’t
know what the New Mexico Cup was, so I looked it up, and I saw the names of the
previous winners on the NMCO site. It
was at that point I decided I had to win this cup. I was traveling to places I
would never go to before, playing on only 2 hours of sleep (because a friend of
mine had a kid and I was at the hospital till 4:00 a.m.). I was going to win
this cup, nothing was going to stop me, and sure enough I did. Then when I went to the New Mexico Open I was
so excited, because I was going to get my glorious pewter engraved cup, with
its marble base, I had never won a prize like this before. I have competed in many events before and won
many trophies, but never a cup. I even
cleared off space on my mantle where it was to be displayed. So you can imagine my disappointment when I
received a coffee mug with the NMCO logo on it (valued at about $3). Ouch!
This year a buddy of mine is near the top and trying to win
the cup (even though he knows it’s only a coffee cup and his name on a webpage),
he’s playing in all different kinds of events he doesn’t like (G/60, G/30,
G/45) just to be named the winner. So
this got me thinking, I would like to increase participation in my tournaments,
so that going forward we can hold bigger and bigger events, and players don’t
currently get points towards the New Mexico Cup for participating in my events,
so why don’t I start my own cup!
So how will Charlie’s Cup be different from the New
Mexico? In a couple of ways:
1. The Scoring, NM Cup’s uses participation and performance
rating to award points. This gives
higher rated players an advantage. I don’t think any of the previous cup
winners were rated below 1700, which is unfair in my humble opinion. As a result, Charlie’s Cup will award points
based on participation and for every win and draw. The scoring will be, you will receive x amount
of points for participating in an event (but to get credit for an event you
must play in at least half of the games for that particulate occasion). Then you will receive 3 points for every win
and 1 point for every draw. You receive
points for all of Charlie’s Events.
Points for a particular event will be announced before an event. The more rounds an event is, the more points
it will be worth. For example, our event
Free Matchups is worth 5 points, and our NM G15 Championship will be worth 15
points. So on the quick and blitz events
you can really pick up a lot of points.
This will enable someone who rated 500, who plays in a lot of events and
wins quite a few games an equal chance as someone who is 2000 and does the
exact same.
2. The prize, NM Cup’s is a coffee mug, Charlie’s Cup will
be a regal trophy, kind of like the picture above. It will be valued at approximately $50-$150, personally
engraved, and something to be coveted. You will also, find yourself on Charlie’s
Wall of Fame! Additionally, the winner
will also receive a $250 gift certificate to either ChessBase, USCFSales,
ChessCentral or another prominent chess market place, or you may opted for free
entry for the upcoming year’s events.
3. The events for the 2016 Charlie’s cup will run from July
1, 2015-June 30, 2016. We plan on holding about one event a month.
First event starts in two and half weeks. Let the race begin!
