Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (wlod) wrote:
1. It is unethical for a player to win $$, when another player who
had a better result won less or nothing;

Why? If you're going to ban class prizes, you're probably also going
to have to ban rating-based grouping in tournaments. Who's going to
play in the U2000 section if there are no prizes except in the open?
If every tournament has only one (open) section, you're going to need
at least one extra round to compensate for the fact that the first
round is now just an exercise in sorting out the strong players from
the weak ones. That probably means that the tournament will have to
go on for an extra day, which means more accommodation and/or
travelling and/or living expenses for the players, and greater fees
for hiring the venue.


2. Class prizes induce some players into the unethical sandbagging;

Any system of rewards can induce people to cheat in order to gain
those rewards. However, I agree with you that class prizes are an
incentive to sand-bagging because they reward people for having
ratings just below class boundaries. On the other hand, is sand-
bagging a serious problem in practice? (I mean `do a lot of people do
it? ', not `is it bad when it happens?') I don't think we need to
worry about sand-bagging unless it is a serious problem.


3. Class prizes cause a higher entry fee;

But not very much so. In the sorts of tournaments I play in, I'd
guess that the total amount of prize money in my class is usually not
higher than the entry fee of, say, ten players. Since the class very
often includes over fifty, the increase in entry fee is not very
significant in percentage terms.


on the total, more chess players are pushed away from the tournament
chess by the extra cost than are attracted by the gambling on
winning the prize;

Do you have any evidence for this assertion?


USCF should keep track of how much $$ each player has won in all
USCF rated tournaments. Then participants of the tournament, for the
purpose of class prizes, can be divided into those who until then
won nothing; the next class would be those who won a total up to
$50, then those who won more than $50 but less than $200; etc.

That's not the answer. What you're doing is introducing a new
`prize-money rating' and you're using perhaps the worst possible
formula for it -- total amount won. At the very least, you need to
have some kind of moving average of prize money against time.
Otherwise, winning $20 in a rated club tournament fifty years ago
might stop you winning a prize in a tournament today, which sounds
absurd. Also, your system `punishes' players for taking part in
tournaments with high prize funds. If you try to correct for that,
you'll just end up with a rating that looks at the results of the
game. But, wait! -- we've already got one of those.

Because your system is just a rating, it is still susceptible to
sand-bagging. Suppose I've never won any money but am on the verge of
winning a tournament with a $100 prize. If week's tournament has a
$200 prize (for people who've never won before), I might be tempted to
throw my last game in the hope of winning more cash next week. (My
modification is also susceptible to sand-bagging.)

Also, why is it ethical (your word, not mine) that my 4/5 wins me $100
because I've never won anything in a USCF rated tournament but your
4.5/5 (including, say, a win against me) wins you nothing because you
have won prize money before? If you're saying that prize money should
be spread evenly, why bother having it at all?


Dave.

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