RA Winter Open: exceeding prize fund !

[Aris Marghetis]

I am pleased to report registration revenue is stronger than expected! We almost always have a higher prize fund in events like the recent National Capital Open, but for this upcoming RA Winter Open, we are receiving more registrations than expected, and less people are taking the Amateur discount. Both these trends are serving to grow the prize fund. More specifically, even with 2 registration evenings to go (Thursday at the RA chess club and Friday before round 1), the total prize fund has already passed $2000, including, at least, $1000 for the top 3 players, and $500 for clear first place. I guess it is possible that some players who said they will pay onsite change their mind at the last minute, but we are quite confident that more players than that would show up at the last minute to register/pay onsite. If you are one of those people who will decide only late this week, please feel free to send me an email that you are coming, as that will save us both valuable time onsite, and help ensure that we glide into starting on time (yes, I am obsessed with that, LOL)

For local players who have not yet registered/paid, it would be great to see you at the RA chess club this Thursday evening! I expect to be there from about 7pm onwards, but I will not be staying too late. It would be best to catch me before the round starts at 730pm. If you really must see me after that, please wait until it is my turn to move, out of respect for my opponent. Note that any payments will need to be in cash. The same thing goes for onsite registrations on Friday evening. The first round will start at 7pm sharp, and first pairings are done at 645pm, but only for players who have already paid, current CFC membership, etc. Of course, we will do our best to accommodate anyone who pays after 645pm, but cannot guarantee them a Swiss pairing.

Further below is the ongoing registration list. Please check for any byes, other outstanding actions, etc. I will re-post an updated list by Friday morning.

Yours in chess,

Aris Marghetis
- Organizer/TD, FIDE Arbiter
- EOCA President, CFC Governor

Please note that we are looking for at least 3 floater players :
- floater players help the TD guarantee no “forced byes”
- floater players are paired and rated like all the players
- floater players play for free, but under some conditions :
----- they play in 0 to 5 rounds, depending on byes by all the players
----- they can be phoned/texted in the hour before every single round
----- they have a current CFC membership by the time of first pairings
if you are interested in being a floater player for this event, please apply by email

--------- ongoing registration list ---------

# CFC# rating name: title last, first

Top Section
146462 2624 GM Sambuev, Bator
102700 2428 IM Hartman, Brian
106245 2426 IM O'Donnell, Tom
(U2400 Class)
103715 2340 Pacey, Kevin
120516 2284 Voloaca, Mihnea
101864 2279 Valdizon, Armando (paying onsite)
125461 2274 Masse, Hugues
106629 2254 Gordon, David (bye 2)
101925 2232 Upper, John
134989 2228 Qin, Joey
U2200 Class
106856 2165 Palsson, Halldor
110815 2162 Regnier, Alain (CFC membership)
139655 2100 Sadeghi, Saeid
131936 2059 Desjardins, Michel (bye 1)

U2000 Section
103276 1964 Martin, Spencer (bye 1)
111290 1963 Smilovici, Emil
106383 1962 Spicer, Christopher
112806 1947 Van Dusen, Eric
107391 1945 Marghetis, Aris (floater)
107565 1944 Hubley, Roger
142032 1941 Forget, David
102539 1933 Groleau, Gilles
101895 1931 Danilov, Alex
137927 1917 Kalra, Agastya
134894 1904 Murray, Adam (paying Thursday)
134845 1891 Renaud, Joshua (bye 1)
102673 1890 Ponce, Fidel (confirming registration)
110972 1873 Ritchie, Gordon (bye 3)
104270 1841 Laszlo, Robert (bye 3)
102205 1834 Thibault, Mario
103877 1826 Serdula, Jay
100337 1814 Laurin, Marcel (bye 1)
U1800 Class
110166 1788 Roth, Gerhard
112353 1780 Tomalty, Alan (bye 3)
107582 1758 Perkins, Simon
147276 1752 Zhang, Kevin
142031 1688 Burton, Joe
148745 1670 Meyer, Ralf
135113 1668 Eyre, Keven (bye 1)
147460 1600 Wan, Kevin

U1600 Section
104858 1596 Hunt, Murray
120087 1590 Van Leeuwen, John (confirming registration)
140794 1512 Huang, Jayson (paying onsite)
144311 1506 Sharma, Pranav
136766 1506 Balanaser, Morgan (paying onsite)
147280 1464 Martin, James
146597 1426 Luo, Fangyi
146765 1416 Lukezich, John
147277 1412 Zhang, David
150262 1371 Muhammad, Hanif
126475 1344 Woolner, Nicholas (paying onsite)
146598 1224 Luo, Tony
148924 1172 Zhang, Jeff (bye 2)
CFC#? 1211 Uramovski, Mat (CFC details)
150390 1139 Carroll, Billy

P.S. All applicable ratings will be rechecked before first pairings at 645pm.

--------- original event announcement ---------

The Eastern Ontario Chess Association (EOCA) organizes the EOCA Grand Prix, a series of weekend tournaments over the 2009-2010 chess season.

The next EOCA event in Ottawa will be the RA Winter Open, on January 22nd-24th. It will consist of 5 rounds, with flexible bye and discount options.

At least 3 sections (rated CFC, Top Section also rated FIDE), class prize(s) every 200 rating points from U2200 (U2400 if many high rated) to U1600.

For more details on this event, and a great webpage for all of the events in the 2009-2010 EOCA Grand Prix, please consider bookmarking this weblink:
http://www.eoca.org/htm/tournaments_2009-2010.html

[Larry Bevand]

Re: RA Winter Open: exceeding prize fund !

I am pleased to report registration revenue is stronger than expected! ...

For more details on this event, and a great webpage for all of the events in the 2009-2010 EOCA Grand Prix, please consider bookmarking this weblink:
http://www.eoca.org/htm/tournaments_2009-2010.html

Hi Aris,

Congratulations!

You are doing what they did in Guelph and Kitchener (Hal and Patrick)...and at the Montreal Chess Club with Sylvain Millette (to mention only a few)...providing quality events on a regular basis....combined with a lot of hard work!

Glad to see these excellent results!

Larry

[Aris Marghetis]

Re: RA Winter Open: exceeding prize fund !

Hi Aris,

Congratulations!

You are doing what they did in Guelph and Kitchener (Hal and Patrick)...and at the Montreal Chess Club with Sylvain Millette (to mention only a few)...providing quality events on a regular basis....combined with a lot of hard work!

Glad to see these excellent results!

Larry

Hi Larry, thanks for the kind words! It is a bit of hard work, like I am lining up a bigger nicer room for this coming weekend, which includes visiting the site ahead of time, etc., but in the end, it is also a lot of fun, especially meeting new people who travel in to play!

(players, look for signs in the West Wing of the RA Centre on Friday, but it looks like we will be in the Canada Room on the ground floor, with a skittles room still on the 2nd floor)

Also, when I give credit to people in my event reports, it's because there are very many experienced players who give me a lot of great feedback! It takes trial and error over time to balance out differing feedback from different players, but without that feedback in the first place, there's only my intuition, and my family has told me how bad that is! ;)

If we break $2.5K in prizes for this weekend, then I am going to really push for $3K for the RA Spring Open (event dates being changed to not conflict with the Hamilton Open).