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This page announces our upcoming tournaments, and has links to the tournaments of other clubs in our area. To see the games from all of our past tournaments, go to our Games page.
To get to the Dole Mansion in Crystal Lake, you can follow these directions depending on where you're coming from. From the South:Take Randall Road North Make a Left onto McHenry Ave in Crystal Lake, go 1.1 miles Make a Left onto Nash Road, go .4 miles (if you pass Rt. 14, you went too far. See directions From the East to get back on track) Make a Left onto Golf Road, go .2 miles Make a Right onto Country Club Road and look for a parking space.
From the West: Take 31 S or whatever is convenient to Rt. 14 Make a Right onto Rt. 14, traveling West towards Crystal Lake. You’ll pass the Crystal Lake shopping malls, and past the McHenry Ave intersection. If you pass Rt. 176, you’ve gone too far. Turn around. Make a Left onto Van Buren St, go .1 mile Make a Right onto Lake Ave, go .3 mile Make a left onto Country Club Road, and grab a parking space.
From the East: Here's a map to the Lakeside Legacy site, home of the Historic Dole Mansion where we'll be playing our championship. You can use the link for a dynamic map where you can zoom and scroll.
Here's a map to our regular playing site. You can use the link for a dynamic map where you can zoom and scroll.
Please bring sets, boards and clocks if possible.
Future Tournaments Schedule Upcoming tournaments for the remainder of of 2007 have been scheduled..
Tournament Playing Site Information Playing Site
Casual play is at the Colonial Cafe in Crystal Lake on Tuesday, and the Borders Bookstore in McHenry on Thursday nights. See our meetings page for more information on casual play.
General Tournament Description In general, all of our tournaments are single day events held on the third Saturday of every month, with the two exceptions noted above. We host two types of tournaments, four round Swiss's and three round Quads. Time control for our Swiss events are Game/60, with round times of 9:30, 11:35, 2:15, and 4:20. Our Quads have time control of Game/80, with round times of 9:30, 12:50 and 3:35. This allows for a forty minute lunch before the last two rounds. We usually alternate between the Swiss and Quad format every month. In a quad tournament, you will play opponents close to your own strength. In a Swiss, your opponents will be more varied but the prize fund is higher. Except for our championship tournament, we award cash prizes at our tournaments. At our quads, we award $20 for first place and $10 for second place in each quad. We try to return about two thirds of entry fees in prize money, with the rest going to pay for the hotel room, ratings fees, club overhead such as the USCF affiliate fees and maintaining the web site, and providing for our scholarship fund. The exact prize amounts, the places awarded and the exact rounds times are posted at the tournament site after registration is complete. Our annual championship tournament awards trophies for the McHenry Area Champion, second and third places overall, a Junior champion and second place junior, three scholastic championships, and several local city champions, including special trophies for people who travel from outside our area. We have been able to hold our entry fee to only $10, and plan to continue offering inexpensive rated tournaments on a monthly basis for the foreseeable future. For more information, contact Bob@McHenryAreaChess.org
Swiss Tournament Adjustments In order to provide a higher quality of
competitive play for all of the entrants to our Swiss events, we reserve the
right to divide these tournament into two sections, based on the distribution of
ratings of our entrants. In this way, masters and experts will not have to be
paired against class D or lower rated players, and beginners will have to
struggle against opponents they have no chance against. While we feel strongly
that much valuable experience can be gained by playing higher rated opponents,
there are realistic limits to how great a difference is reasonable. However, we
will consider requests by anyone who would prefer to play in the upper section.
We expect to only exercise the two section option in events with 25 or more entrants, and where there is a wide range of ratings. For example, in our July Swiss, we had 32 players with ratings that spanned from 2233 to 950, with 3 unrated players. A dividing line at 1500 allowed sixteen players in each section (late entrants changed these numbers slightly). However, we may not always split the field exactly in half, to allow for an uneven distribution in ratings. For example, if one tournament is attended by a large number of scholastic players, all under 1100, the top section may have far fewer players than the second section. Of course, this will require adjustments to the prize funds given out. We will follow our normal policy of returning most of the entry fees in prize money, allowing for some overhead expenses, (such as hotel costs, ratings fees, the scholarship fund, and providing this web site). Typically we award between two thirds and three quarters of entry fees in prize money. If the number of entrants in each section is different, the prize money offered in each section may be different. However, the proportions should be pretty much the same. Note that these changes do not affect our Quad events, and it also will not be used for our annual Championship tournament, where we award trophies in various categories that are not dependent on ratings (such as Junior titles and City Champions). Quads are always four man sections, and our Championship tournament will always be a single open section. We expect this will allow us to offer tournaments which are the most interesting and enjoyable we can provide. We welcome any feedback people wish to make regarding this matter.
No Conflict with cash prizes and sports! There had been concern expressed by some of our younger players that accepting cash prizes at our tournaments might make them ineligible for amateur sports at their schools. We looked into this, and discovered that such fears are completely unnecessary. You are allowed to win any amount of cash at any of our tournaments without it affecting your participation in school athletics. We checked with both the IHSA (Illinois High School Sports Association) and the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association). Although the IHSA does list chess as a sport, they exempt chess prizes from prohibited compensation. Further, their only prohibitions are within the same sport, so if a student wins money in a tennis tournament, they can still play on the high school football team, just not on their tennis team. But even winning money in a chess tournament does not kick you off the school chess team. The NCAA does not consider chess a sport at all, so there are conflicts. We hope this information encourages our younger players to participate in our events more often.
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