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BGonline.org Forums
Another Survey Response
Posted By: Rich Munitz In Response To: Another Survey Response (Bill Riles)
Date: Thursday, 7 May 2009, at 12:53 a.m.
Agree overall. I would go again myself.
I did receive 1 penalty point (lot of good it did me) against my disappeared opponent who returned after I was forced to personally chase him down and he arrived about 35 minutes after I told the staff that I did not know my opponent. That only happened after I put the director on the spot as to how it could be left open ended for the guy to maybe show up eventually at some point after it is already 15 minutes after I first alerted the staff that I needed my opponent. Then when the opponent showed up 20 minutes later (director said 18) I was told there would be no penalty points since he was only 3 minutes late past the 15 minute grace. I had to explain that the first penalty point is at 15 minutes, not 5 minutes later. The director agreed.
Anyway, aside from the issues already raised due to inexperience, my major peeve was simply that there seemed to be generally a lack of decisiveness and a lack of people taking ownership of issues. It seemed generally expected that people would find their opponents and report their matches and that everyone would simply know what to do and the event would just run on autopilot. And when that did not happen with some people, there was chaos. It seemed way too often that there was nobody on staff around to help or if they were, they were busy doing something else.
The venue was fabulous and at a reasonable price. Don't mess with that.
Mike's lecture was great as always.
The food sucked, but I imagine they were on the hook to buy some volume of food and drink from the hotel. And the usual $50 per gallon of coffee or $3 per can of soda that hotels charge for catering is enough to make anyone puke. Honestly, sub-par as it was, if I consider the hospitality fee to be part of the rake and then look at it as a free breakfast, well - it was free and it was worth every penny. And there was coffee. It is not the fault of the tournament. They simply had to choose the method of robbery.
It is very clear that this is a well meaning group and that they genuinely want to learn and to improve. Lesson one is to make sure people know the tournament format, who they play and when they play and to make sure matches go off on schedule and that delays in matches are detected and addressed quickly. I already suggested that spreadsheets for payouts are created in advance so they can just enter the actuals and have the figures pop out a moment later. That will ensure they are free to pay attention to the tournament. Second is to ensure that someone is in the room at all times who is responsible and authorized for making rulings and resolving disputes. It seemed on a few occasions that this was simply not the case.
Overall, bumpy, but a pretty decent first attempt, and I would certainly return. I would expect improvement the second time around.
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