Format for 2006 Club Championship

It's that time of year again! This week brings the Business Meeting and the discussion on the format of the Club Championship. I have jotted down some notes to help guide the discussion. I'll bring copies of this to the meeting on Thursday @ 8PM. These are some of the options for the format that have been kicked around, but it is certainly not intended to be all inclusive. If you have another idea on how to run the tournament please put that idea on the table. I personally believe that the growth of the Club has made the current one-section format not practical given the length of time it would take to complete.

Time Control:	G/90 (last year) or something else Time Delay Clocks (note that if it is USCF Rated – delay is preference)
Prizes:	Trophies Cash and Plaque What places?
USCF Rated	Not (traditional) or Rated
Entry Fee:	$25 last yr
TD	Who wants to run it – make rulings / pairings, etc.
Section:	Options: 1. One Section Round Robin: The current traditional format. This format has 2 key advantages. First, everyone plays in the same section for the Championship, and second that everyone plays everyone else once. This format has become somewhat untenable though due to the growth of the Club. To accommodate 15 people in the tournament, we would be looking at the tournament running at least though the early part of April if not longer. Last year, a number of people did not participate in the tournament given the commitment that it entailed. With more members, this situation could potentially be worse. A key item of a Club Championship is that it should be inclusive of as many members as possible. 2. Multiple Section Round Robin This would help alleviate the problem of the length of the tournament, though comes at the cost that not everyone would be playing for the Club Championship. A way to solve this would be to have two sections, Open and U1800. The winner of the Open Section would be declared Club Champion, and the winner of the U1800 is the U1800 Champion. Everyone is eligible to enter the Open section, however, only those in the U1800 section are eligible to be U1800 Champion. Ratings would be used from the latest printed Supplement. 3. Swiss Format This would preserve the advantage of having everyone in the same section. Also, the tournament would be of a fixed length of time. However, this format has two main drawbacks. First, everyone would not be guaranteed to play everyone else, and second, bye weeks would become substantially more difficult to manage than the Round Robin type format.
Deposit:	Fee to discourage no shows How many no-shows determines forfeiture of deposit