The new MACA project: Spiegel Cup Series is running already for 3 years. So it is time to analyze some results.
Here are some tables related to the number of participants in each SCS season.
# of players by # of Affiliates sorted by Total # of players:
The same report sorted by Average # of players:
Affiliates and TDs set different Entry Fee. You may think that it may affect the number of participants. Yes, it does, but in the opposite way! The larger is EF, the more players come to the tournament:
Every joke has a grain of … joke. The main reason is certainly the increased popularity of chess tournaments for kids in the last two years.
There were 5 tournaments on Saturday and 15 on Sunday. Sunday is more attractive than Saturday for chess among kids:
And the last thing I analyzed is: there are affiliates with tens and hundreds of tournaments (BCC has thousands), others have a few tournaments only. So I compared “experience” affiliates vs. medium experience vs. recently created. There is no significant correlation between experience and the number of participants, new affiliates are slightly more attractive to players, but not significantly more.
I'm looking forward for the next successful year of scholastic chess in MA, including SCS tournaments.