Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 12:49:31 08/30/01
Go up one level in this thread
On August 29, 2001 at 23:58:38, Bruce Moreland wrote: >Before defining the terms, let's decide why. > >The reason to have amateur and professional is to sock it to Chessbase on the >entry fees. > >The reason Chessbase should be socked is that they make a lot of money if they >win a title, they will probably usually win a title, and they are generally >already paying a lot of money for stuff anyway. > >The problem is to figure out a way that you can sock Chessbase without socking >some college student. If you sock the college student, the student will not >attend the tournament. > >European college student, of course. American college students can't go, >because the trip costs too much already anyway. > >Another problem is that you don't want to do the full-sock on someone who is >selling their thing but is just starting out. > >Another problem is what to do about Bob. He's not professional but he can >diddle with chess crap a lot, so his program is good. A related problem is what >to do about me, since I'm a pretty heavy duty guy even though I'm amateur. I >think we should get the amateur rate even though we are serious. Amateur >shouldn't mean "newbie", and Bob, even though he gets career points for doing >Crafty (I suspect), shouldn't be considered professional. > >A professional is someone who is established and who is selling chess programs >for real, as in significant money, significant business. Examples are >Chessbase, Rebel & co, Ossi's guys before he blew up, etc. > >Semi-professional is someone who's probably got a job or who is in college, but >is selling a little bit. I think this is anyone who is selling a program now, >although if you did the "Young Talents" thing a couple of years ago and are no >longer getting money you are probably not professional anymore. These are >people who if they were charged the professional rate for tournament entry fees, >would end up spending everything they made and probably more. > >Amateurs are people who aren't selling their programs. > >Attempts to set rules based upon percentage of income are bad, because dumb >things happen. You can have someone who is making a quarter million dollars per >year from a business or stocks or something, and making fifty thousand on a >chess program, and they are an amateur, and you have someone else who is >starving to death making fifteen thousand dollars per year on a program, nothing >on anything else, and they are a professional. > >Instead we have to do it based upon level of commercialism. The two extremes >are easy. The big programs are professional, and those who aren't selling and >who haven't sold are amateur. The harder ones are people like Vincent, Gerd >Isenberg, Rudolf Hubner, Gromit, the Goliath guy, and so forth. Some of these >guys have been sporadically kind of professional but they shouldn't end up >paying four times as much on entry fees for the rest of their lives if they stop >selling. > >bruce Here is my suggestion for a solution to the problem, that I made a long time ago: If you enter your program in the tournament, you can pay a minimal (or no) entry fee, but you can not use _any_ results in the tournament as part of a marketing strategy. You can't use the same name for your program in the event as you would use if you sold it. IE you can not derive _any_ commercial benefit from the event. If, on the other hand, you want to reference the event and your result in the event, then you will have to pay a "big" entry fee and then you can use the commercial name of your program in this event, and you can use any results or games you play as part of your marketing strategy. This lets "me" in for a cheap fee, and it would let Frans in for a cheap fee too, so long as he didn't enter "fritz" and so long as he never mentioned that he finished in XX place at the 2002 WMCCC event and beat Y and Z in the process. Then the commercial guys can help support the tournament if they are going to use it to support their marketing. Or else if they are not, they just enter and play like the rest of us. IE the ICCA could "charge" them for the right to use the results in a commercial marketing way, without killing those that don't want to.
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