My Mt Buller report

[Garvinator]

The long awaited for personal opinion of my time at Mt Buller:

My evaluation of the Mt Buller events


Overall-

I don’t think the Mt Buller events were a success as an organiser.
I didn’t enjoy my time at Mt Buller. This was not mainly because of the location. My main difficulty was with dealing with all the politics. Also as second in charge, I was getting caught in the middle between George Howard's way of dealing with people and my own views, which were quite often in conflict, so I found myself having to give opinions that I personally didn’t agree with, but still wanted to try and give the appearance of unity.

Regarding Mercure Grand Chalet as sponsors, I can’t recommend them as a sponsor based on the treatment we as organisers received. It was really difficult trying to plan anything for certain when our financial arrangements ie bulletins and associated printing was changing everyday. To go back in two years to Mt Buller, it is essential that we have everything in writing, including the signature of someone from Accor Hotels in a higher management position than Roman.


Beginning stages-

George sent out an email to anyone he knew from the acf and other parties to see if anyone was interested in running the Mt Buller events. Kerry Stead and I answered this email and agreed to be part of the team. Andrew and Alex were then asked by George to also be part of the team. Karthick was retained as he had put a lot of work into the website from when David Cordover was main organiser (from my understanding).

As is known, George had to draft a proposal for consideration for the acf council in nine days. This would then become the template how the tournaments were designed and structured.

During the next couple of months, there were a lot of discussions about how to design the events, but unfortunately it was mainly left to George and I to try and design the events as Andrew, Alex and Kerry were indisposed for various reasons. As far as I know, George didn’t ask many people for their thoughts outside the immediate organising team. This was a major mistake.
At this stage, I was only new to the chess organising business and didn’t actually know what George was like, so I felt uncomfortable disagreeing with him. I now wish that I could have that time back as I would have suggested many more things, but I don’t think George would have agreed with my suggestions anyways.



Website and my laptop issues-

The website was our most major weakness. There is no point hiding from this fact, but it is important to isolate where the weaknesses were so it can be improved on in the future.
My laptop runs on windows 98 and wasn’t configured properly as I only got it days before leaving for Mt Buller. Drivers were still being installed the day before I left. I noticed when I got there that I couldn’t burn to cd and also I don’t have an A drive. Having a win98 operating system meant I couldn’t read USB sticks or use external A drives etc.

This meant my computer was pretty much useless for sending information for the website. The only other computer with internet access available the organising team had available was George's computer at our accommodation, but it also ran on win98. George's computer had an A drive though, so we could at least send information by floppy disk. One of the biggest issues though was that George's computer was located at our accommodation and everyone wanted to use it for various activities.

I was the one responsible for sending the information required to Karthick. I was quite often coming back from closing the playing venue at 9pm. If I could have sent sp files from my computer, then things would have been easy. But that wasn’t the case. When I got back to our accommodation, I would quite often find other people wanting to use the computer and already on it.
I felt uncomfortable asking people to get off the computer as I was always given the impression that the website wasn’t important, especially from George. I judged it more important to try and keep as good relations as I could with the people I was staying with, than upsetting them to try and send information to the website.

George actually said as much early on that the website wasn’t a priority. Quite frankly, if George could have gotten away with having no website, he would have taken this course of actions

I also quite often felt like I had difficulty getting sp files from Charles. Near the end of the days play, I would place the disk on Charles’s desk near his laptop so he could save the sp files at the end of the day after the next days draw had been done. Charles quite often told me to go away and not give him the disk till right near the end. After a couple of repeats of this situation, I just gave up and waited for Charles to ask for the disk, which sometimes didn’t occur at all and required me to ask him back at our accommodation.

Getting the sp files from the morning round was quite often impossible and I dreaded this task even more.

Combined with these issues, Andrew's laptop was only working intermittently for the first few days, so keeping information was extremely difficult. This made everything a slow process.

George never asked for outside help with entering games etc, so it was left to the organising team to enter as many games as possible, which we did our best, but didn’t enter many. I was actually told that George only wanted us to enter the 8 games that the dgt boards record automatically. We entered as many games as we could, but very simply we didn’t have enough people to enter all the games. The rest of the organising team didn’t ask for help as it was very clear from the main organiser that his attitude was to not ask for help.
I was afraid to ask for help in entering games as I would be going against the attitude of the main organiser.



Finances-

There has been much speculation as to how much money and in kind sponsorship we received over the course of the events. My understanding is that we were to receive $50000 in cash and another $50000 in in-kind sponsorship. The in-kind sponsorship was to cover such things as printing, free accommodation (I think) etc.

The prize money totaled close to $30000 for all events. Another $15000 or so went to paying the arbiters/organising team for their efforts. $2400 went to the Italian coaches for their time during the juniors.

We also had to pay for the shuttle buses during the juniors. This totaled about $2000

Over the course of the events, the printing sponsorship was basically withdrawn mid event by Roman. George had to pay for already done printing to the tune of $1300 out of the $30000 that was to be used for paying prizes etc. We then had to get our bulletins photocopied by the chalet and this meant we ranked a long last in the list of priorities of the chalet.


Aussie IM's-

When preparing the budget for the open, George repeatedly informed me that he was advised by Ian Rogers and others that offering decent prizes down to tenth was the way to go in terms of getting the Aussie IM's to play. I have since found out that Ian disputes this version of events. That being said, George was telling me he got the prize format layout from Ian Rogers. I am just repeating what George was telling me.

This unfortunately was an unsuccessful way to go, but by the time we realised it, it was too late to change the budget as it had already gone out in the brochures and was well known. Enough had been chopped and changed in the preceding weeks/months, so it was decided to go with what we had and to the best we could.

For the future, it would appear that the best approach for attracting the IM's to play is to have a lower prize fund and offer them conditions.

My personal view- I don’t really understand why IM's should be paid appearance money and sometimes have their accommodation paid for as well. I think offering appearance money guaranteed against prize money won is a better way to go, but not sure how this would be received.


Dealing with George-

Jenni and Libby have already mentioned that dealing with George and trying to negotiate with him was extremely difficult and frustrating. I have to concur with them. George's first answer would always be no and then more often than not I found that to get George to change is mind, you had to argue with him.

I know for a fact that I was not the only person in the organising/arbiting team to have this opinion as quite often we would disagree with George, but we couldn’t really be bothered arguing with him because of the general ill will it would cause. The Michael Lip incident is a case in point. Michael posts on here, so he can give his first hand account himself.

In the end, this lead to a case of the status quo remaining, as basically we just wanted to get to the end of the tournaments with as few an arguments as possible.
Unfortunately, this was not good policy as many things needed to be changed, but to change them meant having to disagree and argue with George.

I am sure Jenni can give a first hand account as to the cancellation of the junior barbeque party.

N.B. The reason I have mentioned Jenni and Michael in this section is that they had the first hand arguments with George. I only heard all versions afterwards.



Overseas players’ deals-

There were a lot of discussions and rumours regarding the deals for Kengis, D'Amore, Arlandi, Hecht and Sedina. Also I heard that some of the Australian titled players weren’t at all happy with the organising team because of the amount of money that was being spent on the overseas titled players.

For the record- the deals for the overseas players to play in the open was negotiated by Grollo Corporation, The Lidums Foundation and Accor Hotels. To my knowledge, we didn’t spend a cent during the open on the overseas players. The only money we spent on the overseas players was on Sedina and Arlandi for their coaching services during the juniors.

George attempted to arrange a prize fund that would attract the titled players and would reward them for playing well. Clearly most titled players are more concerned with how much they can get up front and not have to worry about how well they perform.



Game broadcasting-

The game broadcasting went well. There were technical issues on the first day which prevented transmission, but after these issues were solved, the broadcasting went well. Thanks goes to Gary Bekker for his assistance in setting up the cabling the night before the first day’s play of the open.



Chess chat Bulletin Board attitudes and the attitude of the organisers towards the bb-


I think it is the collective opinion of the organisers that Amiel Rosario alone cost us 15 or so entries. Our collective contempt for him is indescribable. When Kerry, George and I were in Mt Buller in August we spoke about how to handle the consistent garbage coming from Amiel and others on the bb. It was decided that I should be the only one to speak on there as I was the only regular poster and the only one who could be bothered posting at all.

If George’s direction was taken, the bb would not have been used at all as a source of information. I was the spokesperson because I was the only person who could be bothered to post at all. This is a decision I now regret. It was the collective decision that debating with trolls is a waste of time and so the others didn’t bother.

I was and still am disgusting by the criticism I was getting for decisions that weren’t even mine. I was saying ask George for a damn good reason, because most of the time I was passing on his unilateral decisions.

I couldn’t change his mind, so to get some change; people had to email him directly. George rarely read the bb himself, so complaining on there was no use.

For those who think my comments about Amiel are just a bit of interrant, they are not. I have not met Amiel and have no desire to. I would not shake his hand if I did meet him.


Double rounds-

I don’t think anyone believes that double rounds in a day are ideal, but they were forced on us in the juniors due to late notice of the Porsche rally. I would have rather seen a nine round juniors than have double rounds, but it was set as eleven rounds, so double days it was.

I believe double rounds in the future should be avoided like the plague.




I would like to thank the following people who were not part of the organising or arbiting teams during the open or juniors:

Matt Sonter, Phachara Wongwichit and Toshi Kimura for their selfless help in assisting me with my entire luggage at Tullamarine Airport. Without their help, my task of getting my entire luggage to check in would have almost been impossible.

Gary Bekker, for coming up the night before the first round of the open and helping me to set up the cabling for the internet broadcasting.

Libby Smith, for her wonderful brochure on activities at Mt Buller, a wonderful guide that should have had more air time.

To Nicki Behne-Smith and relatives/friends for their help with the bulletins during the juniors in collating them in order. Also for their general assistance.

Rowena Morris, Neil Anderson and Dianne Illingworth for their time operating the canteen. If I have missed anyone else who helped with the canteen, my apologies.

Tristam Cooke during the open for helping with entering games etc. Without your help, our task of entering games would have been much more difficult.

To Aaron Guthrie, again for help with the bulletins and entering games.

To Chris Tran, Tor Lattimore and Michael Lip, thank you for your help also in entering games. I would have liked more help, but circumstances outside my control prevented this. Your assistance will not be forgotten.

To Jenni Oliver who was such a good source of information about what the juniors would want and giving me a reality check on how things were going. Without her advice on occasion, especially near the end of the juniors, I don’t think I would be continuing in chess administration at all.


If I have forgotten anybody, please remind me and I will add them.

[Paul S]

I commend Garvin on his forthrightness. His post helps to explain some of the "behind the scenes" problems that would not have been apparent to BB viewers.

Will be interesting to see what others involved with Mt Buller have to say (eg Jenni, Libby, Kerry etc) about Garvin's post. Most of all, though, I would like to hear what George Howard (who seems to be a bit of an "invisible man" these days) has to say!

Anyway, three cheers for Garvin on his post and for having had to put up with (to a considerable extent) being the "meat in the sandwich" for the Mt Buller problems!

[Garvinator]

Most of all, though, I would like to hear what George Howard (who seems to be a bit of an "invisible man" these days) has to say!

you have more chance of getting a violence free Iraqi election than getting George to reply or give his report on Mt Buller on here.

[arosar]

I think it is the collective opinion of the organisers that Amiel Rosario alone cost us 15 or so entries.

G'morning from cold London town gray.

Now, I've just had a very nice trip to gay Paris and am in a really good mood. Planning to go on a red bus tour today actually.

Anyways, mate - if you really believe that I cost 15 entries, then you're the biggest idiot that ever befell Aussie chess. Didn't someone here call you a stupid monkey?

Oh, I hope George sues your pants off. You're one big joke.

AR

[arosar]

I believe double rounds in the future should be avoided like the plague.

In the context of a 90+30 [from 1] TC, you're remark is stupid. Having double rounds saves time and money. Geddit?? You gonna pay for all our costs due to an extended stay?

I reckon you should do us all a favour and lock yourself up in a mental asylum.

Matt Sonter, Phachara Wongwichit and Toshi Kimura for their selfless help in assisting me with my entire luggage at Tullamarine Airport. Without their help, my task of getting my entire luggage to check in would have almost been impossible.

Too supid to do a simple task as check-in?

Thank god for this revelation. I was gonna ask you to go on a world tour with me - you know, expand your horizons a bit with a little travel.

Gary Bekker, for coming up the night before the first round of the open and helping me to set up the cabling for the internet broadcasting.

Libby Smith, for her wonderful brochure on activities at Mt Buller, a wonderful guide that should have had more air time.

To Nicki Behne-Smith and relatives/friends for their help with the bulletins during the juniors in collating them in order. Also for their general assistance.

Rowena Morris, Neil Anderson and Dianne Illingworth for their time operating the canteen. If I have missed anyone else who helped with the canteen, my apologies.

Tristam Cooke during the open for helping with entering games etc. Without your help, our task of entering games would have been much more difficult.

To Aaron Guthrie, again for help with the bulletins and entering games.

To Chris Tran, Tor Lattimore and Michael Lip, thank you for your help also in entering games. I would have liked more help, but circumstances outside my control prevented this. Your assistance will not be forgotten.

To Jenni Oliver who was such a good source of information about what the juniors would want and giving me a reality check on how things were going. Without her advice on occasion, especially near the end of the juniors, I don’t think I would be continuing in chess administration at all.


If I have forgotten anybody, please remind me and I will add them.

Yeah...yeah...you watch too many awards shows.

Now sit down and shut up and leave us chess people alone.

AR

[eclectic]

In the context of a 90+30 [from 1] TC, you're remark is stupid. Having double rounds saves time and money. Geddit?? You gonna pay for all our costs due to an extended stay?

I reckon you should do us all a favour and lock yourself up in a mental asylum.

A brief digression (apologies to garvin gray)

Given that FIDE for title purposes allows only 2 games per day and no more than 12 hrs playing time per day I'd like to know how many title aspirants, title holders etc would put up with playing for possibly that length of time for days in succession at the expense of their nerves and health.

Perhaps two games per day is foisted on players by FIDE because of tournament organisers who have to pay expenses

I'd prefer a game each day myself and time to do other things ... (I thought you were a chess tourist Amiel who liked to do other things as well as play in tournaments )

Besides, if you stay somewhere for a decent length of time, you can usually negotiate discounts if you're astute enough.

Some think of the time and money they save.

Others think of the result they want.



Mark

[Garvinator]

In the context of a 90+30 [from 1] TC, you're remark is stupid. Having double rounds saves time and money. Geddit?? You gonna pay for all our costs due to an extended stay?

Hello Ameil, i love your work. Thanks for showing us your stupidity. You still dont seem to realise that it was the whole organising committee that had a gutful of your comments, not just me. That was the point of my comment you fool.

By the way, nice to see you took such a close interest in the open and junior that you failed to read the time control, it was 90 + 60 you moron, not 90 + 30. A few games went for six hours.

Too supid to do a simple task as check-in?

Thank god for this revelation. I was gonna ask you to go on a world tour with me - you know, expand your horizons a bit with a little travel.

I would rather go be an election worker in the Iraqi elections than spend a second talking or associating with you.

For the moderators, if arosar is going to keep sticking his nose into this possibly worthwhile thread, you might as well split it now into a non chess thread, because I am going to flamewar amiel with no regrets and it will get nasty as I wont stop. Just giving a fair warning to other posters too.

[Garvinator]

A brief digression (apologies to garvin gray)

Given that FIDE for title purposes allows only 2 games per day and no more than 12 hrs playing time per day I'd like to know how many title aspirants, title holders etc would put up with playing for possibly that length of time for days in succession at the expense of their nerves and health.

Perhaps two games per day is foisted on players by FIDE because of tournament organisers who have to pay expenses

I'd prefer a game each day myself and time to do other things ... (I thought you were a chess tourist Amiel who liked to do other things as well as play in tournaments )

Besides, if you stay somewhere for a decent length of time, you can usually negotiate discounts if you're astute enough.

Some think of the time and money they save.

Others think of the result they want.



Mark

Hello Mark,

the organisers also run Australian tournaments according to the accepted standards and acf by laws and the accepted standard is one game per day for national title events.

Two rounds per day at 90 + 60 or some equivalent time control would be massively unpopular and lead to an erosion of the quality of chess.

[arosar]

For the moderators, if arosar is going to keep sticking his nose into this possibly worthwhile thread, you might as well split it now into a non chess thread, because I am going to flamewar amiel with no regrets and it will get nasty as I wont stop. Just giving a fair warning to other posters too.

Flamewar? You wouldn't know how you incompetent Gwyneth Paltrow-wannabe.

Hey gray - there's a word for you mate. "Rat". That's what you are. If I were you, I'd ship meself off to Baghdad than be sticking around waiting for George and co to come around to your backstabbing.

AR

[Mischa]

Many people were against the idea of a tournament at Mt. Buller. Many of us thought it was a huge expense and inconvenience.

The venue was great, the tournament a successs...as far as chess tournaments go, but most importantly, people got on with the job as best they could under sometimes adverse conditions. And certainly, in the junior, parents got stuck in to help however they could to make it enjoyable for the kids.

An organisers nightmare perhaps, but nothing that can't be improved on, given hindsight.

I would just like to say that the juniors and their parents and some of the coaches, were just wonderful in the fact that they stopped complaining and just got on with the job of making it a successful and enjoyable time for the junior players.

I would probably attend a tournament at Mt. buller again.

[Duff McKagan]

Website and my laptop issues-

The website was our most major weakness. There is no point hiding from this fact, but it is important to isolate where the weaknesses were so it can be improved on in the future.
My laptop runs on windows 98 and wasn’t configured properly as I only got it days before leaving for Mt Buller. Drivers were still being installed the day before I left. I noticed when I got there that I couldn’t burn to cd and also I don’t have an A drive. Having a win98 operating system meant I couldn’t read USB sticks or use external A drives etc.

This meant my computer was pretty much useless for sending information for the website. The only other computer with internet access available the organising team had available was George's computer at our accommodation, but it also ran on win98. George's computer had an A drive though, so we could at least send information by floppy disk. One of the biggest issues though was that George's computer was located at our accommodation and everyone wanted to use it for various activities.

I was the one responsible for sending the information required to Karthick. I was quite often coming back from closing the playing venue at 9pm. If I could have sent sp files from my computer, then things would have been easy. But that wasn’t the case. When I got back to our accommodation, I would quite often find other people wanting to use the computer and already on it.
I felt uncomfortable asking people to get off the computer as I was always given the impression that the website wasn’t important, especially from George. I judged it more important to try and keep as good relations as I could with the people I was staying with, than upsetting them to try and send information to the website.

George actually said as much early on that the website wasn’t a priority. Quite frankly, if George could have gotten away with having no website, he would have taken this course of actions

I also quite often felt like I had difficulty getting sp files from Charles. Near the end of the days play, I would place the disk on Charles’s desk near his laptop so he could save the sp files at the end of the day after the next days draw had been done. Charles quite often told me to go away and not give him the disk till right near the end. After a couple of repeats of this situation, I just gave up and waited for Charles to ask for the disk, which sometimes didn’t occur at all and required me to ask him back at our accommodation.

Getting the sp files from the morning round was quite often impossible and I dreaded this task even more.

Combined with these issues, Andrew's laptop was only working intermittently for the first few days, so keeping information was extremely difficult. This made everything a slow process.

George never asked for outside help with entering games etc, so it was left to the organising team to enter as many games as possible, which we did our best, but didn’t enter many. I was actually told that George only wanted us to enter the 8 games that the dgt boards record automatically. We entered as many games as we could, but very simply we didn’t have enough people to enter all the games. The rest of the organising team didn’t ask for help as it was very clear from the main organiser that his attitude was to not ask for help.
I was afraid to ask for help in entering games as I would be going against the attitude of the main organiser.

Didn't you guys get paid, unlike the organisers in Adelaide? There are so many solutions to this... for a start www.imation.com/flash has win98 USB drivers... or could have used a parallel cable, or just asked someone else to borrow their computer, or borrow their operating system. In such an important event all of the games should be published, for the kids sake. I remember in 2002 the organisers had the bulletins for the days round ready to print by 7pm each night. They set up a press room and had their own computers plus a couple that they borrowed so some other parents and kids could have a turn at entering games. At the end of the day the main organisers would collect all of the games on their computer, standardise them and then print. Chessbase 7/8 make it easy to do this. I was going to let this pass by but after seeing all this bickering by everyone on these forums, which incidentally are not officially affiliated with the ACF as i remember, I've decided to have my 2 cents worth. The bottom line is if you are getting paid to do a job, lets do it right.

[Don_Harrison]

An insult to my intelligence.

[Garvinator]

Didn't you guys get paid, unlike the organisers in Adelaide? There are so many solutions to this... for a start www.imation.com/flash has win98 USB drivers... or could have used a parallel cable, or just asked someone else to borrow their computer, or borrow their operating system. In such an important event all of the games should be published, for the kids sake. I remember in 2002 the organisers had the bulletins for the days round ready to print by 7pm each night. They set up a press room and had their own computers plus a couple that they borrowed so some other parents and kids could have a turn at entering games. At the end of the day the main organisers would collect all of the games on their computer, standardise them and then print. Chessbase 7/8 make it easy to do this. I was going to let this pass by but after seeing all this bickering by everyone on these forums, which incidentally are not officially affiliated with the ACF as i remember, I've decided to have my 2 cents worth. The bottom line is if you are getting paid to do a job, lets do it right.

you obviously missed part of the point of my report. As soon as any of the other organisers asked anyone for help or proposed the idea of asking for help to George, he got offended and an argument started or you got the response of FO.

That is why we rarely asked for help. As I said, this attitude was disgusting, but again all I can say is email George at georgeshoward@hotmail.com.

Anyways, Mt Buller is over and the only thing I hope is learnt is that George is to never be in charge of a major tournament again, especially if we are back at mt buller in 2007.

[Cat]

The long awaited for personal opinion of my time at Mt Buller:

My evaluation of the Mt Buller events


Overall-

I don’t think the Mt Buller events were a success as an organiser.
I didn’t enjoy my time at Mt Buller. This was not mainly because of the location. My main difficulty was with dealing with all the politics. Also as second in charge, I was getting caught in the middle between George Howard's way of dealing with people and my own views, which were quite often in conflict, so I found myself having to give opinions that I personally didn’t agree with, but still wanted to try and give the appearance of unity.

Regarding Mercure Grand Chalet as sponsors, I can’t recommend them as a sponsor based on the treatment we as organisers received. It was really difficult trying to plan anything for certain when our financial arrangements ie bulletins and associated printing was changing everyday. To go back in two years to Mt Buller, it is essential that we have everything in writing, including the signature of someone from Accor Hotels in a higher management position than Roman.


Beginning stages-

George sent out an email to anyone he knew from the acf and other parties to see if anyone was interested in running the Mt Buller events. Kerry Stead and I answered this email and agreed to be part of the team. Andrew and Alex were then asked by George to also be part of the team. Karthick was retained as he had put a lot of work into the website from when David Cordover was main organiser (from my understanding).

As is known, George had to draft a proposal for consideration for the acf council in nine days. This would then become the template how the tournaments were designed and structured.

During the next couple of months, there were a lot of discussions about how to design the events, but unfortunately it was mainly left to George and I to try and design the events as Andrew, Alex and Kerry were indisposed for various reasons. As far as I know, George didn’t ask many people for their thoughts outside the immediate organising team. This was a major mistake.
At this stage, I was only new to the chess organising business and didn’t actually know what George was like, so I felt uncomfortable disagreeing with him. I now wish that I could have that time back as I would have suggested many more things, but I don’t think George would have agreed with my suggestions anyways.



Website and my laptop issues-

The website was our most major weakness. There is no point hiding from this fact, but it is important to isolate where the weaknesses were so it can be improved on in the future.
My laptop runs on windows 98 and wasn’t configured properly as I only got it days before leaving for Mt Buller. Drivers were still being installed the day before I left. I noticed when I got there that I couldn’t burn to cd and also I don’t have an A drive. Having a win98 operating system meant I couldn’t read USB sticks or use external A drives etc.

This meant my computer was pretty much useless for sending information for the website. The only other computer with internet access available the organising team had available was George's computer at our accommodation, but it also ran on win98. George's computer had an A drive though, so we could at least send information by floppy disk. One of the biggest issues though was that George's computer was located at our accommodation and everyone wanted to use it for various activities.

I was the one responsible for sending the information required to Karthick. I was quite often coming back from closing the playing venue at 9pm. If I could have sent sp files from my computer, then things would have been easy. But that wasn’t the case. When I got back to our accommodation, I would quite often find other people wanting to use the computer and already on it.
I felt uncomfortable asking people to get off the computer as I was always given the impression that the website wasn’t important, especially from George. I judged it more important to try and keep as good relations as I could with the people I was staying with, than upsetting them to try and send information to the website.

George actually said as much early on that the website wasn’t a priority. Quite frankly, if George could have gotten away with having no website, he would have taken this course of actions

I also quite often felt like I had difficulty getting sp files from Charles. Near the end of the days play, I would place the disk on Charles’s desk near his laptop so he could save the sp files at the end of the day after the next days draw had been done. Charles quite often told me to go away and not give him the disk till right near the end. After a couple of repeats of this situation, I just gave up and waited for Charles to ask for the disk, which sometimes didn’t occur at all and required me to ask him back at our accommodation.

Getting the sp files from the morning round was quite often impossible and I dreaded this task even more.

Combined with these issues, Andrew's laptop was only working intermittently for the first few days, so keeping information was extremely difficult. This made everything a slow process.

George never asked for outside help with entering games etc, so it was left to the organising team to enter as many games as possible, which we did our best, but didn’t enter many. I was actually told that George only wanted us to enter the 8 games that the dgt boards record automatically. We entered as many games as we could, but very simply we didn’t have enough people to enter all the games. The rest of the organising team didn’t ask for help as it was very clear from the main organiser that his attitude was to not ask for help.
I was afraid to ask for help in entering games as I would be going against the attitude of the main organiser.



Finances-

There has been much speculation as to how much money and in kind sponsorship we received over the course of the events. My understanding is that we were to receive $50000 in cash and another $50000 in in-kind sponsorship. The in-kind sponsorship was to cover such things as printing, free accommodation (I think) etc.

The prize money totaled close to $30000 for all events. Another $15000 or so went to paying the arbiters/organising team for their efforts. $2400 went to the Italian coaches for their time during the juniors.

We also had to pay for the shuttle buses during the juniors. This totaled about $2000

Over the course of the events, the printing sponsorship was basically withdrawn mid event by Roman. George had to pay for already done printing to the tune of $1300 out of the $30000 that was to be used for paying prizes etc. We then had to get our bulletins photocopied by the chalet and this meant we ranked a long last in the list of priorities of the chalet.


Aussie IM's-

When preparing the budget for the open, George repeatedly informed me that he was advised by Ian Rogers and others that offering decent prizes down to tenth was the way to go in terms of getting the Aussie IM's to play. I have since found out that Ian disputes this version of events. That being said, George was telling me he got the prize format layout from Ian Rogers. I am just repeating what George was telling me.

This unfortunately was an unsuccessful way to go, but by the time we realised it, it was too late to change the budget as it had already gone out in the brochures and was well known. Enough had been chopped and changed in the preceding weeks/months, so it was decided to go with what we had and to the best we could.

For the future, it would appear that the best approach for attracting the IM's to play is to have a lower prize fund and offer them conditions.

My personal view- I don’t really understand why IM's should be paid appearance money and sometimes have their accommodation paid for as well. I think offering appearance money guaranteed against prize money won is a better way to go, but not sure how this would be received.


Dealing with George-

Jenni and Libby have already mentioned that dealing with George and trying to negotiate with him was extremely difficult and frustrating. I have to concur with them. George's first answer would always be no and then more often than not I found that to get George to change is mind, you had to argue with him.

I know for a fact that I was not the only person in the organising/arbiting team to have this opinion as quite often we would disagree with George, but we couldn’t really be bothered arguing with him because of the general ill will it would cause. The Michael Lip incident is a case in point. Michael posts on here, so he can give his first hand account himself.

In the end, this lead to a case of the status quo remaining, as basically we just wanted to get to the end of the tournaments with as few an arguments as possible.
Unfortunately, this was not good policy as many things needed to be changed, but to change them meant having to disagree and argue with George.

I am sure Jenni can give a first hand account as to the cancellation of the junior barbeque party.

N.B. The reason I have mentioned Jenni and Michael in this section is that they had the first hand arguments with George. I only heard all versions afterwards.



Overseas players’ deals-

There were a lot of discussions and rumours regarding the deals for Kengis, D'Amore, Arlandi, Hecht and Sedina. Also I heard that some of the Australian titled players weren’t at all happy with the organising team because of the amount of money that was being spent on the overseas titled players.

For the record- the deals for the overseas players to play in the open was negotiated by Grollo Corporation, The Lidums Foundation and Accor Hotels. To my knowledge, we didn’t spend a cent during the open on the overseas players. The only money we spent on the overseas players was on Sedina and Arlandi for their coaching services during the juniors.

George attempted to arrange a prize fund that would attract the titled players and would reward them for playing well. Clearly most titled players are more concerned with how much they can get up front and not have to worry about how well they perform.



Game broadcasting-

The game broadcasting went well. There were technical issues on the first day which prevented transmission, but after these issues were solved, the broadcasting went well. Thanks goes to Gary Bekker for his assistance in setting up the cabling the night before the first day’s play of the open.



Chess chat Bulletin Board attitudes and the attitude of the organisers towards the bb-


I think it is the collective opinion of the organisers that Amiel Rosario alone cost us 15 or so entries. Our collective contempt for him is indescribable. When Kerry, George and I were in Mt Buller in August we spoke about how to handle the consistent garbage coming from Amiel and others on the bb. It was decided that I should be the only one to speak on there as I was the only regular poster and the only one who could be bothered posting at all.

If George’s direction was taken, the bb would not have been used at all as a source of information. I was the spokesperson because I was the only person who could be bothered to post at all. This is a decision I now regret. It was the collective decision that debating with trolls is a waste of time and so the others didn’t bother.

I was and still am disgusting by the criticism I was getting for decisions that weren’t even mine. I was saying ask George for a damn good reason, because most of the time I was passing on his unilateral decisions.

I couldn’t change his mind, so to get some change; people had to email him directly. George rarely read the bb himself, so complaining on there was no use.

For those who think my comments about Amiel are just a bit of interrant, they are not. I have not met Amiel and have no desire to. I would not shake his hand if I did meet him.


Double rounds-

I don’t think anyone believes that double rounds in a day are ideal, but they were forced on us in the juniors due to late notice of the Porsche rally. I would have rather seen a nine round juniors than have double rounds, but it was set as eleven rounds, so double days it was.

I believe double rounds in the future should be avoided like the plague.




I would like to thank the following people who were not part of the organising or arbiting teams during the open or juniors:

Matt Sonter, Phachara Wongwichit and Toshi Kimura for their selfless help in assisting me with my entire luggage at Tullamarine Airport. Without their help, my task of getting my entire luggage to check in would have almost been impossible.

Gary Bekker, for coming up the night before the first round of the open and helping me to set up the cabling for the internet broadcasting.

Libby Smith, for her wonderful brochure on activities at Mt Buller, a wonderful guide that should have had more air time.

To Nicki Behne-Smith and relatives/friends for their help with the bulletins during the juniors in collating them in order. Also for their general assistance.

Rowena Morris, Neil Anderson and Dianne Illingworth for their time operating the canteen. If I have missed anyone else who helped with the canteen, my apologies.

Tristam Cooke during the open for helping with entering games etc. Without your help, our task of entering games would have been much more difficult.

To Aaron Guthrie, again for help with the bulletins and entering games.

To Chris Tran, Tor Lattimore and Michael Lip, thank you for your help also in entering games. I would have liked more help, but circumstances outside my control prevented this. Your assistance will not be forgotten.

To Jenni Oliver who was such a good source of information about what the juniors would want and giving me a reality check on how things were going. Without her advice on occasion, especially near the end of the juniors, I don’t think I would be continuing in chess administration at all.


If I have forgotten anybody, please remind me and I will add them.

You have distinguished yourself Garvin, this must be the worse episode of cowardly treachery since Judas Iscariot. All your worse traits are on display to view, I doubt that anyone could ever work with you again after reading this. You have fallen on your own sword I'm afraid!

[Garvinator]

You have distinguished yourself Garvin, this must be the worse episode of cowardly treachery since Judas Iscariot. All your worse traits are on display to view, I doubt that anyone could ever work with you again after reading this. You have fallen on your own sword I'm afraid!

if that is that attitude other organisers want to take, so be it. I am not concerned if I dont ever have anything to do with another australian tournament. The politics I saw was a disgrace and no one we remain a fourth rate sport

I notice though that none of the other organisers there have actually disagreed with my analysis which I am sure they would have if I was completely wrong.

I am sure that both Libby and Jenni have read my post, maybe even a couple of times and would have disagreed with me if they disagreed with what i said