World Amateur Championship Announced

Chicago, IL will be hosting the World Amateur Championships on March 19-25th. In many ways, it is similar to the annual US Open. It is a nine-round tournament stretched over seven days with a $20,000 min prize fund. The entry fee ($120) is very similar to the US Open ($125).

The main difference is that this is an Amateur championship, so only players rated 2000 FIDE or lower are allowed to play (I'm eligible since my FIDE is 1912). The winner gets an automatic 2200 FIDE rating and the FM title.

As with any FIDE championship it seems, there's a few things that are weird with this tournament.

1) Why is it only eligible to <2000 FIDE players, and the ultimate reward is the FM title? That would be like a US tournament for A-players and below, the winner getting the national master title! It seems like the Amateur championships should be open to anyone who is not a (FIDE) master.

2) $20,000 is not a very high prize fund, especially for the $120 EF. The announcement states that if the tournament has 600 players, it will bump prize fund up to $30,000, and 800 players, $40,000. So let's say $50 prize fund/ player, even though with 599 entries, it's closer to $33/player. This means that of the $120 minimum EF, less than half is going towards prizes. The minimum entry fee of another large tournament, the North American Open, is $243. Prizes are announced as $120,000 b/600 entries (with a $90,000 minimum), so of that $243 EF, $200 is going into prizes or 82.3%, nearly twice the amount of the World Amateur Championship (41.67%)

3) I spent six days in the 2009 US Open, I'd have to spend seven at the World Amateur Championship. The US Open has over a hundred years of history and in practically no other tournament in the country does a club player have the opportunity to play against masters or even international masters. Getting an even or positive score at the US Open is often considered a highlight of the club player's career. The World Amateur Championship holds no comparable mystique to it. It's just not worth spending seven days in a hotel for. I could see playing if I lived in the Chicago area, but I'm not going to travel over a thousand miles to play.