Don wrote:Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
Registration fees were increased.
I'm speechless.
Even worse: people who are faithful participants are automatically upgraded to semi-professional.
Seems backwards. The more you come, the more you pay.
I think that the overall cost of the organization of such kind of tourneys is a lot greater than the "poor" registration fees. Suppose 10 commercial programs and some amateur, they can get about 6000 euros from registration fees. If you think about the % of that cost on the overall cost... i think that it would be more smart to reduce the cost to attract more partecipant, than to raise it. Maybe 100 euros for amateur and 200 for professional/commercial should be enough. How many people, with very strong software, doesn't partecipate because of the cost? That's my case... now i'm in doubt to partecipate or not. You don't loose a strong software, in my case, but maybe you loose an interesting one (Freccia would be based on genetical algoritms, rather than standard evaluation function).
So, it have no sense to discard the cost on the partecipant... sponsor should pay almost all!!! We do this in our italian championships: sponsor will pay the hotel and eating for all partecipant and we don't have registration fees.
This is just my opinion, of course (and excuse me for my bad english).