Not to put too fine a point on it - but who on earth would go to Guam to play a 10K Futures tournament? It would cost you more to get there than you'd get for winning the tournament. Or am I missing some source of cheap flights ....
Not to put too fine a point on it - but who on earth would go to Guam to play a 10K Futures tournament? It would cost you more to get there than you'd get for winning the tournament. Or am I missing some source of cheap flights ....
Well there's 2 schools of thought when it comes to getting those first magic points.
1. You go somewhere hard or expensive to get to. There will usually be a small qualifying draw. You will be almost guaranteed to be accepted. The field will be very mixed and with a fair wind you should get a MD win.
2. You go somewhere very cheap - Sharm/Antalya. Low cost flights and inclusive accommodation. Can be large Q draws to negotiate and often quite a few strong players in the draws looking to 'top up' their points. No great outlay if it doesn't work meaning more cash in the bank to have another go.
Ideally, players look to get their first points in a home 10K through qualifying. Used to the conditions. Easy to organise and probably familiar opponents. Having got a ranking, it is much easier then to go for the foreign ones because you can work out much further in advance how likely you are to get in, take advantage of earlier travel arrangements etc etc. That to my mind was the real advantage of all the home 10Ks we used to have a few years ago. I don't think it improved our players, although their rankings improved, because they were always playing each other, but it did get a whole cohort of juniors going in the adult game.
NB In answer to Spectator and The Optimist's comments re Matt's decisions to go to Guam, and the cost etc, my guess is that he's there as a coach, and just decided to play too.
He's the coach (assistant coach?) at the University of San Diego, I believe, and previously at Georgetown.
So I'm guessing he's here as coach with a couple of the US kids.
R1: (WC) David Barclay & Steven Goh (AUS/AUS) UNR (but a CH of 1024 & 711 respectively) vs (WC) Matthew Brooklyn & Andrew Dottino (USA) UNR (but Matt has a CH of 1182)
