This highly successful monthly junior chess tournament is run by chess coaching business, Chess Power in Auckland, New Zealand. In early 2020 over-the-board chess was stopped dead in it’s tracks by COVID19.
Chess Power quickly pivoted to online delivery and restarted the Online Sarapu Cup using Tornelo. The results were instant!
Event #1 held on 5 April, 2020 – 76 players
Event #2 held on 19 April, 2020 – 109 players
Event #3 held on 10 May, 2020 – 91 players
The arbiter-led aspects of Tornelo allowed the organisers to provide excellent value to players through:
- Using real names
- Maintaining same rating profiles as offline events
- Posting prizes to winners
- Individual attention and entertainment through Zoom conferences
- Flexible system allowed lots of user support and minimal frustration from players learning new systems
Two amazing things to note:
- The organisers could charge the SAME entry fee as for OTB events
- MORE players took part onlinethan when it was Over the Board!
Chess Power used these events to grow their own database because every player who takes part shares an email and phone contact number with the organiser!