I was made aware that there was a big discussion going on at this site with much speculation about the HB Global. While I try to stay away from some folks who live to criticize, I think it makes sense to say a couple of words about what really happened.
First of all, the HB Global was a fund-raising initiative, meant to raise money to help more kids learn chess and to give scholarship money to deserving chess-playing youngsters. It was not simply a way to promote adult chess or even professional chess, as many people would wish. What this meant is that the promoters wanted to see a return that would allow them to continue to build on their good work. At the same time, they had no desire to crush any existing tournament (hence the time of year it was done so as not to conflict with anyone else’s events).
Now, there are some obvious things to consider. One is that given a choice, I would have seen to it that the tournament was held on the East Coast (for obvious reasons) instead of holding it in remote Minnesota where the foundation is located. Second, I would have done it in the summer when kids were off and folks were more apt to take time off from work. I guess its easy to suppose that we sort of randomly decided when and where to do this after the fact. Third, it would have been safer not to risk such a large sum of money in the hope that chess players would show up in support of it. This I can agree with, but I wonder just how much worse a turn-out we would have gotten in that case since folks would have seen no compelling reason to make the trek up to Minnesota.
Now, some have speculated (in completely bizarre fashion) that the foundation might have “blown” all of its endowment of 2 million dollars! The fact is they lost a tenth of that spending it on the event. Because the idea did not work the way they wanted to (and it would only have worked if with the full support of chessplayers), they decided that the rest of the money wsa best spent elsewhere. Some have more reasonably suggested that it would have been better to spend the money on teachers, books, equipment and the like. That’s what they were doing before they decided to hold the event! It’s real simple folks: they wanted to find a way for the foundation to fund itself, they thought that this was it, and it didn’t work fast enough. I believe it still would have if they had waited it out and tweaked some things (location, time of year, prize fund). However, it was not my money to spend and the fact that chessplayers did not show in the right numbers (those who did, I am eternally grateful) was very discouraging (as are some of the comments I am reading here now.) It is well within the sponsor’s rights to decide what to do with their money; that money can be spent in many more ways than just chess. I am very saddened that that decision was made, but again, it’s not my money to spend.
Now, the fact that Bill Goichberg has raised his prizes across the board is interesting. The World Open prize fund looks strangely familiar. I wonder how many people will say to Bill that he is being dumb doing this (offering $500K in prizes with $300K guaranteed). Bill is a very astute businessman and I imagine he has made the best evaluation of this than anyone on this site (including me) could make. If he is ready to throw his hat in the ring (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars), I can guarantee that it was only after a very careful analysis of the final numbers. I’m sure the truth will only be known in time; my intuition is that the HB Global will get its due in time for raising the general level of prizes in the States (although some people will always try to find fault).
One fact that always bothers me is that there are a group of skeptics who believe that sponsors should always lose money, that chess is never going to be big so why even try. It’s impossible to disprove these folks and recent history (which includes Kasparov’s failed attempts here in the States) suggests that they are right. For these folks, it’s better that we sit right where we are, playing chess on-line and going to random Swisses forever. They may in the end be proven right, but I doubt that will stop people like myself from trying to truly promote this game we love.
As for me, the whole process was very tiring and took two years off my chess career. I will continue to promote chess in the best way I can, and hope that there are many others who will try to elevate our grand game, especially to the benefit of our young people. It’s a goal that I think is well worth it.
Have a wonderful holiday season everyone.
Maurice Ashley
Posted by: Maurice Ashley at December 10, 2005 22:51
This was my post:
Thank you Maurice for taking time to let us know some of the facts. Maurice is a great guy and he gave his best shot to make things happen. He has done many wonderful things for chess. Maurice is also my friend and the chess community needs more active people like him. There is no competition between us. We do different things and we will join force if our paths cross sometimes in the future.
Mig is correct in saying that there are some trolls out there spamming the same nonsense over and over again on various newsgroups. When someone say anything negative about people such as Kasparov, Kramnik, Fischer, Kosteniuk or me, there are usually fanatics viciously trying to defend their idols. It is embarrassing for me as well. I do not want anyone to defend me in that fashion. I would prefer people to more civil, tolerant and professional with their conducts. To be honest, I do not know how to stop it. I am sure Mig had to delete many of these posts and I had to do the same on my blog.
There are also others who like to criticize just about everything and everyone. I saw some of the nasty comments made about Hikaru on various forums just because he lost in the first round of the World Cup. I have news for those folks. Chess is not an easy game and we can all have bad days or bad tournaments. Give the kid a break. His game is flawed but he does play exciting chess and we should all appreciate his unique style. He will improve with age.
Maurice made many good points. The bottom line is he tried hard and this is a big loss for the entire chess community. This further proves that we all have to work together to help chess. Thanks Mig for bringing up many great topics. Happy Holidays to you and your family. Now go feed that cat of yours 🙂
Best wishes and Happy Holidays to all!
Susan Polgar
Thank you, Susan, for using your weblog to help those of us who are far removed from some of these events understand what really is going on. It’s so tempting to speculate and to criticize based on assumptions, half-truths, and misinformation. As for those chronic critics of efforts to promote chess, it is almost always easier to criticize someone else than to invest one’s energy in helping the effort towards a solution or success.
Great job Maurice!
On another note, and I know this is off-topic, but it looks like somebody is trying to auction Bobby Fischer’s confiscated stuff on eBay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Bobby-Fischers-chess-book-collection-and-other-items_W0QQitemZ8736084948QQcategoryZ2554QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
The mega-robbery of all of Fischer’s belongings at Bekins only worth US $15,000.00? And nobody placed a bet yet?
That is clearly a Jewish conspiracy. The chessbook, signed by his mother, is already worth millions of dollars.
Will they ever stop torturing poor Bobby?
We should note that Kasparov’s failures as mentioned by Mr. Ashley with PCA only failed due to his main sponsor (Intel) being upset over their main competitor (IBM) winning the 1997 man vs machine match and withdrawing their money due to that. It is difficult and sad that when a chess player’s sponsors lose people associate it with them losing somehow. One obvious question to ask is this: If you knew it would fail due to its exremely poor location (Minneapolis) and even more poorly chosen date why attach your name to it?
Why? Money! Money! Money! He gets paid a lot of money for his work. Money talks, chess players walk. Can you blame him?
Anatoly
Once again, thank you Maurice for your selfless efforts.
Unfortunately, the pathway of life (and business) is littered with the souls of the well intentioned. The free marketplace plays no favorites, as lessons of unlikely successes like the pet rock, and unlikely failures like the BetaMax video tape (vs. the inferior VHS) point out.
As Susan has pointed out time and again, gauging the market correctly is of paramount importance.
On a side note, has anyone ever looked into including chess into TV shows like Donald Trump’s or Martha Stewart’s Apprentice TV shows? It could be a somber, calculating, raw ability selection element. How including chess as one of the selection elements on Survivor? Sort of a way for the participants to show their raw abilities to one another and a means to establish a defacto intelligence pecking order.
Better yet, how about a Terminator Four sequel where Ahnold plays one game of reality chess versus the movie’s villain to determine the fate of mankind?
Maurice
thank you for your letter. However it does not answer any of my questions. but then you have no obligation to answer any of my questions.
where did the money get spent. The income from the chess players was very large. the people throwing the tournament should spend as little money as possible to hold down the total expenses.
I believe there should be no one on payroll based on a tournament. That means that a tournament can not afford to hire people to put on and direct a tournament from 2 years before the income finally comes in.
I think the loses were due more to the spending and not due to the number of people who showed up.
The chess players are paying for the prize fund. and the tournament director has the moral obligation to not spend that money on other things. that money is to be returned to the players in prizes. if the tournament director does not get that basic idea right from the beginning then it is doomed to failure.
you say the founding idea was to make a profit. that is the wrong place to start when doing a tournament. the place to start is to want to help out the chess players who are going to contribute so much money to the prize fund. any profits should be accidental and mostly because expenses were held to an absolute minimum.
None of this was done in this case.
2nd question.
if they only lost 10% or $200,000 of the $2,000,000 then what happened to the $1,800,000 that they claim they are broke and trying to raise money.
You so cleverly seem to avoid any discussion of that reality.