What happened to Hawaii Chess???

I've recently started a faculty post at the University of Hawaii in Hilo. After spending years playing competitive chess at the Denver Chess Club in Colorado, I was keen to keep playing after arriving here on the big island. 

I remember news posts on ChessBase raving about the Hawaii chess festival in march of 2015 and the blossoming of scholastic chess across the islands.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/hawaii-the-chess-vacation-of-a-lifetime

My coach Lawrence Trent even remarked that he had heard Hawaii was an excellent spot for chess! 

However, much to my dismay, since arriving in July, all I have been able to find are dead web links, inactive facebook groups, and unresponsive emails. Even the link to the Hawaii chess festival appears to be useless. What happened to these great events and the chess culture that seemed to be flourishing on these beautiful islands? The USCF website does show some intermittent tournament activity (albeit sparse), but nothing like what the web media had portrayed. Did anyone attend the Hawaii chess festival? Was there a terrible turnout? 

No responses from big island chess club or the Hawaii chess federation, what's the deal? Where are all the chess players in Hawaii?  

Isn't expense ubiquitous for all chess events? I suppose Oahu might be an expensive place to rent hotel space and I'm sure the flights to HNL for all of the European players, but I don't imagine Las Vegas or other major hotel venues are that much cheaper. Plus, Oahu is not all of Hawaii, surely holding a tournament or festival at venues on the big island wouldn't break the bank of a well-oiled chess club. Even if we assume an international event is too expensive, it doesn't explain the lack of active chess clubs across the islands. Chess itself is not that expensive. I just want to make sure I'm not missing some underground chess club founded by Tyler Durden before we make efforts to start up a new club in Hilo!

Years ago on business trips I would go to an open air cabana on Waikiki beach. It was free then and anyone was welcome. If the buildings are not free or safe anymore you will need to start something. 

Rental halls/rooms are never cheap for anyone or anywhere. Chess players are not big spenders 

That's the vibe I've been getting. There used to be  I'm happy to start a club at the university. Any tips for starting a chess-club are appreciated and encouraged. 

Go play at Waikeke

Fergussc I will give you something as I have time. A quick hint is to google “ How to start a chess club at a college or

 school. USCF very likely has some good materials 

"Where are all the chess players in Hawaii?"

 

On Oahu.  And even then, it's not that big.  On the Big Island I doubt you will find more than 10 players who are registered and active USCF members.  You will have to rely on online chess and chess engines to play games.  Better than nothing.  Or fly to Oahu for their tournaments.  I think inter-island flights aren't too bad.

I did see that I can contact USCF for a start-up packet. I appreciate any helpful tips you might have as well. It should be fun to get folks playing here in Hilo!

I’m here on Wakiki beach until Friday and open to playing anyone for blitz chess who’s here. 2100+ USCF.

Very nice! Know anyone on big island? I'm hoping to cultivate a club here in Hilo. Will keep you informed with how things go!

Where on Oahu are people playing?

Are there boards set up on waikiki beach and if so where???

If I were in Hawai'i, chess would be the last thing on my to-do list.

Unfortunately, chess is not big here as what you would expect.  It’s hard here because chess is not a priority.  The rise in living expenses makes it difficult for most of us to spend time on chess.  We don’t have this luxury as some of us have multiple jobs.  Chess used to be popular before.  We have had the Hawaii international from 1994-1996 in Oahu, the US Open in Kona, and the last big event was the event in 2015.  The reason why we don’t have these big events as much is due to sponsorships and funds.  It’s really a huge burden on the event organizer.  If there were enough funds and interests, then I’m sure holding an event this big wouldn’t be a problem.  I’m not sure about the Big Island, but we do have a good amount of chess players in Oahu.  I would say that they’re about 100-200 active scholastic players and 20-50 active adults.  I’m not sure about the count, but there should be at least 150-250 players that have been a member of USCF here that still lives in Hawaii.  There is a group called Hawaii Chess on FaceBook.  Maybe you can go there and keep up with any updates.  Unless you come to Honolulu or have a training partner nearby, playing online on chess.com is the only option to improve.  

It's sad to read this. I plan to retire to the big island near Hilo in September 2022 and I was hoping to find some decent chess there. Perhaps you will organize something via the University that will be open to players like me as well?

Get a hold of me when you get out here or if you come visit before then. Would love to play a casual game and/or grab a beer. At the moment I'm caught trying to get my research agenda going at the university (grant deadlines and publications etc) but will hopefully have something up and running by the time you move here! If you (or anyone else reading this) knows of any resources for getting a club going, please don't hesitate to share!

I have known universities to be supportive of chess clubs in the past, donating space to be used, so perhaps that university would be amenable? The USCF has some resources, I think, for helping people to establish clubs. I hope it works out, as I'd love to have a club be there when I arrive!

On page 12 of the February 2020 copy of Chess Life, there is a sidebar article about USCF’s updated “Guide to a Successful Chess Club.” There is a link to the PDF file as well. Here’s a link:

https://new.uschess.org/news/guide-successful-chess-club-updated/

In my experience, the hardest part of establishing and maintaining a local club is finding a venue. You may have a leg up there as you are associated with a University. Host routine meetings, both formal and informal and it will build over time. We play informally in a coffee house every Wednesday night, and host a formal tournament once a month. After three years, less than an hour’s drive from two major cities, and in the 2nd largest city in the state, we have regular attendance of about 20 at either event.

Use social media to get the word out, keep your tournament entry fees as low as you can and return as much as you can to the prize fund. You’ll need a venue for about ten hours to run a four round G45/d5 tournament.

Feel free to PM me for further pointers, I know how hard it can be and would love to help however I can,

 

Thanks a ton for this, mate! Very useful indeed. I planned on becoming a USCF affiliate so that should help us get the word out in addition to social media. I wonder if we need to file as a non-profit or anything like that to handle money? I just wonder how other clubs handle the money issues since I'll likely be donating some of my own capital to get the initial supplies. I would also like to solicit donations to get some chess sets and whatnot.

Thoughts? 

Money:

Some small clubs just use a cash box. We established ourselves as a non-profit organization, but not a charitable one (i.e. we don’t offer a tax deductable status for those who make donations). This enabled us to obtain a checking account which also get us a debit card. Useful for paying the USCF for submitting tournament results, memberships collected, purchasing equipment online etc. We operate as a cash only club in our front facing interactions with the players, collecting entry fees and returning prizes on the spot in cash. While this limits pre-registrations, it keeps costs down as accepting credit cards adds another layer of cost with the credit companies percentage fees on every transaction.

Expenses:

1 – Venue
2 – Insurance if the venue requires it (work with USCF here, as they have negotiated cheap event policies)
3 – Equipment: boards, clocks, score sheets, a laptop, a WiFi hotspot is really useful if the venue does not have WiFi (or you can add that service to your cell phone) and a printer all make life much easier.
4 – Advertising: we subscribe to Meetup which gets us a discussion group, event calendar and a means to get the word out. One of our officers also set up a Facebook site, which I don’t think costs anything. The USCF provides online Tournament Life Announcements (TLAs) for free, although the web interface to generate them is very clunky.

A bit more on equipment:

Starting out, ask players to bring their own. Most tournament players have a set and a clock. If not, they have at least sets, so focus on clocks first. Set up your entry and prize fund + expenses to earn you a small margin of profit, and build up your equipment over time. Sets and boards are relatively cheap; it is the clocks that will cost the most. Life is much easier for the TD if all of the players are using the same clock; we decided on the DGT North American (the blue one) which has lasted well, is relatively easy to set and meets USCF standards for time controls. They run about $40 each if you shop around. There are other threads here on Chess.com that speak to equipment – the “chess books and equipment” topic has an excellent thread on quality plastic sets. Your go-to vendors will be: Chesshouse, Rochester Chess, American Chess Equipment and Wholesale Chess. Contact each of them and let them know you are standing up a club, and they will offer bulk discounts on sets. Most of their owners monitor many of these threads.

Another hard part is TDs. To run a regular schedule of tournaments you will need a few of them because, strange as it sounds, people have lives outside of chess. Once you have established the USCF affiliate, you then have to associate each of those TDs with the club to allow them to run your tournaments and submit results. Our TDs are all members of the club and provide this service gratis, but I suppose this could be an additional cost.

Be patient and persistent, it does not happen overnight, but if you build it, they will come. Run consistent, fair and straightforward tournaments and you will build a clientele, and then can start to build momentum.

Again, feel free to send be a personal message via this site, and I’ll be happy to contact you directly.

Again, thanks a ton for this advice. Hilo (the town I live in) is pretty old school and quite small, I'm not holding my breath for a bunch of chess players to come out of the woodwork as soon as they catch wind of a new club, but I am hopeful that we can find the few local players that we have and build from there. At the moment, I'm torn whether to pursue building a club for the university via the students and making that open to the public (if that's even possible) or making the club for the city and for the big island and then trying to build interest with the students. I might just blast some emails and post some flyers/Facebook posts to set up a meeting and see who turns out, and then go from there. Thanks again for the quality info! I'll certainly be reaching out via PM in the future. Anyone else reading this thread, please feel free to provide any additional advice and/or resources!