Is anyone interested in sponsoring a chess tournament on ICC? (chessclub.com? )
ICC was founded back in 1991 (at that time it was known as ICS) -- long before google and and yahoo. It has hundreds of International Grandmasters and International master -- not to mention 30 thousand (and more) regular chess players who pay $60 a year membership fees.
Here is a list of active ICC members
http://www6.chessclub.com/activities/all_handles.phpThis is a list Grandmasters who play on ICC
http://www6.chessclub.com/help/GM-bio(the list of International masters is much larger)
A big chess tournament on ICC where the prize money is awarded in Nxt (must be enough money though to attack all the grandmasters) can attract media coverage OUTSIDE of crypto community.
I emailed Martin Grund (one of the founder of ICC) and asked him if ICC would hold such a tournament where prize money would be in Nxt (donated by Nxt community) and they will advertise the tournament to their members, and in the media.
Here is how that email exchange went:
Martin Grund via messagingengine.com
Feel free to reply to this email with your needs.
On Fri, Jan 31, 2014, at 03:28 PM, ICC [XXXXXX] wrote:
> Message sent to ICC user LateKnight from ICC user XXXX
> hi. I need to talk to you
XXXXX
[email protected]4:17 PM (9 hours ago)
to Martin
How about arranging a chess tournament on a large scale (could be $10,000 US dollar eqv)?
The Nxt (it's crypto currency) stakeholders are spending money on promoting it. It currently has $60 million dollars market cap
http://coinmarketcap.com/(see #5 Nxt)
Someone did $500 worth of tournament on FICS where they currency was paid with Nxt.
How about if I talk to the stakeholders to sponsor a tournament on ICC worth $10,000 ?
They provide the money (in Nxt). You arrange the tournament on ICC with enough publicity to attract some press and GMs and IMs
$10,000 is a lot of money in chess circles
Martin Grund via messagingengine.com
4:19 PM (9 hours ago)
to me
It could happen if the monies were put in escrow.
We would, in essence, show off their monetary systems capabilities in venues such as ours.
Martin Grund via messagingengine.com
6:27 PM (7 hours ago)
to me
In fact, we too would toss some money into the fray.
Marty
Martin Grund via messagingengine.com
6:30 PM (7 hours ago)
to me
If it matters, I am an officer of ICC, a founding owner, VP and treasurer.
the tournaments on FICS will take place in February.
Regarding the prizefund on ICC (which is the commercial version of FICS and based on their code):
We have to think about the best balance between prizefund and publicity.
10000$ are a nice pricefund for a chess tourney, but you won't get 20x participants compared to 500$ prizefund for an online tournament.
although you might get press cover on sites as chessvibes, since with 10k$ their will be many grandmasters participating.
. 
