Let’s Get Together: ACE Letter
January 9, 2008
Hi all! In this monthly update portion of Danny’s Corner I will be letting everyone in on new products, services, and ideas coming your way from American Chess Events. Perhaps even more importantly, I will be giving all of you a chance to post comments and ideas of your own! Improving chess on the whole at every level is still ACE’s main objective, and this is a chance for us to partner up and do our best to see that the best ideas always get put into action.
First off, I hope that everyone is enjoying the new and much more interactive AmericanChess.net, because that is where we will begin. As you have noticed, one of our new slogans at the top of the main page is “Chess at the Highest Level”, also posted is the phrase “The Future of Chess Excellence”. We have posted these headers and themes as slogans for what we feel our program represents. What ACE is challenging all of you to do is to help us create our best slogan yet! From now until the end of May we will be collecting ideas via email from all of you, and the winner of our “ACE Banner Contest”, will be announced in the first week of June. The Banner winner will be recognized in an ACE Newsletter and receive a $25 prize or Gift Card, the Banner will be posted on the MAIN page of our site, and the Banner will be adopted as one of American Chess Event’s slogans for years to come. By sending in your Banner suggestions to the above emails you are consenting to our use of it on our web site and/or any ACE products. For questions please email Daniel Rensch (danny@americanchess.net) and please send all Banner entries to danny@americanchess.net or Register@americanchess.net. Banner fill out forms will also be available at our tournaments.
As some of you may have noticed, Arizona has just been awarded an expansion team for the upcoming 2008 season of the U.S. Chess League (The Arizona Scorpions). Along with several other players, I will be participating in hopes of bringing home a Championship (or many) to Arizona. I am mentioning this as not only a heads up to all those Arizona followers who now have a team to root for, but also as a good lead into our next project: The Master Trek Grand Prix Cup!
The Grand Prix Cup series is an idea that we have had in the works and wanting to implement into our tournaments for sometime. I think we finally found the right formula and logistics to make it work. The basic idea is to create a “league” or “season” type feel to the Treks, thus giving each particular tournament more value. The Grand Prix Cup system is devised to recognize, acknowledge, and then honor those who made the most improvement and showed the most consistency over a given time period. For a full description of ACE’s GPC formula and seasons, please view the full article on the Grand Prix Cup Series.
While the Grand Prix Cup will be implemented starting immediately with the New Year, a more long term goal of ours is creating a tournament for all the Trekkers to call their own. The Copper State Chess Jam will be held in December of this year, and every year to follow. This will be a Championship tournament like none others before it. With raffle prizes, side events, and awards for the winners like none they have ever received at a chess tournament. Prizes that will certainly be worth fighting for! I can’t say too much here, or they might have me eliminated. And who are they you might ask, I don’t really know… But let’s just leave it at that because there will be much more to come on this issue.
Finally, I would just add that the “ACES WILD” section of the site is not complete yet, so if there are any problems accessing those links, please be patient. Again, I hope everyone who has ever experienced an ACE tournament will participate in helping us find the perfect ACE Banner. Please take this letter for exactly what its title reads, and let’s get together!