Running A Chess Tournament At Work

I recently managed a Chess tournament at work, the first one I've done, and it was an interesting experience. I put out the word, and got a fairly decent response. The players were of all skill levels from fairly new to people who have played for years.

We set up a round robin, and the top four played elimination rounds of four games each. Overall, I think everyone had a good time, and those who really put a good effort into it showed a lot of improvement. I saw some players go from very weak to a level that I enjoy playing against.

There's a few problems when running a tournament though. The biggest one I found was to keep people committed to the tournament all the way through. Some people realized they had no chance of winning, and wanted to drop out. Other people thought it would be fun but lost interest quickly.

That being the case, I think it's important to do a few things:

1. Have prizes, and an entry fee, even if small. Our first one was intended to be for fun and to gather interest in Chess, but having no reward may have contributed to the lack of interest. I'm thinking about doing a multi-level prize structure next time, where beginner players can have a lower entry fee, but only qualify for smaller prizes.
2. Have a fair system in place so that if someone drops out, it doesn't vastly affect certain players. My suggestion for this is to have one big all-play-all round robin, or groups of at least 8 to 10. That way, if someone drops out, it doesn't affect 1/3 of someone else's games.
3. Don't have elimination rounds. Stick with a round robin or swiss style tournament. When you start having to play four game matches, it can stretch things out for a long time.

I'd like to hear about workplace (or other similar setting) tournaments and how your experience was, and if you have any suggestions, so feel free to post a comment...