harmy: I think that it was part of the idea that prizes weren't formatted. Maybe I want to create a tournament where the prize is a big french cheese (sent by boat).
Now, maybe there could a new free-style field for the prize, that could be displayed in the tournament list. For the moment, all we see is that the tournament is in bold, whether the prize is a Brain Rook or a Brain Bishop subscription.

nabla: or a big french cheese

nabla: the way it's set up now, you'd have to send that big french cheese to Fencer in advance so he could set the "prize has been provided" flag. And then he'd send it to the winner when the tournament was over.

Since the subject has been brought up I'd like to make a sugestion:
When buying a membership, besides the target player option have a tournament option, where you could buy a membership as a prize to a tournament (when selecting, only the open prized tournaments would show up on that list). The new membership would be added to the shopping cart and the association with the tournament made automatically (no intervention from Fencer). This would also allow for a separate field to be displayed on the tournament details page, with the prize that had been paid (weather or not it matched what was said on the tournament's description).
On the tournament page itself, while the prize hasn't been paid, a link to pay the prize could be visible. This could allow to buy a money prize, or a membership prize, or brains prize or whatever (the big french cheese option may be a bit hard to implement in this system, but the current system would still be available for any option, naturally).

pauloaguia: Hmm you're right ! And now that you make me realize that, I hope that I will be able resist the temptation to create a 21-pointer Cloning Gammon tournament with a big french cheese as prize

Your suggestion is probably close to the ideal way. Some programmation work, but definitely a bigger incentive to create a prize tournament. Too bad for the cheese !

nabla: Darn! I´ld like to win the cheese, for I loooooooove French Cheese and Cloning Backgammon :)

joshi tm: nabla can still set one up, it just won't me highlighted as a Prize Tourney.

nabla: this could even evolve into a system where people could contribute for one prize (so, instead of having someone pay for a maharajh prize in a tournament, you could have 10 different people pay for 1/10 of that prize).
But a simple automation on the current system would go a long way. The other day someone asked me how to provide the prize for a tournament. After my reply (send money to Fencer saying it's for tournament X) I got a reply that went like "Oh, thank you. Never mind then". I got the impression that, since it wasn't automatic, she just didn't want to go through with it anymore (which doesn't make much sense, since Fencer is the one having to do most of the manual work anyway).

joshi tm: Well, just have Fencer add some support for some cheesy prizes then