And so starts the 31st season

[LawrenceCooper]

I do sometimes wonder what the going rate is for professional players (not expecting you to tell us, Lawrence!). In many fields (consultancy, legal advice, plumbing...) £300 per day would be good value. I guess it depends on how much the sponsors want to win (buy?) the league, since there is not really a financial business case to be made. I doubt we will be having FFP rules applied any time soon.

The players in my teams play for expenses only so I'm not the right captain to ask. Manx, Chessable, Cheddleton etc would be the ones in the know.

Is this new or subject to exceptions? I recall that Adams played in a recent season!

Yes, two seasons ago. That was very much the exception rather than the rule. I've been captain since 2016-17 and it's been expenses only in that time.

[LawrenceCooper]

I did deliberately exclude White Rose from my earlier list of title contenders, but the extent of their butchery by Wood Green Youth is still extraordinary. Willow looks likely to win and if memory serves, that would be two wins in two seasons for him against Rowson.

Being 5.5-0.5 up before settling for a 6-2 match win was beyond my wildest dreams.

15-year-old Can Durak has met all the requirements to make an IM title application. His norms came in the chessengland.com grandmaster festival in December 2023, Vandouevre & Budapest January 2024 and he also met the 2400 requirement during the the latter tournament. He is currently on 3.5/4 in this season's 4NCL.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Taking this to be the first division thread, here is my analysis of the state of play.

And it is fairly positive!

The pairing system has worked better than last year, with more matches between equally matched teams spread over the season. Only this last weekend consisted of seeded teams beating weaker teams (and then some: 12-0) as opposed to three weekends largely of mismatches as of last year. If there has to be one weekend of mismatches - which there does, if you want two of out of three matches in the final weekend where the seeds play each other, and likewise the non-seeds - then you probably should indeed have it in Telford, which surely is the venue captains dread the most and where one might therefore want to host a weekend with relatively little at stake.

So far the disappointment of the season has been White Rose 1 and the positive package has been Alba, even after last weekend's massacre of the non-seeds. This has been helped in some regard by Alba's own win over White Rose 1, which is still the one victory of a non-seed over a seed (that part has not worked out so well but what can you do? It has not all been massacres, one might add; Oxford, though having lost all their matches, have twice lost only 4.5-3.5 to two seeded teams. And to two others, alas ...)

We have still have a three way fight for the title: Wood Green on 8/8 (including a win over Shark), Manx and Sharks on 7/8 (the Sharks having beaten Manx). The race tightened significantly in round seven when Manx, not exactly noted for piling on the gamepoints against weaker teams in the way that Guildford did, suddenly showed awareness of the table and made 7.5-0.5 against Celtic Tigers whilst Wood Green laboured to 5-3 over White Rose 2.This keeps Manx in the race, in so far as a conceivable 5-3 win over Wood Green in round ten might suffice, given they have perhaps easier opposition in the other matches (both teams play White Rose but Manx plays White Rose 2 while Wood Green plays against Blackthorne). But the real beneficiary from a Manx victory over Wood Green in round ten would be the Sharks, just one gamepoint behind Wood Green as it stands and thus liable to overtake them in that scenario, should they carry on winning. Who, indeed, would be incentivised to stop them? Well, they are yet to play Wood Green 2 ...

How common are (realistic) three way races for the title, going into the last weekend? Naturally, very uncommon. I might stand to be corrected regarding last season, which I did not follow too closely, but I would go back to 2000/1 and 2002/3. Yes, here comes the history bit.

2000/1 is the closest analogy. Again there was one team on 8/8 (Beeson Gregory, formerly Invicta Home House, etc) and two on 7/8 (Slough and Wood Green, Slough having won their direct encounter but having lost to Beeson), and so again the team on 8/8 (Beeson) had yet to play against perhaps the strongest team of all in the final weekend (Wood Green). But here Beeson had substantial gamepoints lead too, over both teams. and could afford to (and did) lose 3-5 to Wood Green in the last round. This year Wood Green cannot plan on having that luxury, unless perhaps the Sharks slip up against their second team in the meantime (they play in round nine).

In 2002/3 again there were three teams in these familiar position: Wood Green on 8/8 (having beaten Barbican) with Guildford and Barbican on 7/8 (Barbican having beaten Guildford). Again Wood Green had enough gamepoints in the bag to be able to lose to Guildford (in the event, it was drawn, and Barbican had lost ground by losing in round nine, which as mentioned, is the round of which the Sharks will be very wary).

On the whole I would still back Wood Green to win, but that is partly precisely because of the Sharks v Wood Green 2 obstacle, in addition to their own chances of avoiding defeat against Manx.

The relegation battle seems to be between five teams. Oxford are doomed, but might still play a role in deciding the fate of others when they play Barnet (ninth), and the teams in tenth and eleventh (White Rose 2 and Celtic Tigers) are playing each other and either might still hope to overtake Barnet. Blackthorne are not entirely safe, since they are due to play both White Rose 2 and Celtic Tigers, but just one draw from both these matches would surely suffice. This all sounds quite close but since round nine features Oxford v Barnet and Blackthorne v Celtic, it is also possible that everything will be quite clear by the end of the next Saturday.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

You should write a history of the 4NCL! Or at least a retrospective. Was an opportunity missed with the 30th season? Will the league make it to 50 seasons? Which is the longest-running continuous national league? (I am going to guess the Bundesliga?)

[Jonathan Rogers]

I had a go after the first ten seasons - it was published in KINGPIN, and included Jonathan Parker's fabulous win over Jonathan Levitt in Cardiff 1997 and Lawrence Trent's finish v Desmond Tan in May 2003, which made its way into Edward Winter's hall of curiosities.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I will have to look those up. Thanks!