Division 3 2012-13

[MikeTasker]

Perhaps another way to do the tie break for a swiss tournament, is to sum the opponents
grades, or the average grade of the teams played. This seems to deal with one side playing stronger opponents.There is still the original question of what to do when some of the teams have withdrawn when calulating SOS.

[Neil Graham]

Surely not a play off for teams who have played each other during the season? That seems like a recipe for organisational trouble. Organising teams post the end of the season isn't easy. Head to head result and then game points if tied seems fine then.

The Birmingham League has successfully organised end of season playoffs for 116 years. According to someone who has done the numbers, there's no higher a default rate in those than there is in regular season league matches. This is, of course, impractical in the 4NCL - but I was talking about local league tie-breaks really.

However, I would be happy with a tie-break of the result of the head-to-head game(s) in the regular season.

"Successfully organising play-offs for 116 years" is a pretty challenging statement to make. Surely you can recall the hotly disputed 1902 play-off when the horse and cart transporting the South Birmingham team was startled by Birmingham's first motor car on a journey to Dudley and the cart toppled over causing extensive injuries to the visiting side who were forced to concede the match. Their appeal to the Match Committee proved unsuccessful. The Birmingham League Rules & Constitution are full of arcane references - for example all venues must be within 12 miles of MacDonalds in the City Centre whilst all club members must reside or work within 15 miles of their club's club-room. No sneaking Ivanchuk or Shirov in as guest players in Brum then!

[Ian Wallis]

Sean Hewitt wrote:
If the pairings were random then I would agree with you, but they are not. Pairings are seeded, based on the number of match points each team has. So the team that has the higher SOS has played, overall, a tougher bunch of opponents. To my mind, that is more meritorious than thrashing a number of weaker teams.

Andrew Bak wrote:
I agree with this entirely. Speaking as captain of a Div 3 North team, we were fully aware that we had played fixtures against Aigburth and Manchester who were towards the bottom of the table which meant that if we were in a tie on match points for the last promotion place, we would likely lose out due to SOS.

Thankfully we ended up playing a lot of the top teams, losing against the two that finished above us and beating all the others, knocking them out of the promotion spots so tiebreaks were only an issue for the final promotion spot.



Congratulations to Hackney, Cambridge University 2, Bradford DCA Knights A and Brown Jack on gaining promotion to div 2.

Can I just make a correction to Sean's posting 'Pairings are seeded, based on the number of match points each team has.' is not strictly true - check out the top five pairings from round eleven.
31 Hackney (18) v Sussex Smart Survivors 1 (14)
32 FCA Solutions 1 (13) v Bradford DCA Knights A (16)
33 Cambridge University 2 (16) v Cheddleton 2 (14)
34 Guildford 3 (13) v Anglian Avengers 2 (14)
35 Brown Jack (13) v The Rookies (14)

It cannot be seen from the pairings but a lot of the teams on 18 - 14 points had played each other as Andrew has already hinted at.
To be precise:
Hackney could only play Sussex SS from the teams on 14 or more points.
Bradford had played all on 14 or more
Cambridge could only play Cheddleton
Anglian Avengers could play The Rookies
The Rookies could play either Anglian Avengers or Cheddleton
Cheedleton could play either Cambridge or The Rookies

So why wasn't the top four pairings
31 Hackney (18) v Sussex Smart Survivors 1 (14)
32 FCA Solutions 1 (13) v Bradford DCA Knights A (16)
33 Cambridge University 2 (16) v Cheddleton 2 (14)
34 The Rookies (14) v Anglian Avengers 2 (14)
You may well ask?

This would have allowed almost all the top teams to have played each other, the board four pairing being a 'winner takes all' for the forth promotion place.

However that was not to be, due to an obscure rule (I say obscure because I wasn't aware of it and I have checked all the latest rules and e-mail communications [a hang-over from previous seasons perhaps?!]...), that I have been told was at the insistence of match captains, that no team will have the same 'colour' on all the matches of the final three day weekend. (Anglia Avengers 2 and The Rookies both had white on odd's in round 9 & 10)

Why colour preference should take precedence over match score points is beyond me, especially in a team event, where each team has the same number of each colour. The 80 point rule is there to allow flexibility on team selection should an individual player raise any objections and in a squad where this may not be possible then it is just a feature of the squad. The pairings should not be distorted to accommodate individual players feelings (if this is the case).

I will be raising this point with Mike Truran in the tiding up process to the league rules in an effort to prevent this inequity from being repeated in the future.

And no it is not 'sour grapes', I feel very strongly on this point and would support Sean's statement if it can be made so.
As I said at the beginning of my post, congratulations again to Hackney, Cambridge University 2, Bradford DCA Knights A and Brown Jack on gaining promotion to div 2.

Ian Wallis
Team Captain Anglian Avengers 2 & 3

[Andrew Bak]

Ian makes a fair point - I thought colours were very low on the list of criteria for pairings in team competitions.

I'm sure that some teams had 3 consecutive matches of the same colour in the recent Olympiad for example.

[Alex Holowczak]

Surely you can recall the hotly disputed 1902 play-off when the horse and cart transporting the South Birmingham team was startled by Birmingham's first motor car on a journey to Dudley and the cart toppled over causing extensive injuries to the visiting side who were forced to concede the match.

The Birmingham League Rules & Constitution are full of arcane references - for example all venues must be within 12 miles of MacDonalds in the City Centre whilst all club members must reside or work within 15 miles of their club's club-room. No sneaking Ivanchuk or Shirov in as guest players in Brum then!

Absolutely. MacDonalds is arguably a classier location than Stephenson Place, which is their actual point of reference. There seems to be a growing minority who want to get rid of that rule.

In any case, I'm not seeking to defend the Birmingham League's inanities. I do think that they've got a fair tie-break system, though!

[Neil Graham]

Surely you can recall the hotly disputed 1902 play-off when the horse and cart transporting the South Birmingham team was startled by Birmingham's first motor car on a journey to Dudley and the cart toppled over causing extensive injuries to the visiting side who were forced to concede the match.

The Birmingham League Rules & Constitution are full of arcane references - for example all venues must be within 12 miles of MacDonalds in the City Centre whilst all club members must reside or work within 15 miles of their club's club-room. No sneaking Ivanchuk or Shirov in as guest players in Brum then!

Absolutely. MacDonalds is arguably a classier location than Stephenson Place, which is their actual point of reference. There seems to be a growing minority who want to get rid of that rule.

In any case, I'm not seeking to defend the Birmingham League's inanities. I do think that they've got a fair tie-break system, though!

MacDonalds was the first thing found when googling Stephenson Place - clearly the hub of Central Birmingham from which all chess activity should be measured.

https://plus.google.com/107701188166656 ... otos?hl=en

[Kevin Thurlow]

"The Birmingham League Rules & Constitution are full of arcane references - for example all venues must be within 12 miles of MacDonalds in the City Centre whilst all club members must reside or work within 15 miles of their club's club-room. No sneaking Ivanchuk or Shirov in as guest players in Brum then!"

Unless they get a job in MacDonalds...