London League Mega Clash

[Ian Thompson]

A much stronger London League which is more attractive to play in for the 'ordinary' chesser. That’s the legacy for the London League, anyway.

As I said its essentially harmless if also somewhat pointless

That's hasn't been the case in some other leagues where players have been paid to play. The effect has been clubs saying there's no point in playing because there's no chance of winning, and players saying they don't want to play against the paid players because the result's a foregone conclusion. The result is a smaller and less competitive league.

Of course, this is easier to say and do if you live in an area where you have a choice of leagues to play in than if you don't.

[Jonathan Bryant]

That's hasn't been the case in some other leagues where players have been paid to play. The effect has been clubs saying there's no point in playing because there's no chance of winning, and players saying they don't want to play against the paid players because the result's a foregone conclusion.

Oh yes, sure. I’ve read about that in the past (on here, for a start). But I was responding specifically with regard to the London League. I’d be amazed if there was ever a move to ban professional players in the London League. And if that ever were to happen I’m 100% certain it would fail.

Different story at the individual club level, mind.

[J T Melsom]

I don't know anything about the details of DK deliberately weakening one of their sides. If something similar happened in Bucks I would be unhappy, but I don't think it makes much sense to try and compare the two approaches to winning, when neither would seem to be in the spirit of things.

Does it really not matter to the majority of people in a team event whether they win or lose? I can see that provided you get a good game that might be enough for some, but are you saying the sense of competition is largely absent? Some captains can take things a little too seriously, and some individual team members might havean entirely detached perspective, but I've rarely been in a team where the result didn't matter.

[J T Melsom]

Ian

I may have contradicted myself by including the sentence you quote. My other posts tend towards the same misgivings that you have suggested.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Does it really not matter to the majority of people in a team event whether they win or lose?.

It matters in the sense that people would rather win than lose, would rather be promoted than relegated. But - in London at least - who wins the division, who goes up and who goes down, doesn’t define the experience for most. I’m quite sure of that.

So, no, it doesn’t matter. Not in the sense of their ever being a movement along the lines of "Well we won’t play in the league if it’s obvious one club is going to win" anyway.

[Joey Stewart]

I would imagine it is nice to be 200+ and, for once, have a game where you have nothing to lose - it gets tiresome sometimes having lots of 160-170s nipping at your heels and having to consistently beat them just to maintain your rating(even though they themselves are very competent players and dont go down easily)

[Nevil Chan]

But what about Drunken Knights deliberately fielded a weakened second team to give their third team a chance of not being relegated? That made the league less competitive too - and in an infinitely more dubious way.

I could put money into my chess club if I wanted to. I choose not to.

I couldn’t have one of my teams take a dive to try to save another.

Going out of your way to make your team stronger v going out of your way to make your team weaker. Which of these sounds more dubious to you?

Jonathan, would you care to elaborate on your strange submission?

[Jonathan Bryant]

Jonathan, would you care to elaborate on your strange submission?

The multiple double default match.

[Roger de Coverly]

The multiple double default match.

If it was this match, it was a decisive win for DK2

http://www.londonchess.org.uk/match_car ... n=20122013

Internal club matches can be a problem, since you should demonstrate to the rest of the league that you have enough players to justify two teams. With only eighteen players showing up, that could be regarded as a failure. It looks as if the match was set up on the basis that the top 9 by grade faced the remaining 9. Another plausible if unsatisfactory arrangement would have been that the top 12 faced the next 6.

If DK had really wanted to fiddle a win for DK3, a way to do it could have been to have 6 players in DK2 facing 12 players in DK3. But I'm not familiar with the detail of London League nomination and substitution rules .

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I think the point is that by only fielding 9 vs 9 for that league match (and possibly by moving players between teams), that allowed some of the players not fielded for DK2 to remain eligible for DK3 later in the season. In this league, when you have played 5 appearances for a higher team, you can no longer play for the lower one. The irony here is that DK3 actually got relegated after fielding a player who had appeared too many times for a higher team (IIRC), and being docked half a match point as a result. As Richmond benefited from this, I'll say no more, except to point out that Streatham & Brixton 1 went down with DK3.

[Roger de Coverly]

In this league, when you have played 5 appearances for a higher team, you can no longer play for the lower one.

Is there ring fencing/nomination as well? At the start of the season you are required to list 12 (or some lower number) players who won't be allowed to play in the second and third teams and another 12 who aren't allowed to play in the third team.

Other leagues have a different approach. If it's a regular feature that you have two or more teams from the same club in the same division, you have a rule, assuming six board teams, that four players are tied to their initial team and the other boards are floaters.

[Nevil Chan]

Jonathan, would you care to elaborate on your strange submission?

The multiple double default match.

I assume this is the match you are referring to: http://www.londonchess.org.uk/match_car ... n=20122013

Simple explanation here which has nothing to do with any 'match diving' nonsense. This fixture was at the start of 2012-13 season when the first three DK fixtures were internal matches over 12 boards. There were only 18 players available for DK2 v DK3 match so we made it a 9-board match instead, with the higher rated players in DK2 and the lower rated half in DK3. Not unsurprisingly, DK2 won by a convincing scoreline.

The notion that DK2 were deliberately weakened to help DK3 avoid relegation is somewhat lost on me!

[Jonathan Bryant]

There were only 18 players available for DK2 v DK3 match so we made it a 9-board match instead, with the higher rated players in DK2 and the lower rated half in DK3. Not unsurprisingly, DK2 won by a convincing scoreline.

Aside from what’s been said above, there’s the general point that another club coming to you with half a team wouldn’t be able to say 'could you default three boards to and loan us some of your players'.

If you say this wasn’t done deliberately for DK3’s benefit I’m happy to accept that. I’ll withdraw my statement and replace it with this one: the decision to play the match in that way had the effect of giving a benefit to DK3 that was not available to other clubs/teams.

[Dan Lambourne]

the decision to play the match in that way had the effect of giving a benefit to DK3 that was not available to other clubs/teams.

Its hard to look for last seasons rules and nominations, but the only benefits I could see:-

The games difference is smaller as you have less games. (Not relevant as games difference isn't a factor, at least not in this years rules)
DK3 might get penalised for fielding only 6 players. (Looking at the nominations for each team this year, if they were the same as last year, then DK2 would have been penalised, because DK3 wouldn't have wanted to give up their nominated players.)

[JustinHorton]

More importantly, Leyton Orient beat Peterborough last night and will meet either Preston or Rotherham in the final.