Having found that the last 4 long play matches in the
Briant Poulter (Surrey Schools) League were draws I started to think about how common drawn matches were. In this league, where individual games are not often drawn then for the six board matches the probability of a drawn match is (from Binomial Distribution) is 20/64, or just over 30%. This is reduced if the teams are not of equal strength, or if individual matches end up as draws. In the top division there was only 1 draw in 20 matches, perhaps indicating that the teams were not of equal ability. Drawn matches (and matches of players of similar ability) are more enjoyable and more likely to retain players interest for future fixtures. Obviously not all results reflect the closeness of a match, and vice-versa. We recently won a very close national schools match 6-0.
I continued to peruse the Surrey website and then came across the following
amazing league table:
Code: Select all
2014/15 Ellery Williams P W D L G Points
1 Dorking 3 0 3 0 6 1½
2 Guildford 3 0 3 0 6 1½
3 South Norwood 2 0 2 0 4 1
(These were 4 board matches)