British Championships Tenders sought

[Stewart Reuben]

A very few people involved with the British Championships receive honoraria. Most receive only expenses. To suggest that people, who receive a per diem allowance for such as food, are receiving a fee, is nonsense.
As far as I know, no sponsorship has been obtained for the 2012 British Championships as yet. There is some philanthropy every year, but I have no idea whether more has been agreed.
There have been other years where the congress was run solely on income from the entry fees.

It is an excellent idea to put out various tasks to tender. It is inconceivable that a volunteer would take on the bulletin and move inputting. It is possible that a local person might do the website voluntarily.

The British Championship would be a very rewarding sponsorship. It generates a fair amount of publicity, for example about 400 column inchs in the press. But there is a huge problem getting close enough to potential sponsors to convince them of this.

[Lara Barnes]

No sponsors have come forward as yet but we have a professional fundraiser looking into it. If anyone really wants the top players to be at the event and has a few thousand pounds to spare then please get in touch.

Mr Reuben is quite correct in the number of column inches acheived by the event and we must not forget the millions of web hits. I will be asking our new Marketing Director to see what he can do as well.

Re: free website - if we can get any of the services 'pro-bono' at a decent standard then we can spend money on other things. The number of folk offering to input games free of charge has been surprising, but producing the bulletin is obviously much more than that, the equipment needed to produce the paper bulletin costs a fortune to run and the 'fee' is mostly used up by this.

I must publically thank the local players of Northumberland Chess Association and the North East for all the offers of support and help. We have volunteers to set up on the first day, control the weekenders and rapidplays, organise evening events and family activities, do press work and man the ECF stall amongst other things.

[Alex Holowczak]

The number of folk offering to input games free of charge has been surprising

Clearly the people who do this on a regular basis for various events are doing a good job then.

[Ian Thompson]

Clearly the people who do this on a regular basis for various events are doing a good job then.

Whoever entered my most recent 4NCL games scored 0/2 for accuracy.

[Roger de Coverly]

but producing the bulletin is obviously much more than that, the equipment needed to produce the paper bulletin costs a fortune to run and the 'fee' is mostly used up by this.

I think you need to ask whether a paper bulletin continues to be necessary. Whilst you get income from selling copies, I could imagine the production cost can be high, let alone all the effort needed to collate several pages every day.

[John Upham]

Clearly the people who do this on a regular basis for various events are doing a good job then.

Whoever entered my most recent 4NCL games scored 0/2 for accuracy.

I have a game in ChessBase which I have tried to get corrected:

[Event "BCF-chT3 0910 (4NCL)"]
[Site "England"]
[Date "2010.01.16"]
[Round "3"]
[White "Upham, John E"]
[Black "Deswarte, Ian"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B08"]
[WhiteElo "1658"]
[BlackElo "1900"]
[PlyCount "33"]
[EventDate "2009.10.24"]
[EventType "tourn"]
[EventRounds "11"]
[EventCountry "ENG"]
[Source "ChessBase"]
[SourceDate "2011.11.26"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. Be3 O-O 6. Qd2 Ng4 7. Bg5 h6 8. h3
Nxf2 9. Qxf2 hxg5 10. Nxg5 c5 11. Qh4 Re8 12. Bc4 e6 13. Qh7+ Kf8 14. Nxf7 Qe7
15. Rf1 Nd7 16. Nxd6+ Nf6 17. Rxf6+ 1-0

should have been recorded as

[Event "BCF-chT3 0910 (4NCL)"]
[Site "England"]
[Date "2010.01.16"]
[Round "3"]
[White "Upham, John E"]
[Black "Deswarte, Ian"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B08"]
[WhiteElo "1658"]
[BlackElo "1900"]
[PlyCount "33"]
[EventDate "2009.10.24"]
[EventType "tourn"]
[EventRounds "11"]
[EventCountry "ENG"]
[Source "ChessBase"]
[SourceDate "2011.11.26"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. Be3 O-O 6. Qd2 Ng4 7. Bg5 h6 8. h3
Nxf2 9. Qxf2 hxg5 10. Nxg5 c5 11. Qh4 Re8 12. Bc4 e6 13. Qh7+ Kf8 14. Nxf7 Qc7
15. Rf1 Nd7 16. Nxd6+ Nf6 17. Rxf6+ 1-0

Slightly irritating but c'est la vie!

[Stewart Reuben]

I too wonder about the value of a paper bulletin, although it is very nice. Both Gibraltar and Hastings have given them up as has the Olympiad. I can't remember whether the players were asked for their opinion about this, but I suspect not. The reasoning for the daily Championship bulletin used to be that, being away from home, it was difficult to access the web and find the earlier games. That is less true today.

It is unsurprising that many mistakes are made in transposing games. John Saunders has said it is astonishing how accurate the game scores were in the days before computers, photocopiers and even electric typewriters.
You write a book. proofread it, proof it again and again. The shortest time known to man is that between receiving your first copy of your book, opening it up and finding an error.

[Alex Holowczak]

Clearly the people who do this on a regular basis for various events are doing a good job then.

Whoever entered my most recent 4NCL games scored 0/2 for accuracy.

This is surprising, because I've had 0/2 e-mails asking for them to be corrected.

[Alex Holowczak]

Clearly the people who do this on a regular basis for various events are doing a good job then.

Whoever entered my most recent 4NCL games scored 0/2 for accuracy.

I have a game in ChessBase which I have tried to get corrected:

14. Nxf7 Qe7

which should have been recorded as

14. Nxf7 Qc7

Slightly irritating but c'est la vie!

But entirely reasonable. Errors involving the letter c and e are probably the most common errors, due to the handwriting of the person writing them. Especially if the game only lasts another move or three. It's not uncommon for me to play 1. e4 e5, and then discover 10 moves later that it was actually 1. e4 c5, except that the way the person writes the "c" is to have an exaggerated inward flick at the top of the c when writing in a hurry.

[Roger de Coverly]

The reasoning for the daily Championship bulletin used to be that, being away from home, it was difficult to access the web and find the earlier games. That is less true today.

It's parallel to the question of whether to have the recorded message reading out the pairings. Ten years ago, you would look for the person in the pub with a mobile phone switched to broadcast so as to listen to the pairings. These days if you don't know the pairings already through your portable connection or your accommodation's in house system, you look for someone with an iphone or similar smart phone to look them up on the website. Similarly with previous games, having them on the website is more valuable than printed bulletins.

[Ian Thompson]

Clearly the people who do this on a regular basis for various events are doing a good job then.

Whoever entered my most recent 4NCL games scored 0/2 for accuracy.

This is surprising, because I've had 0/2 e-mails asking for them to be corrected.

Two reasons:

1. I only checked that I'd accurately entered my games in my own database a couple of days ago, having been without ChessBase for almost 2 weeks while my computer was away for repair.
2. I can't be bothered reporting errors in game scores.

[Andrew Walker]

Out of interest, we're still getting one or two calls a week at the office from people who paid for last year's bulletin, but we haven't seen hide nor hair of it yet to send it to them. This may have some bearing on whether a 2012 bulletin is a priority?

[Alex Holowczak]

1. I only checked that I'd accurately entered my games in my own database a couple of days ago, having been without ChessBase for almost 2 weeks while my computer was away for repair.
2. I can't be bothered reporting errors in game scores.

1. is fair enough.
2. A games-inputter is human, and thus will make mistakes. He or she is probably only wrong with about 1% of the moves. In Division Three, I probably would have inputted 9,000-12,000 halfmoves over the course of a 4NCL weekend (say 150 games, 30-40 moves long), so if only about 20 of those are wrong, we're doing pretty well.

[Ian Thompson]

2. A games-inputter is human, and thus will make mistakes. He or she is probably only wrong with about 1% of the moves. In Division Three, I probably would have inputted 9,000-12,000 halfmoves over the course of a 4NCL weekend (say 150 games, 30-40 moves long), so if only about 20 of those are wrong, we're doing pretty well.

If 1% of moves are wrong, that would be a lot more than 20 out of 150 games wrong, unless you assume that most games with errors have numerous errors in them. 120000 half moves = 120 errors = 80% of games with errors in them if there is only ever 1 error per game.

If my own games are typical, I would suggest that the true error rate is about 25% of games, but I suppose that could vary significantly from player to player depending on their handwriting.

[John Upham]

Out of interest, we're still getting one or two calls a week at the office from people who paid for last year's bulletin, but we haven't seen hide nor hair of it yet to send it to them. This may have some bearing on whether a 2012 bulletin is a priority?

Andrew,

Is there a direct number we can ring to obtain the balance of the bulletins? I believe one of those chasing is a BCM colleague of mine.