English Chess Forum

I reckon my Leicestershire colleagues would disagree with that!

Every time someone wanted to go out of the room e.g. to the toilet, I had to stand up to let them out - and I was playing board 2

Safe to say, we prefer Newcastle-under-Lyme Bridge club to Uttoxeter Library

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Any postings on here represent my personal views and should not be taken as representative of the Manchester Chess Federation

On the plus side it was warm and had wallpaper - not something you can say about Chorlton. Remember to thank DP for finding Uttoxeter library as he wouldn't play in a lovely village hall near Chesterfield.

We do too!

There is definately a fine line between a weak open county and a strong minor county but since most strong players really hate to lose (or be affiliated with a losing team) then the open seems to be condensing more and more to the absolute elite teams and everybody else is bailing out into the minor.

A few years ago, it would have been possible for all the counties in the country to have competed in this competition with a few omissions from their regular line up and even the modern grade boundaries are not especially restrictive - in fact even Kent, one of the top open teams, qualified for the minor counties last year but had the decency to withdraw.

I dont want a situation where people are blocked from playing chess either, but it does seem that the current system is allowing a few counties to dominate and the others not getting a look in. A slight reduction in average grading would go a way to narrowing this gap for the weaker teams, making the section a little more competitive and stopping it being treated as a plate competition for open level teams who dont quite make the cut.

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They thought he was dead.
They were dead wrong!

I just thought, this might be a better way of managing it, to have a plate in the open - it creates more fixtures so nobody is being shut out by grading restrictions, but should also make this section more competitive again as the top minor county teams could re enter this section with a chance of getting to win something, and frees up the 'real' minor counties to play a slightly more balanced competition amongst themselves.

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They thought he was dead.
They were dead wrong!