3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Details of upcoming UK events, please provide working links if possible.
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Jon Mahony
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3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by Jon Mahony » Tue Jun 24, 2014 10:23 am

Hi All,

The 3rd Leeds Chess Congress will take place Friday the 11th to Sunday the 13th of July 2014.

We were very pleased with the turn out last year, and this year we are hoping it will be the biggest yet!

The venue is ideal for Chess, with brilliant on site catering at a reasonable price.

Over £1,700 in prize money!

Capacity is limited, and we were very close to full last year, so get those entries in quick to avoid disappointment!

Further details can be found on the Congress Website:

http://www.leedschesscongress.org.uk

And here is a direct link to the entry form:

http://www.leedschesscongress.org.uk/Le ... ss2014.pdf
"When you see a good move, look for a better one!" - Lasker

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Michael Farthing
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Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by Michael Farthing » Tue Jun 24, 2014 2:15 pm

Out of interest, why do you go for 3 1/2 hours, Jon?

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Jon Mahony
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Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by Jon Mahony » Tue Jun 24, 2014 3:39 pm

Michael Farthing wrote:Out of interest, why do you go for 3 1/2 hours, Jon?
Just simply to keep round times a little shorter Michael, we reasoned people appreciate getting away a little earlier, especially on the Sunday night :)

We have however changed the time control this year, to the more common move 36, as that did come in for a surprising amount of flack in past years!
"When you see a good move, look for a better one!" - Lasker

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Michael Farthing
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Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by Michael Farthing » Tue Jun 24, 2014 3:45 pm

I can see it's a difficult call for organisers. I see congresses as an opportunity to play at a slower speed than can be had in evening matches, so I always prefer 4 hours. [But as we've discussed elsewhere my absence from Leeds will be purely because of distance].
Good luck with it.

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Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by Roger de Coverly » Tue Jun 24, 2014 3:59 pm

Jon Mahony wrote: We have however changed the time control this year, to the more common move 36, as that did come in for a surprising amount of flack in past years!
FIDE on Stewart Reuben's advice think it should always be move 40 whatever the rate of play. With a four hour session, you can do 40 in 100 plus 20. With three and a half, you can use 40 in 90 plus 15.

Isn't 42 a magic number in Yorkshire? I can remember the Fulprint York being something like 42 in 105 + 15, which I was told was one of the local league rates.

MartinCarpenter
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Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by MartinCarpenter » Tue Jun 24, 2014 4:06 pm

Yorkshire league, so very much the slow play rate that people are used to. I don't think the local leagues are at all consistent :)

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Jon Mahony
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Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by Jon Mahony » Wed Jun 25, 2014 10:27 am

I’m not going to win with this time control thing am I? :lol:

And yes, Leeds league the time control is move 35, I believe it’s 37 in Bradford, Calderdale has a different one and I think Sheffield is an hour for all moves (I could be wrong there, but it’s pretty short). Then there is the Yorkshire league which has congress time limits, is the time control move 42?
"When you see a good move, look for a better one!" - Lasker

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Michael Farthing
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Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by Michael Farthing » Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:21 am

Jon Mahony wrote:I’m not going to win with this time control thing am I? :lol:
Do you think we could manage to turn it into a 39 year dispute?

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Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by MartinCarpenter » Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:30 am

A good idea.... Lets try and create and impose a unified local league time control ;) 39 years would be quick going.
(Although I can't work out why Leeds/Bradford are 35/37 and not the normal 36. Just to be different to each other?!).

Unless my memory is confused - very possible with so many time limits I've played at! - yes its 42 in the Yorkshire league. I suspect that I've not ever repeated a local league time control.

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Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Jun 25, 2014 12:00 pm

MartinCarpenter wrote:A good idea.... Lets try and create and impose a unified local league time control ;) 39 years would be quick going.
It's not something the ECF or the BCF before it have ever risked. You could, in theory at least, have a tariff depending on the length of session, whether it was two and half hours, three hours, three and a half hours or four. Whether forty moves was mandated would depend on whether you let Stewart Reuben anywhere near the discussion.

In a manner of speaking, there used to be a tariff in the old adjudication days of not playing faster than 6 moves in 15 minutes. So that applied to short session evening leagues. Weekend play and adjournment leagues would use a 10 moves in 30 minutes tariff. So county games were 40 in 120 minutes and London league 30 in 90. International tournaments or those played to those move rates would use 40 in 150 minutes. Bank holiday tournaments would use the county rates. Until the invention of quickplay finishes, weekend events with adjudication would use a variation on the evening theme. So you got 48 in 120 and for the Sunday games, 54 in 135. 54 moves is a long way away, I think it was only just on the same side of the score sheet. It was also one of the earliest games where I decided to risk a normal defence to the Spanish. If you only have 30 moves to play with before an adjudication or adjournment, you cannot risk reducing the game to 12 moves by playing 18 moves of near theory, but 54 is a long way off.

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Ihor Lewyk
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Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by Ihor Lewyk » Wed Jun 25, 2014 12:39 pm

There were two proposals put forward at various AGMs to unify some of the local leagues time rates. The proposals were to suggest the same local league rates as Leeds (35 move in 1.15 with 15mins to finish) and were put forward to Calderdale (36 in 1.15 + 15) and Bradford (37 in 1.15 + 15)
The Bradford proposal was defeated and one of the arguments against was that the current 37 moves was closest to 2 minutes per move for the 75 mins time control.
I don't know what happened to the proposal in the Calderdale league.

42 moves adopted for the Yorkshire league and various congresses equates to 2.5 minutes per move on the first time control of 105 minutes.

MartinCarpenter
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Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by MartinCarpenter » Wed Jun 25, 2014 2:04 pm

I'd have thought 36 would have been the more obvious compromise candidate :) Having the time controls so subtly different - and people potentially playing in all three leagues at once - really does seem calculated to generate a steady trickle of losses on time. Oh well!

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Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Jun 25, 2014 2:38 pm

MartinCarpenter wrote: Having the time controls so subtly different - and people potentially playing in all three leagues at once - really does seem calculated to generate a steady trickle of losses on time. Oh well!
G/90 or G/(half the available session time) is another alternative. You can almost ignore the variability of the initial time control by pacing yourself to this. That doesn't stop players being at move 20 with less than five absolute minutes remaining, but in some circumstances the position can justify it.

The ECF and one or two Congresses have been trying out move rates like G/90 but with 10 or 15 second increments. You don't have to score, so the last "five" minutes still feels like a quickplay finish, but you have time to think every so often. Perhaps that's a bad strategy and you should use the time to figure out how to finish the game, trusting that you can beat the increment in actually executing it.

Graham Borrowdale

Re: 3rd Leeds Chess Congress 11th - 13th of July 2014

Post by Graham Borrowdale » Wed Jun 25, 2014 4:40 pm

I have always found that most time controls are based on a certain number of moves every 1/4 hr, so for 5 per 1/4 hr we have 40 in 120, for 6 per 1/4 hour we have 36 in 90 (then all in 15 or all in 30), or 42 in 105 (then all in 15), and for really fast play of 7 per 1/4 hr we have 35 in 75 (then all in 15), which seems to be common in evening leagues with 3 hour sessions. I have even played 30 in 60 (then all in 15) in Surrey League where 2 1/2 hour sessions were common, which works out at 7.5 moves per 1/4 hour. The British and Hastings used to play 40 in 2 1/2 hrs, which is just 4 moves per 1/4 hour, which seems very slow by today's standards. I don't think I could cope with time controls of 37 or 39 moves though. Many players apportion their time - so many moves per 1/4 hr - and that does not work with strange numbers like 37. Even 36 in 1 1/4 does not work.

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