8th Jessie Gilbert Celebration Tournament, 24-29 August

[Michael Flatt]

Jack,
Have got any dates for next year and will you continue with the English Seniors?

20-29 August. Whether we have the English Seniors next year as well is unclear.

I think that if you did the Seniors a second year you would attract a bigger entry. If annual events flit around between different locations the uncertainty over where it will be held causes it to lose popularity. I hope that you can continue with it.

With the Hertfordshire Tournament it has taken us three years to re-establish ourselves at our new venue.

PS
It was good to meet you in person at the J G Tournament.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

In theory, if the tournament had been double-round APA between just the six titled players, would that have been OK or not?

It would have been OK for IM norms, but not for GM norms, I think.

OK. I think I just about understand that... Looking at the 12-round result from Sreeves, are you saying that this would have qualified for an IM norm, but didn't because there are only 4 titled players out of the "12 players" (though wouldn't that be the 1/3 needed)? Still not sure I get that rule. Going back to the hypothetical 10-round APA between the 6 titled players, would Sreeves's performance (based on the results obtained in the actual tournament) of 5.5/10 not have been enough for an IM norm and what would he needed to have got?

i.e. was the nearly-IM norm from the 12 rounds (7.5/12) due to raising the rating of the lowest-rated player (in this case Gordon Scott at 2101) to the IM norm ceiling, or can you not do that in an APA (and can you only do it once, anyway)?

Hope that all makes some sort of sense.

[IM Jack Rudd]

The 12-round result from Sreeves meets all the criteria for an IM norm in itself - he played four IMs/GMs, he played four games against non-English opposition, he played 12 games against non-Scottish opposition, he played ten games against titled players, he got a 2450+ TPR. (The IM norm ceiling is not relevant because everybody in the tournament was rated 2050+, but you're right, he could have raised one opponent to 2050 if relevant.)

The bit where it falls down (and what we didn't realize when desperately trying to come up with a format that would work) is the rule that says that in a tournament where the pairings are pre-drawn, you have to be able to get a norm against the entire set of opponents for any norm against a subset of them to be valid. And with only four IM opponents in a 14-round tournament, that was impossible.

[Clément Sreeves]

Noting here that Bogdan Lalic won this event with 9/14 (though others could have gone past that score if all games were played):

http://www.ccfworld.com/Chess/Results/2 ... 0_JGCI.htm

Not sure what the story is behind the multiple games not played...

Clement Sreeves was playing and has just made his first post on this forum (welcome!).

Maybe he would be willing to say something about the event?

Hi Christopher!

The reason my final round match wasn't played was because my opponent was tired after a long event and it suited me too because I could get an earlier train back to Scotland.

I'm very happy with my performance, but still lots of work to be done since I missed quite a few good chances.