British Championship Congress 2017

[Barry Sandercock]

Thanks Thomas.

[Barry Sandercock]

Jones and McShane are first round winners.

[MartinCarpenter]

Well done Gawain

Scary tactical defence in that second play off game - he managed to baffle the commentator.....

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Yeah, Luke must have missed something there. I was convinced we were going to an Armageddon game. Good win by Gawain Jones. His second victory after winning in 2012 at North Shields.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Craig Hanley looks the big winner irrespective of the play-off result. 90% of prize money will be split among the tieing players, so Craig appears to collect £4275 as a main prize plus £2000 rating prize. The three top seeds can hardly complain, since their mutual games were all short draws.

They would do better to point to Hanley's relatively low TPR, and the fact that he only played one of them, and didn't beat a GM in the entire event, if they wanted to complain. But I think they will accept his finish as 1= as as something that can happen occasionally in a swiss. As for the prize money, they shouldn't complain - they did have starting conditions, after all.

And people did say reducing it to 9 rounds might produce this sort of thing......

[Mick Norris]

Prizewinners

Delighted that Andy Horton got an IM norm

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Is there a list of norms gained? Did Conor Murphy get an IM norm?

Given that the title of English Champion is shared and not settled by tie-break, it is good to see that Luke McShane and Craig Hanley can call themselves that (Howell has won this before). Though I am not sure how prestigious it is. I remember someone (Conquest or Arkell?) being really pleased to have that, though they had just missed out on the 'main' title. Is there a list anywhere of the English Champions (and when did that start)?

How did nine people tie for first in the U140 Championships? How many people were in that five-round tournament? I've never seen that big a tie for first before!

[David Robertson]

Delighted that Andy Horton got an IM norm

Me too. He's a lovely lad. Not knowing what was what, I did wonder at the bloodless draw today - that Andy was on a norm, and Nick Pert knew. If so, kudos to both

[Brendan O'Gorman]

Some pics: https://brendanogorman.smugmug.com/Ches ... nship-2017

[Andrew Zigmond]

How did nine people tie for first in the U140 Championships? How many people were in that five-round tournament? I've never seen that big a tie for first before!

As one of the participants (and nearly one of the joint winners) I can field that. Each round saw a disproportionate number of draws at the top end of the draw which meant that no one player surged ahead.

[Andrew Zigmond]

Should add my congratulations to Gawain Jones for becoming the 2017 champion and of course my thanks to the control team for working all those twelve hour unpaid days and making it all possible for the rest of us.

[Ian Thompson]

Craig Hanley looks the big winner irrespective of the play-off result. 90% of prize money will be split among the tieing players, so Craig appears to collect £4275 as a main prize plus £2000 rating prize.

It looks like players can only win either a place prize or a rating prize. Hanley is shown in the prizewinners list as sharing second (only). Emms is omitted from the players sharing 5th place, but does appear as winner of the 2451-2550 rating prize. Similarly, Gormally and Adair are shown as winners of rating prizes, but not amongst the players sharing a place prize for scoring 6 points.

[Alan Walton]

Delighted that Andy Horton got an IM norm

Me too. He's a lovely lad. Not knowing what was what, I did wonder at the bloodless draw today - that Andy was on a norm, and Nick Pert knew. If so, kudos to both

From what I have been told is that Andy has been getting some coaching off Nick over the past year through the John Robinson fund

[Mike Gunn]

"Where a player wins a place prize and a rating prize, the player will win whichever prize is of the higher value."

(From the rules on the website)

[IM Jack Rudd]

Murphy was half a point short of a norm, as was Jackson.