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Any other member ever had to play against someone from their own club in a league competition.

It happened to my club this season just gone, and again next season.

Brewood A and Brewood B will be in the Wolverhampton League Division 3 next season.

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It is a very common occurence

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In the Leeds Evening League, there are two dominant clubs, Rose Forgrove and Alwoodley. Either or both regularly have 3 teams in one division. The rules regarding differ between different leagues, which means that you have to ensure you know your own local rules very well!

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The North Devon League has the ultimate version of this: all the teams in the league are from the same club.

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I don't see a problem with this as long as:

1. Local derbies are scheduled as the first matches of the season
2. Each team in the same division has a different captain
3. Players cannot play for more than one team in the same division

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I captain our B team and we managed to beat our A team last night in the Durham A division the result gave us a excellent chance to stay up which would be a excellent achievment concidering for most matches we are giving away on average 40 grading points on every board.
The Durham rules are that you have 4 nominated players that can not play for any other team in the league.The matches are played with 5 boards which seems fair to me as we have such a small pool of players in the region.

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I am speaking here for myself and not the NCCU which i am now president of

Many years ago there was a huge controversy in the Oxford and District League when, due to games persistently being postponed, the two University sides in the top division ended up meeting in the last two games of the season. Which they were allowed to do, despite numerous assurances that this would not happen. Mercifully this didn't result in either of them winning the title.

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In the Birmingham League, Division One contains South Birmingham A, B and C. But for them losing and defaulting in the final two matches of their season, we could have had a South Birmingham D getting promoted to Division One next year.

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In the Thames Valley League, and doubtless in other leagues as well, teams from the same club in the same division have to play each other at the start of the season. In theory they have to be the first matches for each team but in practice the league committee sometimes allows some leeway.

In this TVL this dates back to a match in the 1972-73 season in which Richmond B, who needed the points to stay up, beat Richmond A, who didn't need the points. In fact it was all above board. The B team selected their players first, and the A team captain, finding that most of his regular players were unavailable, was reduced to picking the C team players. The league were naturally suspicious, though, and as a result changed the rules to what they are now.

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Next year there will almost certainly be three Drunken Knights teams in the 1st Division of the London League.

This leaves open the possibility of the same Drunken Knights player playing three times against another team.

Maybe one day we will have 11 Drunken Knights teams, and Wood Green, in Division 1.

Some years ago Athenaeum I won the Middlesex League, Athenaeum II came second, whilst Athenaeum III won the second division. Athenaeum II managed to win away(!) against Athenaeum I, iirc, whilst losing to them at home. Rather than have three Athenaeum teams in the first division, all three (highly motivated) captains resigned, and the club dropped one of its teams.

David, it can be a sign that your club is on the up, if it is in Division 1, yet not so good in Division 5.
I played in a match up like this back in mid the nineties, playing for the 2nd team managed a win on bd 2 in the first game and a draw on bd 1 in the return. You need only play the board and enjoy your games as I did back then.

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Some years back Coulsdon & Purley (as it was then) had 10 across in the 5 divisions of the Surrey league. We had 2 teams in each division and the season always started with a night when all of them played each other as appropriate. In addition I can also recall having 3 teams in the Croydon League bottom division over a decade back - and I recall it was a double round all play all! In the end we set up an internal league within the club as it got so big and now have 18 teams in that. This is likely to rise again next season when it becomes FIDE Rated. Most of the players in it are "internal" but there is 1 team from outside and a number of individual players from other clubs who play in it when they can.

Since the Coventry League has three divisions and all teams except one are from the four main clubs, it's pretty much impossible for this not to occur; the most extreme case I've know is a division of eight teams which included four from one club and two each from two others.



I've known things function perfectly well despite none of those conditions being met. Generally some matches between teams from the same club take place near to the start of the season, but with so many of them to schedule it's impossible for all of them to do so. Usually teams will have different captains, but occasionally a club can't find enough players willing to be captain, so one captain has to take on two or three teams; similarly, as far as possible each player will stay with the same team, but if one team is a player short on a particular night and another has a player spare, there's bound to be some swapping (there's a rule in place to prevent players on higher boards swapping between teams too often, but on lower boards there's almost complete freedom). In particular, if the two teams in a division only possess one car between them, the driver will usually find himself playing for whichever one has an away match! Of course this leaves open the possibility that a club will try to arrange results in order to benefit the team which has a chance of winning something - we just trust that no-one will, and thus far trusting each other has worked.

I doubt if there are many leagues that do not have two teams from the same club in the same division. I doubt if there is a chess league anywhere that does not permit a club to enter more than one team, we accept it as normal, but is it right? I'm sure Manchester United could enter a highly competitive team in the Championship, and I'm sure they'd love to do so, but they aren't allowed to.

When I first played league chess there were many one-team clubs - office/works teams, social clubs and the like. They usually had one or two keen players who persuaded enough of their mates to join them (people who would never in a million years join a chess club). But if another keen player came along he could play for one of the larger clubs in our division, and also for other teams in that club. We were forbidden to play for anyone else. If it came to a crucial promotion or relegation clash, you could guarantee that the opposition would turn up with a high-graded player or two who didn't play much these days, so were eligible to turn out for any team at the club if needed. And so we gradually declined. When we ceased to be viable three of us joined other clubs, and the rest were lost to chess. There are now two such clubs surviving in our league.