English Chess Forum

I just wanted to say really well done to the arbiters and game inputters for their Sterling efforts in getting things online ago fast this weekend - the league management has give from strength to strength!

Ditto!

Ditto from me too. As a free service, it is extraordinary and I am still adapting to its reliability. On Sunday I left before the first team match had finished (well, two games did finish just before the seventh hour!) and so I asked the first team captain to text me the results. Normal procedure? Maybe not in the future. I actually first got confirmation of our victory from the website, shortly after the playing session finished.

I do think, however, that things could be improved by consulting captains about the appropriate live games to be shown. On Sunday, the live games did not show Barbican v Cheddleton, even though it was likely a match between two of the top five teams (the only such match in the weekend) and it has always ended very close in the past. Nor did they include the sensational e2e4 v Wood Green match (admittedly the result there as a touch unpredictable but in fact it only ended 5-3 to Wood Green last year too, and it was at least a more obvious pick than Wood Green's match v BCM Dragons, which had been shown live on the Saturday). I think that very few captains would have agreed with most or even any of the choices that were made for the live matches.

Jonathan Rogers wrote: I do think, however, that things could be improved by consulting captains about the appropriate live games to be shown.

Wouldn't an online poll of the audience, rather than the team captains make more sense?

??

The decision has to be made in advance, and they know how to contact the captains ...

Jonathan Rogers wrote:??

The decision has to be made in advance, and they know how to contact the captains ...

The poll could be run in advance (as all the team pairings for the first 7 rounds in division 1 are known in advance). I see no reason why a poll couldn't be run here (say) to see which of the pairings a prospective audience would want to see. Of course, the prospective audience may be too small to have any meaningful result.

Why would captains want to have a say in which matches were on live boards?

And when can we expect to see all matches on live boards, thus avoiding the need to make such a decision? I accept that all matches on live boards is not practicable now, but will it ever be? Do the 4NCL budget for future increases in live boards? Adding (say) one extra board per year? Or is the bottleneck the need to have someone setting it all up and making it run properly?

EDIT: I'm going to try and set up a poll...

OK, polls are here:

Round 3: http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4960
Round 4: http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4961

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:And when can we expect to see all matches on live boards, thus avoiding the need to make such a decision? I accept that all matches on live boards is not practicable now, but will it ever be?

I would need to provide extra hosting for that

The amount of boards and the IT resource needed on site on the day would probably make this impossible even if the cost is ignored

Thanks Chris. Of course if a significant number of people offer their views, then fine.