English Chess Forum

Neil Graham wrote:Why would a team consisting largely of senior players be named "CSC"?

Perhaps because their registered players include the Chief Operating Officer, and two other senior managers, of Chess in Schools and Communities.

As for the 4NCL engine room - is this manned by a host of arbiters, possibly those not part of the nexus, shovelling coal into a furnace to keep the 4NCL afloat?

Not just arbiters. A lot of other people, including our webmaster, results database manager and various other volunteers to my certain knowledge spent several hours fixing the various changes required to accommodate the name change.

Perhaps because their registered players include the Chief Operating Officer, and two other senior managers, of Chess in Schools and Communities.

The players voted for it - we had a debate - Mike made us aware of the charge. We are aware of the back office. It was actually a pleasure in my break from working to log-on - see how the team were performing - & cheer them on.

On the issue on numbers - move to Telford is an issue & perhaps combining that with smaller Division Three & Four (South) ought to have made 4NCL aware possibility of pairing issues with previous couple of years withdrawals. Especially junior teams.

Anyway CSC hope to be back up to three teams for the next round. The club is managed by Charlie Cooke he is not involved in CSC.

I'm not involved either though my day job is in education finance with a lot less time for chess than last year.

Nice report from Steve Burke here: http://www.4ncl.co.uk/download/reports1 ... sburke.pdf.

Including Div 4 too as an extra bonus......

Mr Burke has clearly taken seriously my earlier threats to fire him and not included my 13 move draw on Saturday as his star game. I still maintain it was very rich in content (well, that's what I told Number Two Son when he refused to go through the game with me afterwards. In retaliation I refused to have a look at his 10 move draw. Not that he actually asked me to do so, to be entirely fair.) After 40+ years of playing chess the position after move 5 was one that I have never seen either in theory or in practice, although no doubt one of the forumites can provide some historical precedent. Thrown as both Gary and I were on our own resources, and after many hours (well, almost three) of intensive intellectual effort, I think we were both glad to call it a day.

So, given that our chauffeur Alan Gentry tossed away a rook in a completely won rook and pawn ending, altogether a good day out. Still, at least we missed the snow.

I'm told that for the final day there is a triangular match...in one day? How on earth does this work as of the three teams there will be no one team to get a six game match with?!

Matthew Parry wrote:I'm told that for the final day there is a triangular match...in one day? How on earth does this work as of the three teams there will be no one team to get a six game match with?!

From the rules - "In the event of there being an odd number of teams in the final round a triangular will be arranged over one day only, and half normal match points will be awarded for the component three-board matches."

It could be significant for West is Best 2. They are in with a chance of promotion. If they were to win one match 3-0 and lose the other one 1-2, they'd get 1 match point, whereas 4/6 would normally get them 2 match points.

What a horrible idea.
(Not that there is a good answer of course but still ).

Not just saying this because our second team is involved, but the pairings for this weekend haven't been ideal.

I think the Div 4 format may need to be altered next year. The final weekend was a bit of a farce with everyone at the top having already played each other, three derbies on Sunday, and a match on the final day where we scored 4.5 but didn't win the match! It was clear that there were a lot of defaults including on the top board match! Maybe the time has come to limit the entry to 16 teams and run it like the other Divisions?

I think the Div 4 format may need to be altered next year.

I think springing that on the Division 4 teams which didn't make the top 16 with no prior notice would be a little unfair. Even if a limitation like that was desirable (which would need careful consideration), something like that would need at least a clear season's notice.

Mike, that is true, indeed. What I meant would have been for any changes to be made next year to be implemented the year after next! I do agree that it would be difficult though.

Mike Truran wrote:

I think the Div 4 format may need to be altered next year.

I think springing that on the Division 4 teams which didn't make the top 16 with no prior notice would be a little unfair. Even if a limitation like that was desirable (which would need careful consideration), something like that would need at least a clear season's notice.

Although, looking at the league, there were less than 16 teams that played more than half of the matches, so it may well be a natural decision if there are only 16 entries next year!

The principle of restricting the size of entry to the lowest division would be a huge philosophical change though. Div 3N has no hard limits and only happened to hit 16 by random chance.

Sounds like the biggest problem was all those teams dropping in/out! That'd really mess with any sort of swiss. Maybe the new venues (a bit kinder to southern teams) will help with that.

Perhaps what we need is some sort of algorithm for pairing decelerated Swisses.

I've just looked at extending the 4NCL pool algorithm: it turns out that you can also do a pool system for 18 teams (three groups of six) and for 20 teams (five groups of four), and it works.