Philidor wins Hampshire Championship

[Kevin Thurlow]

No, not that one.

More details will appear on Hampshire CA website. I was arbiter. There were surprisingly few problems. There was a bit of a panic trying to run a 6-round Swiss for 8 players, but we got away with it. (For the uninitiated, you can suddenly find that the draw is impossible near the end. Luckily somebody took a bye at a crucial point and rescued the situation.) Hotel was great, staff were great, players caused very few problems, and there were only a couple of very minor disputes, which resolved amicably. The Hampshire team worked hard to keep the tournament running smoothly.

It was good to see a few players there who qualified as seniors some time ago, and some scary young juniors who played well and behaved well, and even the parents behaved too!

"Hampshire Chess Association 2022 Congress.
(Fareham, 4-6 Nov, 2022)

We have a new county champion. Iwan Cave (Chandlers Ford) won the Silver Rook on tie-break from Roland Bezuidenhout (Fareham) - it was a very close decision.

The list of prize-winners is below.
A full report with details of each round will be available soonish,

Open
1st (4½ pts) Oliver Gill (Leeds)
2nd= (4 pts) Iwan Cave (Chandlers Ford) and Roland Bezuidenhout (Fareham)
Under-2015 Grading Prize (2½ pts) Paul Northcott (Emsworth), (Len Walters Board)

8 started, 8 finished.

Major
1st (5½ pts) Patrik Baron (Southampton)
2nd (5 pts) David Collyer (So’ton Uni)
3rd (4½ pts) James Schumacher (Bournemouth)
Under-1750 Grading Prize (3½ pts) – Philip Maul (Reading), Joseph Morrison (Surbiton) and Jack Wicken (Fareham)
The Peter Marshall Cup was not awarded as it disappeared during the Covid pandemic….

41 started, 39 finished.

Minor
1st (5½ pts) Tom Philidor (Fareham) winning the Parsons Cup
2nd (5 pts) Oliver Ward (So’ton Uni)
3rd = (4½ pts) Freddie Christou-Moore (Eton College) and Ayan Pradhan (Reading)
Under-1450 Grading Prize = (4 pts) Chris Budden (Fareham), Dave Williams (IoW),
Peter Eales (Chandlers Ford) and Oleksii Pustyntsev (Hampshire)

38 started, 34 finished.

Ladies Prize - was won by Sofia Syed (Fareham)

The John Dunleavy Memorial Prize for the best game in any section will be announced later,
on the Hampshire website – www.HampshireChess.co.uk

John Wheeler (Sec, Hampshire CA) 7/Nov/2022"

[John Upham]

It is good to see that this event was organised for a 4NCL weekend.

Top quality planning!

[Kevin Thurlow]

"It is good to see that this event was organised for a 4NCL weekend.

Top quality planning!"

I have already told you that the event was planned for its normal weekend, surely not too difficult to understand?

4NCL chose to clash with the Hampshire event, which was probably accidental, but assuredly not HCA's fault.

[John Upham]

"It is good to see that this event was organised for a 4NCL weekend.

Top quality planning!"

I have already told you that the event was planned for its normal weekend, surely not too difficult to understand?

4NCL chose to clash with the Hampshire event, which was probably accidental, but assuredly not HCA's fault.

A conversation could have taken place along the lines of

"Dear 4NCL, you may not have realised that you have scheduled your weekend on the weekend of the Jesuit Plot which HCA uses for its annual congress. Would you like to move or shall we?"

I moved the Hampshire Junior Open when the South of England Junior was moved to "our" weekend. I didn't take it personally: just got on with it.

However, I agree that the onus was on 4NCL not to clash in the first place. Maybe it was not possible?

The modern phrase appears to be "It is what it is"

[IM Jack Rudd]

The trick with running a 6-round Swiss with 8 players is to start by splitting it into two pools, which you run as all-play-alls. You then combine them all and run it as a Swiss from round 4 onwards.

[Kevin Thurlow]

Thanks Jack - interesting idea. In the last round, I put the top four players in, and they had all played each other, but the other four slotted in with only one massive float. We did have a fallback plan after useful advice from David Sedgwick.

John - Hampshire Congress typically does not consider 4NCL a rival, so why discuss it? Especially now, it is very difficult to book hotels for chess events, as they are eager to book as many post-covid weddings as possible. If you are booking months ahead, it is inevitable there are clashes. I would guess that Junior events are not usually in hotels? I was only the arbiter, nobody in Hampshire was upset bythe clash, I was just mildly irritated by the unjustified, pointless, repeated criticism. So no harm done.

It is not the same scenario as when you announce an event, then another organiser announces one in the same town on the same weekend (with bigger prize-money)...

[Chris Goodall]

The trick with running a 6-round Swiss with 8 players is to start by splitting it into two pools, which you run as all-play-alls. You then combine them all and run it as a Swiss from round 4 onwards.

Interesting, I'm now wondering what the fairest "missing" pairing at the end of the tournament would be. 1v5, 2v6, 3v7, 4v8 means that 4 would really love to sandbag and become 5. 1v8, 2v7, 3v6, 4v5 seems better as, although everyone would like to be the next seed down, winning games will shift you onto a tougher schedule like in the Swiss.

[John Sellen]

""It is good to see that this event was organised for a 4NCL weekend.

Top quality planning!"

It's worth pointing out that the Hampshire congress has been held on this particular weekend for many years.I first played in the congress in 2013 and i suspect it has been going for longer than that

Well done to all the organisers this year. It was a most enjoyable weekend.

[GrahamStuart]

The Hampshire Individual Championship was first held in 1930 (also with 8 players in a knockout tournament https://hampshirechesshistory.co.uk/ham ... ship-1930/),The congress format has probably been run since the late 1980's. I first played in 1994 and has normally been played in November but was normally fixed around early November in the early 2000's.

The tournament this year was particularly successful (and great value) and many thanks to Kevin for his excellent organisation. It was a shame that the open only had 8 players and it is difficult to set the grading limit for the Major and Minor and at the same time encourage players to enter the Open. But this is something the HCA are aware of and will discuss going forward.

Additional details on the winners of the HCA Individual and some articles can be found at:
https://hampshirechesshistory.co.uk/ham ... mpionship/

[GrahamStuart]

For those who are interested I have added a report on the Hampshire Open Tournament which also includes the Hampshire Individual Championship. The report includes an annotated game by the winner and hopefully one from the Hampshire Champion should follow shortly as he has promised to supply one.

I hope to add small reports on the Major and Minor Tournaments in the future.

https://hampshirechesshistory.co.uk/ham ... ship-2022/