Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2018 9:35 pm
The problems that may be unique to England are that organisers do not modernise their events, and arbiters are not necessarily suitably skilled.
One of the issues is that English organisers and arbiters still do a lot of their tournaments manually. They'll be able to find a grader to do the grading file for them in a spreadsheet once they post the results to them, but who do they ask to do the rating file? That's a skills shortage caused by years of prominent arbiters failing to embrace tournament administration by computer, often because of a belief that the British pairing system was better than the FIDE pairing system. While I think I've succeeded in getting the British organised in a more efficient way than it was when I first got involved, many other events are still wedded to the old-fashioned ways.
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The extreme South West is a good example of this, particularly Paignton. You can only normally enter by post. Their time control remains a guillotine finish. The results are often difficult to find online. How many other events in continental Europe are organised like that? It's very old-fashioned, and it would surprise me if Exeter was different. Paignton is FIDE-rated, but only after the now traditional e-mail grovelling to you because they forgot to register it.
I am compiling a list of long established and successful events and organisations which Alex is seeking to undermine. I shall now add the Paignton and East Devon Congresses to the list.
I would be interested to learn of other instances.