When Anteaters Attack II - Reform of the British

[Geoff Chandler]

Not another closed shop elitest tournament.
There are enough of these things already, are those guys not fed up
playing the same people all the time. I'm fed up reading about them.
Or are they happy doing so as a loss hardly dents their precious grade.
(and they don't have to memorise anything else but the Slav.)

You have to give the lads (the body and soul of British Chess) a chance to play the good guys.
Not sneer at their low grades and claim they have no right to be even in the same room
as the top players.
(well we can be allowed in the room as them...as spectators...as long we pay to watch...aye right!)

SG claims this is one of the weakest BC's ever.
Can't argue with a free opinion...(can't argue anyway he leaves his comments box off!)
Be interested to know what he considered was the strongest.

So sorry winner, who ever you ever you will be.
Hand back the cup and the cheque and walk away with your head bowed.
You won't deserve it. You only won it because the ECF could not stump up
the appearance fees for the good players who should have been there.

The sub payers, the book buyers, the chess players who keep the whole thing going
deserve better than this. As do the GM's and IM's who have entered.

(Strewth, I'm writing this as if SG's comments really mean anything. It's a blog.)

If it was up to me I'd throw the whole thing open to any woodpushers who lives
in Britain. Entrance fee would be scaled on your current grade.
The lower graded you are the more it cost for you to play. (max £100 - Gm's and IM's free).

One massive Open - open to all.
No side show tournaments like the u-10's and u-16's etc.
(they are a load of nonsense, most of the kids who play in these events
would score very well against adults. Give them a chance to progress.)

One tournament, Everybody in and the best man/woman wins.

I'd also stop calling it calling it The British. It is in effect The English.
The ECF run it, 99% of the players are English.
If you want a British Championship then by all means have a closed shop
tournament two players each from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
APA twice. Each gets £500 appearance fee. Sole winner gets £1,000.
Cost to each fed = £1,250. Each fed takes it in turn to organise it.

and...(if it was up to me)

I'd use the English Championship as a qualifyer for places in the Olympiad.
If the good guys cannot be arsed to take part in their national championship
then their arses will not get a seat on the plane.

and....(if it was still up to me)

I'd ditch that stupid grading 3 digit grading sytem and bring the lot of you
in line with the rest of the world.

Bah!

Well done Ernie. I'm popping down to the BC for a few days to meet some
old friends I've not seen since the 70's. Introduce yourself.
I'll be wearing a battered denim hat, bright clothes and will have in tow a very
bemused looking woman (Mrs C.) who still does not know the British is on.
(I'm not looking forward to the moment the penny drops....I may also have a black eye.)

[Roger de Coverly]

On the assumption that that wouldn't be practical for sponsorship or other reasons I'd prefer a swiss restricted to 20-30 players along the lines of the format used in America for a few years.

It was the format that the Championship event was limited to 32 players, which applied from 1948 until the mid seventies. It was abandoned and the tournament enlarged when it became quite clear that there were far more players worthy of a slot in the British than slots available. So you had the effect that players in the Major Open, the Under 21 and Under 18 were stronger than those who had got lottery place in the British itself.

[Jonathan Bryant]

On the assumption that that wouldn't be practical for sponsorship or other reasons I'd prefer a swiss restricted to 20-30 players along the lines of the format used in America for a few years.

It was the format that the Championship event was limited to 32 players, which applied from 1948 until the mid seventies. It was abandoned and the tournament enlarged when it became quite clear that there were far more players worthy of a slot in the British than slots available. So you had the effect that players in the Major Open, the Under 21 and Under 18 were stronger than those who had got lottery place in the British itself.

Well yes, but now we have a situation where the tournament is stuffed with 'also-rans' (relatively speaking). I believe it was you yourself who pointed out the long tail in Canterbury and we're revisiting the issue again this year.

I'd agree if you restricted entry you'd have to think sensibly about the qualification system. Frankly, it seems like a total horlicks to me at the moment and well in need of an overhaul anyway.

[Sean Hewitt]

Well yes, but now we have a situation where the tournament is stuffed with 'also-rans' (relatively speaking). I believe it was you yourself who pointed out the long tail in Canterbury and we're revisiting the issue again this year.

I'd agree if you restricted entry you'd have to think sensibly about the qualification system. Frankly, it seems like a total horlicks to me at the moment and well in need of an overhaul anyway.

You'd also have to think seriously about economics. Without the 'also rans' as you call them, you would not be able to afford to maintain the current prize fund I suspect - unless an alternative revenue stream was available to replace their entry fees.

[Kevin Thurlow]

The probable reason the event stopped being closed was that a talented young player was omitted from the initial 12, then inserted when a place became available. He then had the temerity to finish 3rd (I think) so BH Wood moaned about the original omission of the player. Alexander and Milner-Barry moaned at Wood for moaning. And a couple of years later the current format started...

In those days you probably needed to publish a magazine to have a good moan about something. Now you have this forum, (plenty of termites with axes to grind, if you'll excuse the analogy) you would have about 100 pages of people complaining that their son or daughter or friend hadn't been selected, and the organisers would give up running it.

An all-play-all for the 12 highest rated players would be interesting, you must avoid selection by other means as people will demand a "best junior", "best female", "best differently abled" player to be included in the 12, but there may be more interest in an open event with variable entry fees, but then you get mismatches.

So whatever you do, you get problems. I largely agree with what Austin, Geoff and Sean have said.

[AustinElliott]

How about this, inspired by something Geoff Chandler said above. Keep the current 2-wk festival, incl. format, re-christen it clearly 'English Championship', then have a "British Supreme' APA later in the year IF a commercial sponsor can be found to underwrite it?

Sure you could find a formula to include Scottish, Welsh and Irish Champions in the 'British supreme' APA, maybe >1 player if GM & >2500 FIDE, top 4 English players by rating, top 3-4 from English Chs?

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Sure you could find a formula to include Scottish, Welsh and Irish Champions in the 'British supreme' APA, maybe >1 player if GM & >2500 FIDE, top 4 English players by rating, top 3-4 from English Chs?"

And what of our dear Channel Islands?

[Andrew Zigmond]

[quote="


Well yes, but now we have a situation where the tournament is stuffed with 'also-rans' (relatively speaking). I believe it was you yourself who pointed out the long tail in Canterbury and we're revisiting the issue again this year.

[/quote]

All swiss tournaments are likely to have a tail, even in minor sections of congresses. Ultimately that's the whole idea behind swiss systems. At the end of the day, after a few rounds we'll be concentrating on Jones, Howell etc and the `also rans` will be largely irrelevant.

Following the thought through, this `tail` is hardly unique to chess. Surely Wimbledon also has a tail; there are 128 entrants initially the majority of whom aren't Federer, Nadal etc. This doesn't seem to make the event any less enjoyable or attractive to the public; if one of the favourites drops a clanger and falls early or somebody largely unheard of finds the form of their life that's part of the fun.

[Krishna Shiatis]

In terms of location, if the aim is to maximise participation, then surely we have enough historical information about the most popular locations?

That being said, as the British is run during the summer, surely the coast has to be the most pleasurable place for partners, parents, siblings etc as well as for the players?

If you then consolidate this information, you can get a top 5 of locations and then rotate the British around those.

Sorted!

[Paolo Casaschi]

In those days you probably needed to publish a magazine to have a good moan about something. Now you have this forum, (plenty of termites with axes to grind, if you'll excuse the analogy) you would have about 100 pages of people complaining that their son or daughter or friend hadn't been selected, and the organisers would give up running it.

Why would the players be (manually) "selected"?

You need to have very clear rules how to assign spots, usually a mix of the top rated players at a given time and players from a previous qualifying event, preferably open. So you could have a 12 players all play all, with the former champion, the top 3 players by January's rating and 8 qualified from a single qualification open tournament (it does not even have to be an even organized on purpose, you could piggyback on an existing large open like the classics, rotating from event to event each year). Players beyond the 8th place at the qualification event would be available as reserve in case some of the selected 12 would not be playing.
A system like this would give everyone a fair chance to get a spot thus no moaning allowed.

[Adam Raoof]

A system like this would give everyone a fair chance to get a spot thus no moaning allowed.

I think you are being optimistic.

[John McKenna]

Wimbledon is a KO and that format is also used by FIDE for what it currently calls its World Cup (formerly its KO World Championship).
Would people like to see a British Championship run on such lines? In such a case there really would be no mention of a 'tail' as each winner would have justified their place in the next round or gone home (with their tail between their legs.)

[IM Jack Rudd]

Wimbledon is a KO and that format is also used by FIDE for what it currently calls its World Cup (formerly its KO World Championship).
Would people like to see a British Championship run on such lines? In such a case there really would be no mention of a 'tail' as each winner would have justified their place in the next round or gone home (with their tail between their legs.)

A true knockout, no. A Hastings system (where the knocked-out players go into a Swiss), possibly. The trouble is that a true knockout makes IM norms almost impossible.

[Andrew Zigmond]

A swiss is similar to a knockout in that you have to keep winning if you want the title; this is not quite true of an all play all. My point was that after a couple of rounds the `also rans` are effectively going to be knocked out - they will be playing among themselves and the wider public won't be following their games.

I'm not insisting on direct comparisons but would Wimbledon be as good if it was just a sixteen player tournament rather than an 128 man event?

Mr Giddins article which prompted this debate perhaps conflates two seperate issues; the relative weakness of the field this year and whether or not the also rans detract from the overall spectacle.

[Jonathan Bryant]

All swiss tournaments are likely to have a tail, even in minor sections of congresses. Ultimately that's the whole idea behind swiss systems. At the end of the day, after a few rounds we'll be concentrating on Jones, Howell etc and the `also rans` will be largely irrelevant.

As I say every year when this comes up (!) it's not the existence of the tail per se that is of concern but the extent of it. The 'tail' is in fact half or more of the tournament now. It's certainly not true that all swiss systems are like that. The British itself never used to be.


Also, it's not true that after a few rounds the tail becomes irrelevant after a few rounds. If you look at the end of the tournament and compare the opposition that the top players face there is often a huge disparity. It's for this reason that your Wimbledon analogy doesn't hold. If the British was a knock-out like wimbledon the problem of the tail would quickly disappear as you say. But it isn't so it doesn.t


That said, I do recognise as Sean highlights above that there are economic arguments against limiting the field. that's why I said that in my original post that on the assumption that a limite swiss wouldn't be practical I'd personally prefer the tournament to become an open.

I don't think that would be the the best off all possible worlds, but I do think it would be better than what we have now. For a start it would eliminate the mess that is the quailfication system.

I recognise, of course, that making the championship an Open would likely lead to a huge increase in the more lowly rated entrants. The aim, though, would that these would be offset by increasing numbers of stronger players. I might be wrong about that, but I think it's worth a try.



Edit:
I see the debate has moved on since I wrote my post.

A swiss is similar to a knockout in that you have to keep winning if you want the title

This is true to an extent but not entirely so. Unlike a knockout if you lose an early game in a swiss you can still come back in a long tournament. The problem with the long tail is that it increases the value of the 'swiss gambit'. One accident, perhaps even just a dropped half point, and you can spend rounds catching up with the leaders.