British 2015 Round by Round

[Jonathan Rogers]

Mike Truran >Why would a GM (or anyone else) withdraw? And if that happens, why not just redo the pairings? <

A player may be ill, as in the case of Jonathan Rogers in 1987, or others ....

1992, but otherwise correct. Incidentally I think I withdrew on the Sunday, which contributes a bit to the earlier debate. I had actually been feeling unwell at the start of the event but was very keen to play and kept hoping I would get better. It was helpful to have the rest day on Sunday to get myself together and accept that I was just getting worse and needed to stop and go home. So you might have more withdrawals through illness on the middle Sunday, not just because players suddenly become ill on the rest day but also because they were ill to start with and this is the natural moment of reflection.

[NickFaulks]

Not convinced if the current field in the tournament is suited to norm chances either actually.

I think it is fine. Anyone making a 2600 performance will almost certainly get the right opponents for a GM norm, and a 2450 performance would most probably be an IM norm. The tail is nowhere near as long as in the typical European Swiss.

[Jonathan Rogers]

I have a question. With 11 GMs playing in a national championship, this looks like excellent norm territory. Why are there so few plausible norm seekers?

also, because there are very few plausible GM norm seekers in England! I think we'd struggle to agree on more than six or so.

Do you want to name them?

No! Though if anyone wants to say twelve or more I might nonetheless ask him for names ...

What about IM norm seekers? There are a number of players on the FIDE website with 2 IM norms; they tend to fall into two categories: (i) those with recent norms and genuine chances of making the title; (ii) those with older norms and/or falling short of achieving the rating of 2400. Would it be worth listing and saying anything about those, or can that be a touchy subject?

The British, with virtually no players between 2250-2450, is an absolutely terrible event for IM norm seekers.

[NickFaulks]

The British, with virtually no players between 2250-2450, is an absolutely terrible event for IM norm seekers.

Interesting. You might need to make 5/6 against 2200 opposition and 1/3 against GMs, which is what an IM having a decent event is supposed to do, but perhaps that is harder than the bald statistics suggest.

[Alan Walton]

There also could be a possibility that most of the players who are seeking norms have already used their British and 4NCL type norms already and have to go abroad.

Martin, I know that Ravi and Daniel Abbas are playing in Vienna which starts next week (I gather Daniel & family prefer playing abroad); Andy Horton played in Poland instead.

[Roger de Coverly]

I think it is fine. Anyone making a 2600 performance will almost certainly get the right opponents for a GM norm, and a 2450 performance would most probably be an IM norm.

It can end up as a poor quality Norm, if at all, because of the lack of non-English players. Hawkins' title winning performance last year wasn't enough for a Norm as he didn't play enough non English opponents. His final Norm was in the Isle of Man which as well as many of the top British players also had an invitational field.

[Stewart Reuben]

Nick Faulks asked where can the rule about not changing the pairings be found.
Competition rules 7.4. on the Rules Commission website.
7.4 If a player withdraws, or is excluded from a competition after the drawing of lots but before the beginning of the first round, or there are additional entries, the announced pairings shall remain unaltered. Additional pairings or changes may be made at the discretion of the CA in consultation with the players directly involved, but only if these minimise amendments to pairings that have already been announced.
***********************
Christopher we have quite a large number of players who have one, two or three norms, but have never achieved the title, whther it be GM or IM. It isn't supposed to be easy.

[NickFaulks]

I think it is fine. Anyone making a 2600 performance will almost certainly get the right opponents for a GM norm, and a 2450 performance would most probably be an IM norm.

It can end up as a poor quality Norm, if at all, because of the lack of non-English players. Hawkins' title winning performance last year wasn't enough for a Norm as he didn't play enough non English opponents. His final Norm was in the Isle of Man which as well as many of the top British players also had an invitational field.

Obviously I would not recommend seeking your third norm from a national event if that were already where the first two had come from.

[Mick Norris]

IM norms

GM norms

I see Jonathan's point

[NickFaulks]

Competition rules 7.4. on the Rules Commission website.

I assume these are just recommendations, otherwise they would be in the Handbook. They are certainly not per se requirements under the titles or ratings regulations.

I do not see why the organisers should not publish pairings before the rest day subject to the proviso that, in the ( relatively unlikely ) event of a withdrawal they may be altered with minimum impact. If that's what they want.

[MartinCarpenter]

Interesting. You might need to make 5/6 against 2200 opposition and 1/3 against GMs, which is what an IM having a decent event is supposed to do, but perhaps that is harder than the bald statistics suggest.

Near impossible, really. That '2200' opposition will average something rather nearer to 2000 Suppose that can be somehow balanced against the GM's but not easy.

Of course, there's nothing structural about this - if all the IM norm seekers collectively decided they wanted to play in the British at once it'd be a decent event for them again. They mostly seem to be happily involved in events abroad instead
(And the people at the British itself seem to be enjoying it, so shrug.).

[Christopher Kreuzer]

IM norms

GM norms

I see Jonathan's point

That there are very few plausible GM norm seekers full stop, or just very few compared to IM norm seekers? The ratio seems about right, given that there are more IMs than GMs (I think), but should ENG (England) have more IM norm seekers as well?

Incidentally, there was talk about Daniel Fernandez achieving his 2nd GM norm recently (in June 2015). I'm not going to query why that is not up on the FIDE website yet (clearly these things take time), but his first GM norm is still listed under Singapore:

https://ratings.fide.com/title_norms.ph ... ountry=SIN
https://ratings.fide.com/title_norms.ph ... 5&title=GM

That is probably the way it should be (he was registered for Singapore when he got that first norm), but it would make an interesting quiz question: name players who achieved their norms while registered for different federations. I wonder if anyone has got norms under multiple federations and the title itself under another one? I know some players have been in the process of transferring between achieving their title and it being ratified (e.g. Dimitri Anagnostopoulos/Demetrios Agnos switched from ENG to GRE after getting his norms and before the title was ratified).

[Roger de Coverly]

Obviously I would not recommend seeking your third norm from a national event if that were already where the first two had come from.

With Daniel Fernandez in the last year's field still under SIN and Justin Tan as AUS, had more of the top Welsh players participated or any of the top Scots or Irish, he might have met a sufficiently varied field. He even got to play a WLS player in round 1.

[NickFaulks]

Near impossible, really. That '2200' opposition will average something rather nearer to 2000

That's the bit I don't understand. The median rating of the event is 2122, and if you're going to spend much of your time in the bottom half of the draw you won't be getting an IM norm and shouldn't expect one.

[Jonathan Rogers]

something nearer to 2150 still makes a difference, and one could be unlucky, eg with playing under-rated juniors who might be on quite high scores. In 2012 the late Neil Carr, rated around 2280, scored 7/11 and actually lost rating points ...