British Chess Championships 2011

[Alex McFarlane]

I agree with Jack that all of the games from the Championship should be on the web asap after each round, though I would accept that there may be some delay with the junior events.

My concern is that if this leads to increased costs then that should not be incurred by the entrants. I have previously suggested that £1500 should come from the ECF Marketing budget for this and that the ECF should advertise it as one of the benefits of membership.

Comments welcome.

[IM Jack Rudd]

Would players perhaps be willing to pay online for copies of the matches, thus still allowing the ECF to benefit financially for all the work done in producing the list of games ?

I don't think that would work. Once I've downloaded the games, there's nothing to stop me posting them up somewhere and allowing everyone else to download them for free.

[Stewart Reuben]

Alex McFarlane >My concern is that if this leads to increased costs then that should not be incurred by the entrants. I have previously suggested that £1500 should come from the ECF Marketing budget for this and that the ECF should advertise it as one of the benefits of membership. <

Though not strangely enough to the current ECF Marketing Director. Are you suggesting something new? That the games would be available on the web, but accessible only to ECF members? The games should be available eventually to everybody on Chessbase, probably not bothering with juvenilia. I suppose that could wait a year. The top game in the U8 in the last round was brimming with ideas, although there were 3 outright blunders. I regret not recording that on their behalf.
Making accessible the games of the players in the Seniors and Major Open lends gravitas to their value. That makes players return and is a tangible benefit for them. Thus it is perfectly easy to justify coming from the entry fees.

Stewart Reuben

[Alan Burke]

So, it comes down to a matter of should all the games be available to everyone via the computer and thus be provided free of charge by the ECF or should those players who want the service, so as to enhance their own future prospects, be expected to pay for the information, maybe via book form (If they wished, they could then download the details themselves onto their computer and OK, they might then distribute it to others, but they would then actually be paying to assist possible future opponents.)

Yes, it might be ideal for everyone to have the latest matches of their next opponent to study, but nobody would have any advantage whether or not they were available before the next day's play.

I think that those players who want the information should be willing to pay for it.

[Paul Cooksey]

I think that those players who want the information should be willing to pay for it.

Arguably, but no-one has been able to monetize it yet. NIC even withdrew their CD version.

EDIT oh, except Chessbase, of course. But as an information provider, rather than the organiser of events

[Roger de Coverly]

I think that those players who want the information should be willing to pay for it.

It can be in the interests of players that their games not be published. That way you can hope to use a devastating novelty more than once as a surprise weapon.

There is however a convention which has been around for getting on for twenty years, that players don't object to games being circulated, in return for which they can freely download them. Also that organisers (and sponsors) benefit from games being published as widely as possible, because it enhances the prestige of the event and the players in it when the games are available worldwide.

The e2e4 Sunningdale event, which only finished on Sunday, has already made all the games played in all the sections available for download. Whether the games will be picked up by ChessBase and other compilers remains to be seen, but it might mean that if any of the lower rated players has done something interesting in the opening, that their game might become part of theory when an author is scratching around for sample games.

[Paul McKeown]

So, it comes down to a matter of should all the games be available to everyone via the computer and thus be provided free of charge by the ECF or should those players who want the service, so as to enhance their own future prospects, be expected to pay for the information, maybe via book form (If they wished, they could then download the details themselves onto their computer and OK, they might then distribute it to others, but they would then actually be paying to assist possible future opponents.)

Yes, it might be ideal for everyone to have the latest matches of their next opponent to study, but nobody would have any advantage whether or not they were available before the next day's play.

I think that those players who want the information should be willing to pay for it.

This is a well worn subject and I imagine other threads on this forum have dealt with it. Many tournament organisers have attempted to charge for game scores. Apparently this is not possible, as historical fact (e.g. the moves played in a game of chess) cannot be subject to copyright. Analysis, as a form of opinion, art, expression or literature is subject to copyright, however, and it is this from which chess publication earns its profit.

[Sean Hewitt]

The e2e4 Sunningdale event, which only finished on Sunday, has already made all the games played in all the sections available for download. Whether the games will be picked up by ChessBase and other compilers remains to be seen, but it might mean that if any of the lower rated players has done something interesting in the opening, that their game might become part of theory when an author is scratching around for sample games.

Yes indeed Roger. In fact all the games were online on Sunday evening, and each round was online within a couple of house of the last game finishing. The games from our events usually do get picked up by chessbase and TWIC and I expect this time to be no different.

This was the first event where we specifically had a person on site to do the games inputting as it was becoming too big a job for me to do on my own. This is not without cost, but I know from talking to players that it is something that they place a significant value on. Offered the choice between a fiver off the entry fee, or all the games downloadable within an hour or so of the round finishing I don't think many players would want the fiver. That's why I was surprised that Alex M didn't think the players should pay the cost because I think they would welcome it. Live transmission of games on the other hand....most players can take or leave that.

[Alan Burke]

It is so easy to praise the fact of one congress getting the players' details onto a website in such a quick period time; but the matches played at such an event are minimal when compared to those at the British Championships, where, for exampe, 215 matches took place on the last Friday alone. To daily put all those details onto a website is indeed a mammoth - and costly - exercise.

[Richard Bates]

The time and effort spent on game inputting is IMO out of all proportion to its worth at a time of scarce resources. At a time when chess needs to fight for all the (favourable) publicity that it can get, i am constantly astonished at the low priority given to round-by-round reports (which will always get picked up by sites like Chessbase) and, in particular, properly constructed press releases. The impression is given that producing press releases seems to be an anaethema to the English chess community and yet they are surely by far the best way of securing media interest - because they effectively give a pre-packaged article to any journalist looking to fill a space, requiring the minimum of effort on their part. Chess is too interested in talking to itself, when it needs to talk and advertise itself to the outside world.

Then again, on discovering that some of the country's leading chess columns have 8 week deadlines, perhaps that really isn't worth the effort either...

[Christopher Kreuzer]

The time and effort spent on game inputting is IMO out of all proportion to its worth at a time of scarce resources. At a time when chess needs to fight for all the (favourable) publicity that it can get, i am constantly astonished at the low priority given to round-by-round reports (which will always get picked up by sites like Chessbase) and, in particular, properly constructed press releases. The impression is given that producing press releases seems to be an anaethema to the English chess community and yet they are surely by far the best way of securing media interest - because they effectively give a pre-packaged article to any journalist looking to fill a space, requiring the minimum of effort on their part. Chess is too interested in talking to itself, when it needs to talk and advertise itself to the outside world.

Agree absolutely. I loved the daily reports from Hastings by Steve Giddins and from the London Chess Classic by John Saunders. I read some of the various chess blogs that did posts on the British Chess Championships this year, but there didn't seem to be anything official in the way of round-by-round reports that could be published, and I mean text-based reporting, as not everyone can or wants to listen to video clips, as good as those were. The trouble is that the existing volunteers, and those paid honorariums or expenses for the work they do, have enough to do. If you are going to have press releases and daily reports, you need probably a team of least 3 people minimum doing it for the whole tournament, willing to publish newsletters once or twice daily and a press release daily and at the start and end of the event.

What the current website has shows how some of this is done:

http://www.britishchess2011.com/press.htm
http://www.britishchess2011.com/videos.htm
http://www.britishchess2011.com/photos.htm
http://www.britishchess2011.com/latest_news.htm

The closest you get to daily updates is the front page:

http://www.britishchess2011.com/index.htm

The links to the chessbase reports should also be on the press page.

There is enough there that could be pulled together and pushed to the press, both offline and online. The photos page is excellent, though it would have been nice to have some video of the actual event and opening and closing moments - if those are anywhere, I missed them.

[LozCooper]

It is so easy to praise the fact of one congress getting the players' details onto a website in such a quick period time; but the matches played at such an event are minimal when compared to those at the British Championships, where, for exampe, 215 matches took place on the last Friday alone. To daily put all those details onto a website is indeed a mammoth - and costly - exercise.

The game inputter at Sunningdale input approximately 450 games over a five day period so not such a minimal number

[Alex Holowczak]

I agree with Jack that all of the games from the Championship should be on the web asap after each round, though I would accept that there may be some delay with the junior events.

My concern is that if this leads to increased costs then that should not be incurred by the entrants. I have previously suggested that £1500 should come from the ECF Marketing budget for this and that the ECF should advertise it as one of the benefits of membership.

Comments welcome.

There doesn't need to be a delay with the publication of junior events online. They're usually done such that they're ready for each day's bulletin. The only thing stopping them going online is the desire to "hold something back", making people buy the paper bulletins. Presumably this is part of the arrangement with the Bulletin team, who as part of their arrangements may or may make profits from the sales. (I don't know the details; the person who does know doesn't tell anyone the arrangements.) A junior parent from Birmingham that I know commented to me that they weren't going to buy a bulletin to find the games of his next opponent, because there was the option of borrowing the scoresheet, which was laid out on a desk and freely accessible.

As I said to yourself and Dave in the hastily arranged meeting in Sheffield, it's extremely archaic to have a paper bulletin and not just put everything you have online. Furthermore, the British Championship is getting criticised because of it in this thread. By contrast, e2e4 events are praised for this attribute. So I think that's the example to follow.

Sean explains above that this was the first time he had someone on site to do inputting for his APAs, usually he did it. So while he didn't need to do any pairings (save for printing them out), he would have had 30 games per round to input, plus do any arbiting that may have cropped up, all in a four-hour session. He combined the roles of arbiter, organiser and games-inputter. This is something you do for the Northern 4NCL - for which I'm grateful! - but, if the cost of having people there is prohibitive, why can't the arbiting team do some games-inputting at the British Championship? The morning events will have three hours without incident after the start of play. The afternoon events will have even longer, since they're all with increments. So, if we want everything to go online - which I think we should aim for, but the cost proves prohibitive - why can't the arbiting team do some inputting?

[Alex McFarlane]

To give my comments on those made since my last posting.

I tend to think of game inputting, game of the day, a daily report and the production of a bulletin as all interrelated, each depending on the other.

What has been lacking at the British is a press officer who would be able to assist with game inputting (a la Steve Giddens at Hastings), produce an annotated game (possibly to supplement the one by Andrew Martin), and supply local media with details of the prizewinners, especially juniors, from the appropriate area.
Some of this has happened in the past but not all. We have been looking at this for 2012.

In promoting the event, all of these tie in with the live game coverage and website. The contribution of Darwin Strategic to this year’s event was much appreciated but a figure of 3 times what they gave is needed to properly run the event.

Loz confirms the number of games per day which can be reasonable input (I had a figure of 80 in mind, reducing due to the ‘quality’ of some of the notation). I think entry fees to the British are high enough without adding on £5. OK you can argue whether it is the live games or the scores of the games that are more important. I simply saw something that the ECF could claim some Kudos for and would be seen as a benefit for a minimum outlay.

I have mentioned that I felt money should come from the Marketing budget before I became Co-manager. I have recently repeated this request to the Director responsible for the event and asked him to raise it. Therefore Stewart, though you hadn’t heard of this suggestion in the past, you will hopefully hear it officially in the not too distant future.

Hope this covers everything.

Obviously didn't cover Alex H's point. I'll answer that shortly.

[Alex Holowczak]

Loz confirms the number of games per day which can be reasonable input

You're both about right - 80 to 90 a day is the maximum, really. 10 per hour is about right, I think. So it depends on how much you're willing to tax your inputters!