Artic Masters (Tromso)

[Matthew Turner]

The Artic Masters starts today and there are lots of English participants. Follow our progress at http://arcticchess.org/acc/
I have just completed a six and half hour trek in the mountains and have come back to find I am 20th seed. Suddenly Canterbury doesn't seem too bad!

[benedgell]

You travel all the way to the top of Norway, then end up playing against your team-mate. Typical Wasn't it last year you were paired with Peter. P in a similarly early round?

[Sean Hewitt]

The tournament has had no problems, and the live broadcasts worked perfectly. We thank CHESS LIVE NORWAY, who once again deliver the goods. This time Bjørn Berg Johansen has Terje Roer with him, and together they broadcast fifteen boards from each round.

What do the Norwegians know that we don't? Not only do they produce Magnus Carlsen and host of other talented youngsters, but they can get DGT boards to work!!

[Carl Hibbard]

Having some cash to spend on IT resources helps, as does sufficient bandwidth on site - the ECF has neither I am afraid

[Adam Raoof]

Having some cash to spend on IT resources helps, as does sufficient bandwidth on site - the ECF has neither I am afraid

What / how much would it take? What would we need, and can you break down the costs?

[John Upham]

Having some cash to spend on IT resources helps,

Carl, £5K per annum has recently become available from the ECF coffers. Will that be enough?

[Alan Walton]

Presumably there is a specific budget set aside for IT at the British Champs, it would be interesting to see what that is and try to compare that with another tournament like the Norwegian currently running

If bandwidth is such a problem, then why wasn't this discussed when negotiating the venue, the only way of advertising chess tournaments nowadays is having a good live broadcast set up

[Carl Hibbard]

Carl, £5K per annum has recently become available from the ECF coffers. Will that be enough?

Free hosting seems to be running the Live Games over at the British now John

[David Sedgwick]

If bandwidth is such a problem, then why wasn't this discussed when negotiating the venue

There are only a limited number of possible venues available free of charge. Fewer still have all the facilities which the ECF might ideally like.

At well resourced events, like the London Chess Classic and the Gibraltar Festival, our IT team do a pretty good job, don't they? I remember the extra traffic we got one day at Gibraltar 2010 when the Corus site went down for 24 hours - everyone can have problems.

[Carl Hibbard]

The Artic Masters starts today and there are lots of English participants.

Not a bad result then Matthew, was the cold worth the effort?

[Matthew Turner]

Weather very temperate, about 12 degrees centigrade all day. The special thing about Tromso is that everyone is so nice. The organisers take us fishing, sailing, mountain walking and we have the famous barbeque. Those who saw the duet of Khenkin and Moiseenko will not be forgetting it in a hurry. It is always nice when the chess goes well, but it would have been a great event even if it hadn't.