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2010/11 Championship

Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 10:46 am
by John Philpott
The ECF website has announced the appointment of Adrian Elwin as controller for 2010/11.

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2010 5:42 pm
by Joey Stewart
Who is Adrian Elwin? I dont think I have heard of him before (and I know alot of chess players names), is he new on the scene?

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2010 5:48 pm
by Adam Raoof
Joey Stewart wrote:Who is Adrian Elwin? I dont think I have heard of him before (and I know alot of chess players names), is he new on the scene?
Definitely not!

http://www.adrian.elwin.btinternet.co.uk/

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2010 9:46 am
by raycollett
Leaders of the MCCU County Team competitions as at 13 December 2010 are: Championship (Open upper division), Warwickshire; Minor Counties Championship (Open lower division), Lincolnshire; Under-160, Warwickshire; Under-140, Worcestershire; Under-120, Staffordshire Bulldogs. Matches in the Under-180 and Under-100 competitions are scheduled for the New Year. For detailed results of matches, visit the MCCU website at: http://www.mccu.org.uk/ and use the 'County Matches' menu navigation button and then links to each competition and match.

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 11:09 pm
by IM Jack Rudd
Somerset look favourites to be champions of WECU after our win against Devon yesterday; the table currently looks like this:

1. Somerset W2 D1 L0 Pts 5
2=. Hampshire W1 D0 L1 Pts 2
2=. Gloucestershire W0 D2 L0 Pts 2
2=. Devon W1 D0 L2 Pts 2
5. Cornwall W0 D1 L1 Pts 1

We will definitely take the title if we beat Cornwall, and have a good chance of doing so if we draw.

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 11:31 pm
by Ian Thompson
IM Jack Rudd wrote:Somerset look favourites to be champions of WECU after our win against Devon yesterday; the table currently looks like this:

1. Somerset W2 D1 L0 Pts 5
2=. Hampshire W1 D0 L1 Pts 2
2=. Gloucestershire W0 D2 L0 Pts 2
2=. Devon W1 D0 L2 Pts 2
5. Cornwall W0 D1 L1 Pts 1

We will definitely take the title if we beat Cornwall, and have a good chance of doing so if we draw.
Hampshire won by default against Cornwall yesterday, so it looks quite likely that the result of the postponed Hampshire-Gloucestershire match will decide second place.

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 10:35 am
by LozCooper
raycollett wrote:Leaders of the MCCU County Team competitions as at 13 December 2010 are: Championship (Open upper division), Warwickshire; Minor Counties Championship (Open lower division), Lincolnshire; Under-160, Warwickshire; Under-140, Worcestershire; Under-120, Staffordshire Bulldogs. Matches in the Under-180 and Under-100 competitions are scheduled for the New Year. For detailed results of matches, visit the MCCU website at: http://www.mccu.org.uk/ and use the 'County Matches' menu navigation button and then links to each competition and match.
Not sure about the other sections but the open top division finished:

1 Staffs 6
2 Warwickshire 4
3 G Manchester 2
4 Notts 0

Notts defaulted all their matches, GM defaulted 4 boards in both their matches so Staffs-Warwickshire was the only match where both teams had 16 players :shock:

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 10:57 am
by Sean Hewitt
LozCooper wrote:
raycollett wrote:Leaders of the MCCU County Team competitions as at 13 December 2010 are: Championship (Open upper division), Warwickshire; Minor Counties Championship (Open lower division), Lincolnshire; Under-160, Warwickshire; Under-140, Worcestershire; Under-120, Staffordshire Bulldogs. Matches in the Under-180 and Under-100 competitions are scheduled for the New Year. For detailed results of matches, visit the MCCU website at: http://www.mccu.org.uk/ and use the 'County Matches' menu navigation button and then links to each competition and match.
Not sure about the other sections but the open top division finished:

1 Staffs 6
2 Warwickshire 4
3 G Manchester 2
4 Notts 0

Notts defaulted all their matches, GM defaulted 4 boards in both their matches so Staffs-Warwickshire was the only match where both teams had 16 players :shock:
And some of our friends in other parts of the country think all is well with county chess :roll:

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 11:00 am
by Adam Raoof
What happened to Nottinghamshire?!

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 11:07 am
by Alex Holowczak
Adam Raoof wrote:What happened to Nottinghamshire?!
Remember how they defaulted against Warwickshire Select and someone else in the 4NCL last season? Well, they withdrew from the 4NCL at the end of the season, and decided to enter the Open section of the MCCU zone instead. It seems they never had the resources to field a team.

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 12:13 pm
by Ian Kingston
Alex Holowczak wrote:
Adam Raoof wrote:What happened to Nottinghamshire?!
Remember how they defaulted against Warwickshire Select and someone else in the 4NCL last season? Well, they withdrew from the 4NCL at the end of the season, and decided to enter the Open section of the MCCU zone instead. It seems they never had the resources to field a team.
That's a slightly negative gloss. At the risk of repeating myself (since this has been discussed at length before), we defaulted three boards in each match of Round 6 (vs. Warwickshire Select 2 and Sussex Smart Controls) in the 4NCL because of heavy unforecast snow that prevented some players from travelling. Because the 4NCL's rules specified a financial penalty with no right of appeal, we opted not to play in the 4NCL this season (or, if you prefer, we refused to pay the fine and would have been denied entry).

NCA policy for some years had been to support the 4NCL teams and not play in the Open section. Once out of the 4NCL, it was decided to re-enter the Open, but insufficient players were willing to play. Since the same players (for the most part) are happy to play in the U180 competition it's not correct to say that we didn't have the resources - they just don't seem to want to play in the Open.

The MCCU U180 Championship is very poorly supported. Only Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire entered last season, and the same has happened this time round. In some recent years the (then) U175 Championship didn't take place at all. County chess is slowly fading away in these parts.

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 12:28 pm
by Sean Hewitt
Ian Kingston wrote:County chess is slowly fading away in these parts.
That's also a slightly negative gloss!

It is true that counties struggle with the higher teams but the same is not true at other levels (U120, U140 and to a lesser extent U160). This is not a surprise because each of these bandings (100-119 ; 120-139 ; 140-159) contains more players than the higher bands (160-179 and 180+) do. Only populous counties such as Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Yorks, Lancs and the Southern Counties can hope to field full teams in the higher grading bands.

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 12:34 pm
by Adam Raoof
Is the problem with the lack of available volunteers to take on the organisational jobs such as Captain? Or, dare I suggest it, is it something that the ECF can do something about?!

If it is, I'm really open to suggestions.

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 1:04 pm
by Sean Hewitt
Adam Raoof wrote:Is the problem with the lack of available volunteers to take on the organisational jobs such as Captain? Or, dare I suggest it, is it something that the ECF can do something about?!

If it is, I'm really open to suggestions.
Availability of captains may be a problem for some but the fundamental problem is a simple matter of availability of players within each band. We have 6 grading bands, with the number of players currently graded in that band shown below

Open (180+) : 1048
U180 (179-160) : 1318
U160 (159-140) : 1989
U140 (139-120) : 2146
U120 (119-100) : 1767
U100 (99-) : 1801 with a disproportionately large ratio of juniors

Ideally, one would want the bandings to be approximately the same size in terms of numbers of players. Whilst the situation remains as is, where the Open and U180 bands combined are only marginally bigger than the U140 band, only large counties will be able to field full, competitive teams in those bands with the fewest players.

Re: 2010/11 Championship

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 1:07 pm
by Alex Holowczak
Ian Kingston wrote:County chess is slowly fading away in these parts.
In the Worcs/Warks/Staffs area, I think county chess is doing fine compared to other areas (the Birmingham League is half the size it was 20 years ago, the Birmingham Junior League is virtually non-existent compared to 10 years ago).