English Chess Forum

According to the SCCU website and a comment elsewhere on this board, two teams have already defaulted their quarter-final matches

The Lancs one in the open is on the English chess website so I guess official now. There were of course already only 2 quarter finals in the open, now only one.

The U160 even had a preliminary match, so a single bye in the 1/4's is the sort of thing that can happen. Yorkshire not fielding U180/140/120 etc teams has left byes in the 1/4 final structure of those competitions but that's fixable if we can get halfway organised.

The open is perhaps rather more serious - 5 teams with 3 of those coming from the same qualifiers isn't precisely what you'd describe as a healthy entry!

Somerset beat Cambridgeshire 8.5- 7.5 in the Minor today. To call it a lucky win would be a big understatement.

A question thrown up by that quarter-final match: if a team in the Minor Counties has a pre-arranged default, as Cambridgeshire did, what does the defaulted board count as for determining their average rating?

IM Jack Rudd wrote:A question thrown up by that quarter-final match: if a team in the Minor Counties has a pre-arranged default, as Cambridgeshire did, what does the defaulted board count as for determining their average rating?

Possibly zero, in which case the total of the other 15 players’ grades are divided by 16 leading to the potential use of a tactical default to play a stronger top 15.

Under the old rules ungraded players were assumed to have a grade of the mean of all the others in the team (no longer necessary now that ungraded players are assigned a grade by the controller) and that may be the way to handle defaults. The problem then is the danger of your board 16 not turning up on the day and putting the others over the 180 average.

Average grade is presumably the average of the 15 who actually turned up

Like Kevin, said though, that could end up with a team getting DQ'd because one of their lower boards dropped out. Even with it being a 'known' default, having it happen a day or so in advance of the match isn't long to stand someone down/find someone slightly weaker etc etc.

Suppose you could consider any team suffering this fate as deserving it for pushing the 180 average so hard

Doesn't seem at all straight forward.

Another possible solution would be to treat all defaults as having the same grade as the lowest-graded player in the team.

MartinCarpenter wrote:Like Kevin, said though, that could end up with a team getting DQ'd because one of their lower boards dropped out. Even with it being a 'known' default, having it happen a day or so in advance of the match isn't long to stand someone down/find someone slightly weaker etc etc.

Suppose you could consider any team suffering this fate as deserving it for pushing the 180 average so hard

Doesn't seem at all straight forward.

They don't get disqualified, the rule says:

Each team must have an average grade not exceeding 180. For every point, or part thereof, by which the average grade exceeds the limit, 1 penalty game point will be deducted from the team’s total score in the match

Of course, Alex consulted on the new Rules and presumably no-one brought this point up

Ok Not that the rules really indicate one idea or the other here. They don't even state which average is used to calculate the grades for the
teams.....

Think you could easily argue for most things except for Jack's rather logical idea. Not sure if 0 isn't a bit kind for D E Fault though. -50 or so perhaps more realistic

Interesting to see though, that this issue was considered when putting together the rules for the National Club:

3. For the purposes of calculating the average grade of the team in sections restricted by grade, the grade of the defaulting player will be used where the default has been named. Where the default is unnamed, the defaulted board shall count as the grade restriction for that section less 50.

So if the same rule was applied to the Minor Counties, unnamed defaults would count as a grade of 130.

Surrey beat Staffs, probably 9-7 although it was 8.5-6.5 when I left.

Beds - Herts in the Minor Counties was looking good for Beds when I left (7-6 with 3 games to go).

Section OPEN Location The Open University, Milton Keynes
Date 16th May 2015 Time Control 40 moves in 2 hours and 30 minute Quickplay finish

Board Colour Staffordshire Grad Ref Aug 14 Jan 15 Est Score Grad Ref Aug 14 Jan 15 Est Score
1 B Cooper, Lawrence H 108844A 218 -10 218 -10 ½ Lalic, Bogdan 160511C 232 -10 233 -10 ½
2 W Wallace,Paul A 104823 210 -18 208 -20 ½ Wall, Gavin 121008H 224 -18 227 -16 ½
3 B Wheeler, Darren P 121442B 200 -20 206 -12 ½ Emerson, Roger 285686E 202 -32 199 -38 ½
4 W Anderton, David W 105731F 196 -14 197 -19 ½ Sharpe, Ian W  188291A 204 -8 206 -3 ½
5 B Grinsell, Lee A 111759C 195 -11 192 -15 ½ Granat, Russell 111505E 201 -11 203 -6 ½
6 W Armstrong, Malcolm J 105843F 195 -10 191 -11 0 Osbourne, Marcus E 116521F 195 -16 195 -14 1
7 B Richardson, Alex 117886G 188 -17 191 -10 ½ Kalaiyalahan, Akshaya 280020C 194 -11 197 -8 ½
8 W Acey, Gerald 105462E 192 -6 187 -14 ½ Golding, Alex 283656H 181 -23 180 -25 ½
9 B Crombleholme, Alan K 109109J 181 -17 185 -12 0 Way, Julian M  187830L 183 -8 186 -4 1
10 W Turner, J 120687E 181 -10 185 -10 1 Porter. Sam 247688F 177 -14 184 -6 0
11 B Edwards, Simon R 110144E 181 -10 177 -18 0 Punnett, Alan K 117524F 183 -4 184 -6 1
12 W Bennett, Patrick  106612C 173 -18 170 -17 ½ Odunaiya, Victor 227786E 175 -12 171 -19 ½
13 B Roberts, Nick W 118039D 167 -16 167 -13 ½ Shepley, Julien 129556B 178 -7 178 -3 ½
14 W Staniforth. John 119583K 161 -16 162 -15 ½ Rosen, Daniel B  118218D 176 -9 177 -4 ½
15 B Walker, Nicholas A 157248K 169 -2 158 -14 1 Galer, Sebastian 259662D 172 -13 174 -7 0
16 W Davison,Colin FS 240175H 156 -15 156 -12 ½ Phillips, Owen 173125H 170 -12 173 -8 ½
Averages 185 na 184 Total 7½ Averages 190 na 191 Total 8½

Well done to Devon U180 who beat Notts U180 8.5-7.5. The match went down to the wire, only decided by the last game to finish.

A picturesque venue too - the village of Frampton-on-Severn (near Gloucester) with departure very slightly delayed waiting for a horse-and-cart to come up the narrow street!