OtB Returns - Henley edition #1 March 4th-5th

[Wadih Khoury]

I will confirm the event within the next 48 hours hopefully (still need to get in writing confirmation of the venue price), but wanted to get the word out as soon as possible to allow people to start planning.

Key facts about the tournament:

• Date: March 4th and 5th
• Location: Henley on Thames - Market town on the banks of the Thames with train access from London and South West, and easy access from M4 and M40 - There is a mix of long term and short term car parks - plenty of cafes, restaurants, supermarkets
• Venue: cross fingers, we will have access to a Grade II listed Town hall in the heart of town! Hopefully that will be a change from the usual sporting halls and schools! (picture at end of post) - Note that at this stage there is no analysis room nor waiting room, but I am in discussion with the council to see if I can convince them to provide another room
• Time control and rating: 110+10 (similar to Hastings Week-end), ECF and FIDE rated - This means there is no upper rating limit (titled players welcome!) and the event is eligible to both British Grand Prix and ECF Chessable Grand Prix - not norm eligible
• Rounds: 5 (3 on Saturday, 2 on Sunday)
• Sections: Open section with a lower limit based on both FIDE and ECF standard grades - Major section for players under the limit
• Prizes: tbc, but I expect between £300 and £600 prize pot in total
• Entry fees: £40, in line with current congresses and to reflect increased costs in venue. There are limited subsidised entries for 2100+ FIDE players and free entries for 2200+. Free for GM/IM/FM
• Entry form: https://tinyurl.com/2u6n55na
• Entrants: Open: https://www.vegaresult.com/vega-trn/index.php?id=1548 - Major: https://www.vegaresult.com/vega-trn/index.php?id=1549
• Capacity: I expect it to be 50 max. If I get massive interest, I'll need to find another arbiter to help out (The venue can probably cope with up to 90)
• Other: depending on interest, I may organise the following week-end (11th-12 of March) a smaller event in the same location (different, smaller room) with similar rating floor as the Open

Picture of the Hall:



For those interested in some of the thought process behind the changes:
- the school I used previously has no longer availabilities on Sundays, and venue inflation meant that the council hall is now comparable to other options I had
- Location: the chance to have access to a fancy building rather than the usual schools or halls. Plus I no longer have to drive 2 hour to/from the venue each day.
- the rating floor in the Open is to experiment in line with some European tournaments and following some player feedback. Note that I probably have equal feedback for and against a floor - another idea I am tinkering with is an acceleration method I saw in a French tournament (section split in 3 thirds, virtual points increasing as you win more "real point"- I think they call it "Suisse Accéléré Degressif SAD" - I don't think it's great for a 5 round tournament)
- there are no major FIDE rated tournaments in early March, and none that are British GP and ECF GP eligible
- Price increase: Venue inflation. I could have stayed at £30, but that would have meant no prize at all and increased the risk
- As usual, a great thanks to Joe Conlon for lending the equipment

[Roger de Coverly]

[*] Rounds: 5 (3 on Saturday, 2 on Sunday)
[*] Sections: Open section with a lower limit based on both FIDE and ECF standard grades - Major section for players under the limit
[*] Prizes: tbc, but I expect between £300 and £600 prize pot in total
[*] Entry fees: £40, in line with current congresses and to reflect increased costs in venue. There are limited subsidised entries for 2100+ FIDE players and free entries for 2200+. Free for GM/IM/FM
[*] Entry form: https://tinyurl.com/2u6n55na
[*] Entrants: Open: https://www.vegaresult.com/vega-trn/index.php?id=1548 - Major: https://www.vegaresult.com/vega-trn/index.php?id=1549
[*] Capacity: I expect it to be 50 max. If I get massive interest, I'll need to find another arbiter to help out (The venue can probably cope with up to 90)
[*] Other: depending on interest, I may organise the following week-end (11th-12 of March) a smaller event in the same location (different, smaller room) with similar rating floor as the Open
[/list]

Picture of the Hall:



For those interested in some of the thought process behind the changes:
- the school I used previously has no longer availabilities on Sundays, and venue inflation meant that the council hall is now comparable to other options I had
- Location: the chance to have access to a fancy building rather than the usual schools or halls. Plus I no longer have to drive 2 hour to/from the venue each day.
- the rating floor in the Open is to experiment in line with some European tournaments and following some player feedback. Note that I probably have equal feedback for and against a floor - another idea I am tinkering with is an acceleration method I saw in a French tournament (section split in 3 thirds, virtual points increasing as you win more "real point"- I think they call it "Suisse Accéléré Degressif SAD" - I don't think it's great for a 5 round tournament)
- there are no major FIDE rated tournaments in early March, and none that are British GP and ECF GP eligible
- Price increase: Venue inflation. I could have stayed at £30, but that would have meant no prize at all and increased the risk
- As usual, a great thanks to Joe Conlon for lending the equipment

[Roger de Coverly]

[*] Rounds: 5 (3 on Saturday, 2 on Sunday)

I'm not convinced people will find a 9 am start terribly attractive, partcularly if no players over 2400 take part. Given the ECF doesn't publicise the Grand Prix, I also doubt whether that will be much of a justification for the early start.

[Wadih Khoury]

[*] Rounds: 5 (3 on Saturday, 2 on Sunday)

I'm not convinced people will find a 9 am start terribly attractive, partcularly if no players over 2400 take part. Given the ECF doesn't publicise the Grand Prix, I also doubt whether that will be much of a justification for the early start.

I appreciate the sentiment, however my criteria for this tournament was the eligibility to both (I did check with the ECF). Which means it had to be an Open with no upper bound. This mandates a 4 hour session in order to be able to rate 2400+ FIDE players.
Which in turns mandates an early start. Or a Friday evening session which means more venue costs.

Let's see how it plays out. My last events had a 9:30 start and were oversubscribed, so hopefully a 9:00 will not be too big a step change. The Hastings weekend tournaments worked along the same schedule roughly, and I don't believe it was the few titled players which attracted the players to come and play.

Anyhow, I recall you are almost a local, so no long commute excuses for you!

[Roger de Coverly]

Anyhow, I recall you are almost a local, so no long commute excuses for you!

Regular tournament players will need a longer notice time. I'm already off to Torquay for the Bartlett memorial that weekend.

(In Henley's favour there's a nearby Wetherspoons)

[Wadih Khoury]

Regular tournament players will need a longer notice time. I'm already off to Torquay for the Bartlett memorial that weekend.

Yes, unfortunately as an amateur organiser, I tend to organise at the last minute when I spot no tournaments to take my son to! got to keep him busy.

[Tim Spanton]

I am probably being particularly dense, but nowhere in this thread can I see where the dates of the tournament are explicitly stated.

[Wadih Khoury]

I am probably being particularly dense, but nowhere in this thread can I see where the dates of the tournament are explicitly stated.

Thanks Tim, I was convinced I typed the date 20 times today... Seems I am getting older by the minute

At least the registration form does have the dates, I'll take that as a win.

[Roger de Coverly]

- the rating floor in the Open is to experiment in line with some European tournaments and following some player feedback. Note that I probably have equal feedback for and against a floor - another idea I am tinkering with is an acceleration method I saw in a French tournament (section split in 3 thirds, virtual points increasing as you win more "real point"- I think they call it "Suisse Accéléré Degressif SAD" - I don't think it's great for a 5 round tournament)

There are at least two ideas behind acceleration, neither of which apply to the tournament proposed.

The first is where there are more participants than would produce a single result in a knockout. So that's limits of 32 for five rounds and 64 for six. In practice tournaments seem to be able to go up to about double the limits without many adverse effects.

The other reasoning is when you have all the players from GMs down to beginners all in the same tournament, it attempts to reduce the number of rating mismatches in the early rounds. The side effect of that, if it works, is to increase Norm chances by reducing or eliminating lower rated opposition being paired against Norm seekers.

The French liked using a system of dummy points, the advantage of this system being that they could use the usual computer pairings but based on the fictitious points. FIDE adopted something very similar under the name of "Baku system". British arbiters had a similar approach, but the main idea sometimes seemed that they could make up the rules as they went along, shuffle pairing cards and debate fairness and floats. Experiments in acceleration go all the way back to the monster tournaments of the 1970s.

I would think the eligibility wording could be simpler. You are eligible for the Open only if your rating has been at least x FIDE or y ECF in any of the lists in a recent period, You are eligible for the Major if not eligible for the Open. Not sure how you deal with borderline cases where a rating briefly peaked.
,

[Ian Thompson]

The French liked using a system of dummy points, the advantage of this system being that they could use the usual computer pairings but based on the fictitious points. FIDE adopted something very similar under the name of "Baku system". British arbiters had a similar approach, but the main idea sometimes seemed that they could make up the rules as they went along, shuffle pairing cards and debate fairness and floats. Experiments in acceleration go all the way back to the monster tournaments of the 1970s.

The Suisse Accéléré Degressif (SAD) system is described, in French, here.

Players are given either 2, 1 or 0 additional virtual points, in addition to their actual points, before doing the pairings. The variation on other accelerated pairing systems of this type is that lower ranked players who only initially got 1 or 0 virtual points are given more virtual points if they get off to a good start.

The system appears to fail to meet FIDE's requirements that the pairings aren't fixed to make it easier to obtain norms if this statement in the document is correct - "Each group includes at least 25% of the players, at most 50%. The Elo ratings serving as boundaries for the groups are determined by the arbiter before round 1, taking into account mainly the possibilities of norms and the prizes per category set by the organisers."

[John Upham]

As Secretary of Berkshire Chess Association I am delighted to see this event on the calendar plus the venue is really rather stunning.

I note that the floor is uncarpeted? How much noise does it generate when walking around?

The ceremonial county tri-point of Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire is to the North East of Henley-on-Thames somewhere near Remenham Court (does anyone know precisely?)

Might I suggest that you request the organisers of the Chiltern League to do an email shot to all of their players and I will do my best for Berkshire Chess Association and further afield?

Assuming my table tennis induced foot injury recovers in time I would very much like to visit.

I wish you all the best for this event!

[Wadih Khoury]

I would think the eligibility wording could be simpler. You are eligible for the Open only if your rating has been at least x FIDE or y ECF in any of the lists in a recent period, You are eligible for the Major if not eligible for the Open. Not sure how you deal with borderline cases where a rating briefly peaked.
,

I could go on for pages as to why I ended up with this version and wording. And my conclusion is that there are no perfect solutions. But the shorter version of it was:

• Many players have been complaing in recent tournaments I attended about the pairing rating mismatches they had to endure (their words). There are 2 broad scenarios: a) a genuine mismatch where a 2200 plays a 1400. Neither party enjoys the game nor learns from it. b) an underated mismatch where a 2000/2000 ECF/FIDE plays a 2000/1500 ECF/FIDE with the higher side getting a very unfavourable risk reward ratio. While these individuals did say they were fine with it on occasion, the recent trends found them sometimes playing all 5 of their games in a week-end congress under these scenarios.
• I first considered a simple Over 1900 FIDE in any of the previous x month( I know how frustrating it is to miss a cutoff by a few days) . Thing is, it would have been really unfair for a 2200 ECF player with let's say 1850 FIDE.
• I then considered to put a Over 1900 FIDE OR Over 2100 ECF. But then someone with 1899 FIDE and 2099 ECF would still miss out while they are clearly not a scenario a or b player.
• Hence the idea of using an everage of FIDE and ECF (minus 100 as this is the average delta between both ratings when excluding juniors). Whilst not perfect, I trialled it in previous events and it seems to work. There were of course unhappy players as well as happy ones. And it is a pain to explain.

On another note, I realised following your other comments that I can afford a later start time on Sunday (likely 10:00). The time was initially setup for 9:00 (similar to Saturday) as I was thinking of a 6 round event, but decided against it (6 x 4 hour games with late finish on a Sunday isn't the most attractive proposal)

As Secretary of Berkshire Chess Association I am delighted to see this event on the calendar plus the venue is really rather stunning.

I note that the floor is uncarpeted? How much noise does it generate when walking around?

.......
Might I suggest that you request the organisers of the Chiltern League to do an email shot to all of their players and I will do my best for Berkshire Chess Association and further afield?
....

I beleive it will generate noise simiar to some Chiltern League venues

I'll drop an email to my Chiltern league captain and feel free to forward to local leagues associations. Note that I am still waiting for the council to confirm the price upon which the events hinges.

[Mike Gunn]

I understand what you are trying to achieve with your event (and why you are doing it) but "Open" is a misnomer for your top event (because it isn't open to all comers). You should really call it something else!
(Elite?)

[Roger de Coverly]

b) an underated mismatch where a 2000/2000 ECF/FIDE plays a 2000/1500 ECF/FIDE with the higher side getting a very unfavourable risk reward ratio. While these individuals did say they were fine with it on occasion, the recent trends found them sometimes playing all 5 of their games in a week-end congress under these scenarios.

I think five similar pairings is likely a function of the rating rules used to establish ranking order. The choices being all FIDE, all ECF, highest of FIDE/ECF, lowest FIDE/ECF or perhaps average of the two. But it's likely that a player capable of playing at a 2000 standard or higher will eventually meet players of that standard by the simplest of the pairing rules, that of playing players of the same score.

At my recent 4NCL Congress in Harrogate, I was towards the tail of the field. My score of 2/5 was enough to modestly boost my ECF rating whilst reducing my FIDE rating. All my opponents had both FIDE and ECF ratings, but mostly being young adults had ECF ratings somewhat higher than their FIDE ones. The pairings were using the higher of the two as the seeding order.

I dare say the gap between FIDE and ECF ratings is being monitored, but I suspect over time it may widen for those players playing in dual rated events.

[Wadih Khoury]

The event is confirmed, so please feel free to share the link around and register.

The participants' list is up to date and I usually enter new entrants within 24 hours.

I am also hoping to have a waiting room for players and families, just waiting for the price to be confirmed:



No food obviously in such a nice room