Inaugural Wells Chess Congress 8th - 10th March 2024

[Kevin Thurlow]

https://wellschess.co.uk/product/wells-chess-congress/

"A 5-round Swiss tournaments in 3 sections with 4-hour playing sessions.

Venue: The Town Hall, Market Place, Wells, Somerset, BA5 2RB
Date: 8th to 10th March 2024

Tournament sections
Section Grade Limit Entry Fee* Prizes
Open
(FIDE-rated) None £35 First: £350, Second: £200, Third: £150
Major Under 1900 £30 First: £250, Second: £150, Third: £110
Minor Under 1600 £30 First: £250, Second: £150, Third: £110
* Not including any applicable ECF fee. Anyone under 18 on 1st September 2023 will receive a £5 discount. Late entries after 14th February 2024 incur a £3 additional charge. No entries after 1st March 2024.

ECF fees
In the Open section the ECF grading fees are as follows:

no charge for Gold or Platinum ECF members,
£1.50 for FIDE registered players with a non-English affiliation,
£12 for all other players.
In Major and Minor sections:

no charge for Silver, Gold or Platinum ECF members, £9 otherwise.
Cash prizes
Depending on entry, there will be at least one grading prize in each section.

There is a team prize of £50 awarded to the highest scoring (genuine club) team of 4 players.

Except in the Open tournament, no ungraded player will be awarded a cash prize greater than £60.

Playing schedule
Friday
18.50 Opening
19.00 Round 1

Saturday
10.00 Round 2
15.00 Round 3

Sunday
10.00 Round 4
15.00 Round 5

Playing sessions are 4-hours. Players will be defaulted if not present within 30 minutes of the start of a round.

Time controls
In all sections, the time controls will be 90 minutes plus 30 seconds per move from the start of each game.

Byes
A half-point bye may be requested in any one of rounds 1,2,3 or 4 (prior to the start of the round)."

[Kevin Thurlow]

The above is from the Wells Chess Club website. I play for a different Somerset club, but different clubs here seem to be friendly with each other! We probably have to be, Division 1 only features Sedgemoor, Wells and Yeovil, playing each other four times each...

For the benefit of any strangers to the area, the venue is next to the market (which should be running on the Saturday) and the cathedral, which is rather impressive. There are plenty of places to eat and drink nearby, between rounds, and (weather permitting), you can find green soothing spaces within a couple of minutes walk. On Saturday, you may well see and hear the Town Crier. You can also see the spot in the Market Square where Judge Jeffries made his less than benevolent pronouncements, and a marked piece of land, denoting the distance of Mary Rand's gold medal winning long jump from 1964.

If you are commuting, Wells used to have three railway stations, but that has reduced to, er, zero. There is car parking, but it is worth researching, as the one I normally use (Union Street) only allows you to stop for three hours, but they stop charging at 6 pm from memory, so it's OK for Friday. The Cinema car park is less than ten minutes walk from the venue. But I may well be completely ignorant of better options.

There are lots of places to stay close to the venue.

Wells is a great place. Wells Chess Club is very dynamic and they are to be congratulated on running this event.

[Roger de Coverly]

If you are commuting, Wells used to have three railway stations, but that has reduced to, er, zero. There is car parking, but it is worth researching, as the one I normally use (Union Street) only allows you to stop for three hours, but they stop charging at 6 pm from memory, so it's OK for Friday. The Cinema car park is less than ten minutes walk from the venue. But I may well be completely ignorant of better options.

There are lots of places to stay close to the venue.

If they are looking to attract players from outside the area, they need to give some information about parking. That's the case both for those choosing a hotel withing walking distance of the venue and those looking to travel from slightly further away. Also whether there are decent bus links to main line railway stations. You can get so far with Google and hotel booking websites, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

Regarding places to stay, the Premier Inn came up as fully booked.

[IM Jack Rudd]

The solution I normally go for is to put the postcode of the venue into https://www.traveline.info and see what it says. It's not giving an awful lot of tempting options if I were going there from Bideford.

[John Sellen]

I considered entering this congress but it appears very difficult to reach by public transport
It seems that from Brighton I would need to get a train to Bath and then have a bus journey of over an hour to Wells
Can the organisers advise if there is an easier way

[Roger de Coverly]

It seems that from Brighton I would need to get a train to Bath and then have a bus journey of over an hour to Wells

There also seems to be a bus route from Bristol. Many trains from London run through Bath anyway. Apart from Britsol, Bath looks to be the nearest Inter City rail station. I've done Frome by train in the past. That involved changing at Bath to a local train. Frome is a bit better connected, you can also get the local train to or from Westbury and pick up the London to Exeter service.

[Chris Strong]

Just one month to go to our Congress. I am one of the organisers.
I understand the issue of travel by Public Transport and, sadly, this is the main problem we have in the country. However, the journey will be worth it. Wells is a beautiful city and the congress will be in a magnificent venue. All prize money is guaranteed as we have secured healthy sponsorship for our first event.
As far as parking goes; there is no problem in Wells. We have a farmer's field very close for Saturday and this is also the main parking for the Market goers. The farmer has agreed that we can stay overnight if needed. On Sunday there is plenty of free on-street parking around.
I know the Premier Inn is full but there are plenty of other options. The Swan Hotel, the White Hart (our club venue) and The Ancient Gatehouse are within 200 yards of the town hall.
Hope this answers anyone's concerns but now that I am registered on the Forum I am happy to answer any other issues.

[Chris Strong]

We have an extensive map and directions on parking for the Wells congress now on our website https://wellschess.co.uk/wells-parking/
Numbers are looking good at this stage.
Hopefully we can get many more to our first congress and make it a good one.

[Chris Strong]

The final week before we start our first Congress and we have hit 100 entries evenly spread out across the three categories.
This means a 1 in 10 chance of a podium finish plus there will be Rating Prizes. The sun is out and Wells is looking glorious.
Please come along and join in the fun.
There will be a social on Saturday night hosted by the Wells Chess Club with food included in the White Hart.

[Kevin Thurlow]

We started tonight. Everything is well laid out, playing conditions are very good. Entries passed the 100 mark, but there were loads of byes this evening. Special mention for Rugantinos, a local Italian restaurant that is sponsoring the event. The menu looks good!

https://chess-results.com/tnr895940.asp ... ES&flag=30 for results etc.

Round 2 has the interesting pairing of A Hill - A Hill. Steve Boniface would be proud of that. Interestingly, the "Open" room has some sort of mountaineering tool firmly attached to the wall. It looks as if you could only remove it if you had another of the same tool, which is probably a wise precaution.

[Paul Ashton]

Thanks to all the organisers of this event. Good Congress, well run in a fine venue and a lovely city to explore (if your games finished early). Same again next year?

[Kevin Thurlow]

Chris Strong implied there would be another one in his opening comments to Round 5. The organizers did a great job. Keith Arkell won with 4.5/5, drawing in the last round to Supratit Banerjee (who doubtless was prouder of that than his other played draw), second on 4 were Oleksandr Matlak (Wells), and Pengxiao Zhu (Devon).

It certainly helped that there are plenty of places to get food and drink within 5 minutes walk.

[Chris Strong]

Thank you Paul and Kevin for posting the kind comments. the Wells Club were very proud of the Congress and would like to run another one next year.
On the plus side, the venue proved to be as good as we hoped, players loved the accommodation and the City itself. The negatives were relayed to me by others during the event in a very professional and supportive way to make the small improvements next time. Thanks for that, too.

[David Gilbert]

It certainly helped that there are plenty of places to get food and drink within 5 minutes walk.

Apart from the chess congress, the excellent venue and really nice people, the cheap tea & coffee (with free biscuits), amazing cafes & restaurants, great places to stay, a bustling street market with delicious street food, the incredible cathedral and gardens, Saturday’s live jazz band, and the delightful tribute to Mary Rand’s Olympic Gold medal jump (then a World Record) in the Market Square - 6.76 metres is a lot longer than It was on the BBC in 1964. Apart from that what has Wells done for us?

Hope to see you next year!

[Brendan O'Gorman]

Photos https://brendanogorman.smugmug.com/Ches ... ells-2024-