Yorkshire league 2026/7 Season

[MartinCarpenter]

Off we went again last Saturday.

York had two captains and various players on holiday but won very well vs Bradford who have - recruiting Phil Watson - continued to morph into Bradford central redux.
(Still issues lower down though, are Ilkley et al basically eating their younger players?).

Huddersfield look properly scary, with Ashton (x 2 for now (?)), Rughani over from Eccles and Alan Walton lurking on board 1 in Division 2. They managed 5-3 vs a very strong Doncaster.
(Who I think have drawn a few of the top players from Lincolnshire.).

Ilkley had a huge set of top boards but lost a close saving match Vs Harrogate.

Rose Forgrove got a draw Vs Leeds in that Derby.

Sheffield - Hull got postponed.

I suppose probably Forgrove and I dunno, one of Leeds or Bradford to go down? Who knows who'll win it.

The top few boards look set to be slightly stronger than last year which was already as strong as I could remember.

I guess that York B (who'll be a fair bit stronger at times than this week) and Calderdale will go up from the IMB. They both started well.

[Stephen Westmoreland]

Yes for HDCA. Crystal was working and could not make it. Due to the trains been out at Huddersfield, we could not get Alan to Doncaster, so he played for our B team this round.

With three teams, drivers are a god send!

[MartinCarpenter]

Yes for HDCA. Crystal was working and could not make it. Due to the trains been out at Huddersfield, we could not get Alan to Doncaster, so he played for our B team this round.

With three teams, drivers are a god send!

They are! One day they'll stop messing with Huddersfield station, it must be quite maddening.

You're a perfectly real chance to win the league then, but someone like Harrogate or Ilkley could easily do that too. Although to judge by Hull B's line up in this round, Hull A are/were due to be really stacked against Sheffield.

[Stephen Westmoreland]

It certainly is maddening. Having to pick my daughter up from Brighouse station every Sunday for work. A rail upgrade that has knocked out services every weekend for the last year.

[Steve Wild]

The league does seem to be getting stronger and stronger. Nearly all the teams on Saturday were clearly over 16000 combined. I wonder how it compares with other seasons.

There are 5 teams who could possibly win it and while Rose Forgrove will find it tough despite a great result who else will be in a relegation battle. A lot will depend on the team Leeds can put out week to week. Even though Bradford and Harrogate (normally 4th and 5th in recent years) look strong, they need to have good seasons to keep clear of relegation zone.

[MartinCarpenter]

The league does seem to be getting stronger and stronger. Nearly all the teams on Saturday were clearly over 16000 combined. I wonder how it compares with other seasons.

Well on a short term basis it's quite easy to track: firmly up Doncaster + 3 x ~2100's from Lincolnshire (?) were a considerable improvement and Huddersfield + a whole bunch of Mancunians are more than that.
(These are all good things of course.).

Historical comparisons are harder. I do have board by board data back one bit of Chess nuts data but the grades have gone through a huge number of changes. My best guess is that boards 1 and 2, maybe 3, are maybe a bit stronger - or at least more evenly spread - than 'usual' but the lower boards aren't very different.

We seem to be producing more 2200+ juniors than 2000+.

It's been very notable recently that in most matches we can still roughly control boards 4-8, but can't do it for 1-3. Not because our top boards have been weak!

The York A team that we had when we first won would still be very well placed to win the league. 2400, 2200 x 3-4, 2050-2100 to round it off, never weaker. Roughly a 6-2 average match score. Sheffield kept pace with us back then.

There are 5 teams who could possibly win it and while Rose Forgrove will find it tough despite a great result who else will be in a relegation battle. A lot will depend on the team Leeds can put out week to week. Even though Bradford and Harrogate (normally 4th and 5th in recent years) look strong, they need to have good seasons to keep clear of relegation zone.

Relegation really is scary right now - it's a short season if you hit genuinely strong York/Hull/Sheffield teams then you can do everything right and still lose.

The IMB intrigues me actually. Past Calderdale there's basically just B teams who are even threatening promotion. And it's really hard to compete for them when you almost need 3 x 2100(+) on the top three. We've always spotted York B one player to cover board 1 but that one board.

[Alan Walton]

For some historical information, when Bradford won the Woodhouse in 2014, breaking the York / Sheffield dominance; these are the key matches that year

Bradford 5-3 York

1 Matthias Gantner (c220) 0-1 Richard Palliser (229)
2 Alan Walton (199) 1-0 Paul Townsend (213)
3 Matthew Webb (181) 1-0 Chris Ross (205)
4 Adam Lang (175) 1-0 David Adams (205)
5 David Grant (196) 1/2 Detlef Plump (199)
6 Winston Williams (182) 1/2 Jos Woolley (200)
7 Ihor Lewyk (186) 0-1 Jim Nicholson (176)
8 Julian Chapman (c180) 1-0 Martin Carpenter (171)

Sheffield 2.5-5.5 Bradford

1 Andrew Ledger (219) 1/2 Matthias Gantner (c220)
2 Allan Potts (c200) 0-1 Alan Walton (199)
3 Paul Cumbers (189) 0-1 Matthew Webb (181)
4 Denis Molofej (189) 0-1 David Grant (196)
5 Samuel Milson (191) 0-1 Adam Lang (175)
6 Peter Hempson (182) 1-0 Winston Williams (182)
7 Jeremy Hamm (181) 1/2 Julian Chapman (c180)
8 Michael Johnson (184) 1/2 Mike Walker (179)

[MartinCarpenter]

A fine effort from you it was too I've only very rarely lost in these big team matches but Julian just took me to pieces.

I obviously prefer to remember our 7-1 win from the season after! For some reason we seemed to keep alternating alarmingly big wins and tight losses/draws vs Bradford, the Sheffield matches were always very tight.

We did escalate rather in 2015 with Jean Luc Weller on 7 (200+ even then) and Adair on 1. That does illustrate how tough it was in a way - the strongest York (and Sheffield) teams were remarkably strong.

Not that I was ever quite sure about it. Players like Jim Nic, Jeremy H etc often enough scored 80%+ for a season! It seemed wrong that they couldn't get a place for the most important matches. Although Jeremy was captain, so OK, I can understand and did do the same when given the chance

That extreme top strength has actually dropped off somewhat but the 4th-6th best teams might well be a bit stronger than they were. It's much nicer and healthier in many ways.

[MartinCarpenter]

The league does seem to be getting stronger and stronger. Nearly all the teams on Saturday were clearly over 16000 combined. I wonder how it compares with other seasons.

Ok, right I've found it. I was sure I'd done it - I scraped chessnuts back when Jon G was running it. Unlike the current (basically brilliant) LMS, you could get all the data from every match played very easily.

Averaged over every team, 2010-11 through to 2016-17 - things were very consistent over that time period. No new teams, few juniors etc.

Presuming - probably not at all confidently! - that you can use the formula to convert old chessnuts grades over to current ECF 4 figures you have:

1. 196 -> 2170
2. 184 -> 2080
3. 179 -> 2043
4. 173 -> 1998
5. 168 -> 1960
6. 162 -> 1915
7. 157 -> 1878
8. 149 -> 1818

The absolute average player in that period was about 171 -> 1983 or so. The average team was ~15860. That was over 12 teams not the present

York's average team in that period comes out just under 17100. Sheffield slightly behind, Bradford a little further and so on. The strongest teams from anyone in recent times have been about that, no one close to averaging it.

Last week's team in play were 16,146. Slightly up but not massively so. It will be quite a lot up once Hull and Sheffield get factored in!
(Hull A will be very strong, look at who's in Hull B.).

But you have to give it a whole season to shake down, people to have randomly weak/strong teams and so on. Last season was seemingly.... 15813. It's almost spooky!