The Independent: The Great British Enthusiast

[Jonathan Bryant]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... on=Gallery


1 and 5.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

These must have been taken at this year's Southern Gigafinal.
#1 is Annie Edward, who I mentioned (though not by name) here. She is the granddaughter of Ernie Szücs.

[Kevin Thurlow]

Not sure you should put names to photos of children...

I assume they get used to the ghastly blue squares on the board?

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

It's very common to caption photos with the names of the children shown in the picture.

The blue-squared boards are one of the least irritating things about the Gigafinal. I love the idea of the UK Chess Challenge and the Megafinal tournament is the highlight of the chess calendar for the majority of chess-playing children, but the Gigafinal really lets it down.

Here are some of the things I don't like about it (here I'm talking about the Southern Gigafinal, though I've been told that the Northern one has many of the same problems):

1) Venue. This ought to be a great venue, but putting the children and the parents in the same school hall, with just a curtain to separate them, is ludicrous. The noise level is very high for the players. Usually the organisers are lucky with the weather and most parents wait outside on the grass. However if it is raining then there simply isn't room in 1/2 of the hall for all the parents to fit. I've seen children play football on the parents' side of the hall whilst chess is still being played on the other side of the curtain!

2) Clocks. Every single game at this level should have a clock. The children here have all performed well in their Megafinal, having qualified from their school tournament to get to the Megafinal in the first place, and so are not complete beginners. There is no excuse for not using them, several people have offered to lend Basman clocks free of charge for the weekend.

3) Chess sets. Many of the chess sets are small are cheap looking. Perhaps this is deliberate because the players are a little squashed and so the smaller board takes up less space?

4) Prize money. First prize - £100. Second prize - £0. A bit biased towards the winners in my opinion.

5) Adjudications. As far as I know if a game hasn't been played using a clock, the result is still decided using the rather clunky "3 or more pawns ahead = win, less than 3 pawns = draw" method.

6) Tie-break. I mentioned Marcus Harvey losing out to Felix on the toss of a coin in an earlier thread.

7) Grading. I'm pretty sure that the Gigafinal games are not sent in for grading. I like to see children get a grade as early as possible, so it would be great if events like this were graded. Once the children get a grade they can work on improving it. I can't remember what the game fee is for junior games, but I think it works out at about £1 per child for a six round tournament.

[Matt Mackenzie]

And of course, if they don't use clocks the games won't be graded anyway

[Christopher Kreuzer]

5) Adjudications. As far as I know if a game hasn't been played using a clock, the result is still decided using the rather clunky "3 or more pawns ahead = win, less than 3 pawns = draw" method.

This one really surprises me. They really do that?

[Kevin Thurlow]

"It's very common to caption photos with the names of the children shown in the picture."

True - but should it be? There is an argument that any captioned photo may infringe the Data Protection Act (unless suitable permission has been granted). However, many county councils and education authorities demand that parents or guardians (or in some cases, Courts) give written permission before any photograph of a child is published AND that the child must not be named in any case. http://www.n-somerset.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyr ... elines.pdf is an example.

I am not saying that this is a wonderful idea, only that it happens.

"And of course, if they don't use clocks the games won't be graded anyway"

unless people forget to tell the grader about the lack of clocks of course!

[Alex Holowczak]

And of course, if they don't use clocks the games won't be graded anyway

Of course they can. There are two ways of thinking of it:
1) Some leagues still have adjudications, but those adjudicated games still get sent for grading. So they might as well not use clocks.
2) No one in the Office would know otherwise, and it's unlikely that the graders would check, or even be that bothered.

[Eoin Devane]

How is a game without a clock actually supposed to work? What's to stop one player (presumably the lower-graded) from just sitting there until the end of the session and then claiming a draw? Something similar once happened to me in a school match. The hosts only had enough clocks for the top four boards, so I, on board five, had to play without one. My opponent ended up moving really slowly, until eventually I offered him a draw to avoid delaying the rest of the team from going home.

[Richard Thursby]

5) Adjudications. As far as I know if a game hasn't been played using a clock, the result is still decided using the rather clunky "3 or more pawns ahead = win, less than 3 pawns = draw" method.

So, if the position at the end of the following game came up
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1262430

white could just sit there until the end of the session and be given a win, despite being powerless to defend against both 36 ... Bf8# and 36 ... Rh5#.

[Alex Holowczak]

How is a game without a clock actually supposed to work? What's to stop one player (presumably the lower-graded) from just sitting there until the end of the session and then claiming a draw? Something similar once happened to me in a school match. The hosts only had enough clocks for the top four boards, so I, on board five, had to play without one. My opponent ended up moving really slowly, until eventually I offered him a draw to avoid delaying the rest of the team from going home.

Absolutely nothing. At County Association Under 10 Championships, that's not really a problem. If anything, they play far too quickly...

[Matt Harrison]

At the local megafinal some years ago, my son was playing in the U11 section, with no clocks whatsoever. Mike Basman was there and felt that this wasn't a problem. After 3 rounds, the top 10 seeded players had reached the top 5 boards. Round 4 (without clocks) then resulted in 5 draws (on the rule above - less than 3 pt material advantage = draw) on these boards. Round 5 was similar. At this point some clocks were found for the last round. But the title was determined by a 5 minute blitz game as a result.

[John Upham]

One may wonder what the MJB criteria for a successful Mega (or any other) Final are?

I assume that without clocks one could sac a piece (correctly) and then ones opponents sits there without moving being given a win on a points count?

Seems ludicrous to me.

[Ian Kingston]

I helped out at a couple of Megafinals a few years ago. We had a supply of clocks that we could use for games that were not being played at an appropriate rate. I don't know if this was officially sanctioned, but no one objected.

[Stewart Reuben]

Well, Michael Basman is a law unto himself.