The current pressident of the Northumberland Chess Association John Wheeler has been awarded The President’s Award for Services to Chess by the ECF 2019 awards for being actively involved in chess in Northumberland for 40 years. In addition to this, the Northumberland Chess Bulletin has won the Magazine of the year award for it’s impressive content.
This years Zollner book is now available! The book is 70 pages and contains all games played in this years Zollner, Sell and Gilroy competitions with diagrams and light annotations where appropriate. The price is £8 per copy if collected from John Wheeler. He will bring some copies to Gosforth Chess Club on Monday evenings and to NCA meetings in September. Email info@northumberlandchess.com if you’re interested any wish to reserve a copy. Electronic copies are available for the same price for those with special requirements.
South Shields Chess Club hosted this years Unofficial Blitz Championship of the North East.
The Event at The Word, National Centre for the Written Word. Playing Chess at this Iconic Venue overlooking River Tyne certainly makes a change from change from the normal venues. The room was airy, bright and gave opportunities to pop out onto the viewing platform to get some fresh air and watch the cruise ships and ferries coming up the Tyne. The competition was well organised by Brian Towers and his team, attracting 49 players from all over the North East and even as far as Edinburgh.
The Event has received a lot of positive feedback already and demonstrates that there is an appetite for more one day events, so we hope that other clubs will take up the challenge. Consisting of 9 rounds of 5 mins + 2 games, the tournament was well contested. The overall Winner was David Walker of Leam Lane and South Shields, second Charlie Storey and third David Mooney. Simon McGuiness and Jack Erskine–Periera picked up Grading prizes, John Turnock the Senior Prize and Max Turner the Junior Prize.
A full set of results can be found on the Chess Results website
We do hope this Event will become part of the Local Chess Calendar and may even be considered as the Official Blitz Championship of the North East next year, please send any feedback to Eddie Czestochowski on this or any aspect of the competition.
So there’s been no love so far for either halving the size of Division 1 or removing promotion and relegation. But perhaps Option 3 is James Turner’s suggestion: re-inflate Division 1 to 12 teams, so at least 3 teams will be fighting to avoid 2 relegation places. (Or even to 13, which would equalise the whites and blacks.)
What if we tried a one-off “reset” of Division 1’s membership, but without removing promotion and relegation? On the basis that a team who didn’t care very much to be the 10th team in a league of 10, might feel better about it if they could collude with two other teams, ahead of the League Meeting, to all enter Division 1 at the same time?
(Regarding the other two divisions, I would prefer 12-8-10 to 12-11-7, with a mid-season split in Division 2. Firstly because Division 2 is “sticky” – if after a season you need to juggle the numbers, you can usually convince teams to come up to Division 2 faster than you can convince them to drop down to Division 3. Secondly because leaving Alnwick in a 10-team Division 3 rather than a 7-team Division 3 means you can give everyone else 4 homes, 4 aways and 1 Alnwick-away.)
The “Big 8” clubs right now are Durham City, Forest Hall, Gosforth, Jesmond, Leam Lane, Morpeth, South Shields and Tynemouth. That leaves 4 places. Which of the following teams/clubs would be willing to join a 12-team Division 1 with three of the others?
Forest Hall 2nd team – YES
Tynemouth 2nd team – YES
Morpeth 2nd team
South Shields 2nd team – YES
Gosforth 2nd team
Leam Lane 2nd team
Newcastle University
Tynedale
Gateshead
Jesmond 2nd team
Durham City 2nd team
Nothing reassures an anxious public like a fixed-width table. Party like it’s 1989!
Rec = received. Sub = submitted.
Dec Jun
Northumberland Rec Sub Rec Sub
League Yes Yes Yes No
Summer Knockout '18 No
Summer Knockout '19 ---In Progress---
Individual Champs Yes Yes Yes No
Congress '18 Yes Yes
Not held: Rapidplay '18. No info: Rapidplay '19. Dec '19 list: Congress '19.
Gosforth No Yes No
Morpeth Yes Yes No No
South Shields Yes No No
Tynedale No Yes No
Tynemouth Yes Yes No
No info from: Alnwick, Forest Hall, Gateshead, Jesmond, Leam Lane, Newcastle University.
Dec Jun
Durham Rec Sub Rec Sub
League Yes Yes Yes No
Individual Champs No No
Ungraded: Ron Evers '18, Ron Evers '19.
Not held: Congress '18, Rapidplay '18. No info: Congress '19, Rapidplay '19.
Bishop Auckland Yes Yes Yes No
Durham City No No
Cleveland grader doing: Darlington, Hartlepool, Peterlee. No info from: Hetton Lyons.
Dec Jun
Darlington Rec Sub Rec Sub
League No Yes No
Dec Jun
NCCU Rec Sub Rec Sub
Club Championships Yes No
County Matches Yes Yes Yes No
As I mentioned a few months ago, I’m going to be changing the website server that hosts the Northumberland Chess website. From the 28th of June, the website might be inaccessible for a day or two until this is completed. Everything will look very similar and you’ll still be able to access the website at www.northumberlandchess.com. A few upgrades that have been made will become live as well.
South Shields Chess Club invite you all to come to The Word Central Library in South Shields and spend a few hours to play some blitz chess on the 6th of July 2019, the competition will be FIDE rated, many people will already have a FIDE Reference number, but if not all we require is your date of birth, we intend to run a 9 round competition, starting around 11am and finishing about 3pm, including a lunch break. The competition will be in THE ROUND, the top floor exhibition area, you will have fantastic views overlooking the Tyne river. Free parking at the Mill Dam car park the building is fully accessible with lifts taking you up to the 4th Floor. We have a limit up to 60 players so we would advise that you book a place in advance to secure entry. Prize money may vary subject to the actual number of entries on the day, but it our intention to split any profits, if there are any, 50% to the Durham Chess congress next May and 50% to Cancer UK.
1st Prize £150
2nd Prize £100
3rd Prize £50
2 x grading prize of £30 (cut-offs to be decided on the day according to entry), Junior (U18) prize – £20, Senior (S65) prize – £20
Maximum of one prize per entrant.
Advertised start time: 11:00am
Time control: 5+2 (game in 5 minutes with a 2 second increment)
Entry £10, payable on the day but please advise you are coming so that we can prepare the admin. Current entries can be viewed on Chess Results.
Email for entries: blitz@southshieldschessclub.co.uk and any more information you may require about the event.
Promotion and relegation between Divisions 1 and 2 isn’t working. There is a gulf in grading that has gotten wider over the past decade: nine of the ten Division 1 teams, at some point this season, had a higher-graded player on board 5 than the eventual Division 2 winners had on board 1. (The team that didn’t, finished four points adrift at the bottom.)
The result is promoted teams having to be persuaded to go up. I’ve heard as many grumbles over the years from teams unwillingly inserted into Division 1 as from teams unwillingly excluded. But if we have a slightly smaller Division 1, like this year’s 10, we end up relegating a Leam Lane Aces or a Jesmond Knights. I am very reluctant to make Jesmond’s first team prove they can win Division 2 with a perfect score. It would be a novelty for a week, then it would be like London Irish in the Championship.
I see the problem as one of supply and demand: when there used to be 30 clubs in the league, it was a privilege to secure one of approximately 12 places in Division 1. Now there are 12 clubs, it isn’t. Clubs who feel strongly that they should be represented in Division 1, already are, with room to spare. And so players who feel strongly that they should be playing in Division 1 are better off speaking to their club’s Division 1 captain than trying to win Division 2. In geek-speak, the algorithm that sorts players into divisions by skill is too efficient, since it operates in real-time within clubs rather than annually at the League Meeting, and a too-efficient sorting algorithm causes stratification.
I see two options:
I would prefer option 2 over 1, because option 1 could just give you twice as many games against the same people, but I would prefer option 1 over the status quo.
Does anyone feel strongly that they want to keep the current Division 1 and not do either of those things? (Click here to leave a comment)
Chris G