National Club Championship 2015

brilliantboy

Chess_Coach wrote: »

OK


How many teams in Leinster and how many in other 2 provinces but make sense to increase number

It seems fine to me the way it is. You just need stricter rules on player and club eligibility so clubs aren't able to buy a place in the ECC.

The solution is simple. A player should have to play X number of ICU rated games in the previous season to be eligible for the NCC.

The Gonzaga 2/Loyola loophole should also be closed.

Chess_Coach

That rule of x games is implemented

brilliantboy

Chess_Coach wrote: »

That rule of x games is implemented

It's implemented as 1 of 3 conditions a player can meet to be eligible.

All players must be members of the club they are representing. For the purposes of these rules, in order to be considered a member of the club, a player must satisfy at least one of the following conditions (or an equivalent at the discretion of the arbiter):
a.He/she has played for the club in at least two previous National Club Championships.
b.He/she has played for the club in a provincial league at least three times in the current season.
c.He/she lives or works within the local area of the club.

eclipsechaser

mikhail wrote: »

Finally destroyed the painting in the attic, did you?

How are the teams on paper? I expect Adare have some strong players if they beat you guys. How are Ennis looking?

Reunion and Mustapha: There's a thread for discussing the icu website(s) here. It'd be a pity to derail this thread from petty bickering about the NCC.

The painting was getting a bit too dark so had to go some year

Team can be seen here: http://www.irishchessunion.net


Results were:
1st Adare
2nd Gonzaga
3rd Loyola/ Gonzaga 2/ Trinity
4th Ennis

Apparently Loyola ran Gonzaga a bit close in the last round! That would have been funny.

Congratulations to Adare.

Yeah, again I think the ICU need to look at the rules and figure out what they want between brought-in players and flags of convenience. What's the thinking behind no 2 teams from the same club by the way? I would have thought it a positive thing to give strong promising Juniors a run out.

Ciaran

eclipsechaser wrote: »

What's the thinking behind no 2 teams from the same club by the way? I would have thought it a positive thing to give strong promising Juniors a run out.

I imagine it's about worries of second teams giving easy points to their first team. I'm sure that didn't happen here but an A team hammering their B team in the last round to win the competition could look a bit dodgy. A and B teams have to play in the first round on the Leinster leagues for that reason.

mikhail

The NCC is a swiss, right? I'd rather see more teams involved so B teams are less likely to be in such a position than rule them out. As eclipsechaser said, B teams are worthwhile for a few reasons.

reunion

Ciaran wrote: »

I imagine it's about worries of second teams giving easy points to their first team. I'm sure that didn't happen here but an A team hammering their B team in the last round to win the competition could look a bit dodgy. A and B teams have to play in the first round on the Leinster leagues for that reason.

But an A team playing a newly created team (but essentially B team) has the same feeling.

I would have imagined that you can't send Club 1 Team A and Club 1 Team B to the European Club Cup. Seems like you could just implement a rule, that would allow multiple teams from the same club but only 1 team allowed to compete in the European Club Cup.

Mustafa Chess wrote: »

I also heard that there might be another NCC in June this year in Dublin with rule changes and the two places for the 2016 ECC event up for grabs. But I would not be sure about that yet.

This can't be true, the ICU would be breaching the NCC rules for the second time in a year!

ICU rules wrote:

1. The INCC will be a Swiss format team event run over one weekend which will be the last full weekend in April, unless this is the Easter weekend, in which case it shall be held at a weekend as close to this weekend as is practical.

Retd.LoyolaCpt

Hi All,

I just wanted to chime in on this. The tournament was a great success as far as I was concerned. John Cassidy did a great job of finding us affordable, suitable and appropriate accommodation, as well as playing in the event himself, and going at great lengths to assemble enough teams to make 4 round Swiss system work (without the need of Byes). The latter might not have been clear from those outside the event but given the late pull-out of Bray/Greystones, John did incredibly well to find a team at such short notice to make the tournament viable and competitive. As well as John; Brian and Andrew ensured the tournament ran with what i felt was a friendly vibe and that the lines (grey areas) that you could and couldn't cross were well defined, and backed up firmly - which was needed given how blood tends to run hot at these events (See: the rest of this thread).

From our own perspective; we realize that we caused many people issues this weekend with our team which was unintended and I think I've apologized to all the relevant parties. I took over the captaincy on Friday morning as it had been an overly stressful job up to that point for Marc L. (no, that's too obvious: M Lincoln), as it would have been for anyone. We wanted to give our juniors some FIDE rated experience while at the same time allowing our BEA team a chance to play so we settled on a combination of the two. However, Marc had to deal with 3 pull-outs between Tuesday and Thursday which pushed our roster to its limits. I was very lucky to be able to get my old Drimnagh Castle bud, Stephen, on board (and he delivered with an undefeated tournament on a tough board). It was at this stage I was made aware of a complaint to the ICU about our team and so I emailed the committee members to assure them that this team, given the rules, could have equally player under the name of Trinity as the name Loyola, which was chosen when we had no Trinity members and were under the impression that this team was going down just to make up the numbers. I received replies from our PRO and a couple of other members but given the looseness of rule 3, which we all qualified for Trinity under as we either live, study, or work very close to it, they may have just decided it wasn't worth their time to cancel the tournament.

However, I'm just guessing. As far as I know, neither myself or Marc received any correspondence about the complaint and were reliant on the updates from the ICU.ie website. These updates almost finished our team as Marc (a reminder of how stressful his job was) had to update our team which was down to 4 at that stage, get permission from parents for our juniors, keep in touch with Cassidy and check to see the latest on our eligibility for the tournament. And then the tournament was cancelled. I, who had already postponed plans for the weekend, began to rearrange them in the next 12 hours, inform players that the tournament was cancelled and see if we could reclaim Hotel and travel fees already paid. But luckily we got clarification before any of this went to far, from the Gonzaga team who i believe were directly in touch with Pat Fitzsimons - rather than the rogue agent on the site. We were still looking for players at this stage and we had feelers out to a couple of players who we ended up throwing in our squad, just in case they could play.

That finally got us to the actual tournament where we tried our best to derail the Adare (first round) and Gonzaga (last) juggernauts but could only manage 4-2 losses against both. I can see why people would be wary of our team playing against Gonzaga, especially in the last round - but my guess is that those people probably haven't checked our rating list... The competition for board 8 on our Armstrong team has never been a more heated battle with no fewer than 8 currently in the chase, including: myself, Ray (another undefeated this weekend), Henry (our new first year) and Marc from our team at the weekend who are all over 1700. Initially 6 of these 8 were in the squad, hellbent on causing as much damage to the opposition as possible and making their mark on the incumbent Armstrong top 7. Combine this with the place in the ECC which we badly wanted and bragging rights over guys you see every few weeks, and you can see why we might not have rolled over on Sunday afternoon. Essentially, if I'd told them to offer draws/lose - I wouldn't have made it out of the team room in one piece.

On a personal note:
In the end, third place was probably a fair reflection of our tournament given the gulf between ourselves and the top 2. Henry and Padraig can use this experience in the future, Ray and Stephen continued their stellar form and Linc can be proud of the team he put together and guided through a tough week.

As regards rule changes, I think we should be doing more to get teams involved and not put the organiser in the position where he/she must put a 6 or more non-odd number of teams together - B teams are an idea but realistically i only think that would concern Gonzaga, Adare and perhaps Ennis but who knows in the future. The idea that players may throw games to allow another team qualify is already an issue with players from Leinster playing for Munster teams and vice-versa, if both teams play, where do their allegiances lie? I think anyone on the committee connected to a club playing or intending to play in the event should abstain from votes on that event. And rule 3 of eligibility needs to be clarified and refined.

Thanks John, Brian and Andrew for a great weekend. Hopeful to be back next year but no idea under which banner, but regardless was grateful for the chance to play this year.

John

brilliantboy

reunion wrote: »

This can't be true, the ICU would be breaching the NCC rules for the second time in a year!

Well there is this curious typo(?) on the ICU websites

The winners of this years National Club Cup will represent Ireland in the up-coming European Club Cup.

Maybe we should be expecting a new National Club Cup competition to take place bang in the heart of Dublin this summer?

reunion

Few reports from the NCC

Limerick Chess Club - this is the most detailed.
Ennis Chess Club.