National Club Championships

checknraise

The teams are out for the National Club Championships which starts this weekend.

Gonzaga are heavy favourites but Trinity continue where they left off last year as they stack their middle boards.

Team's can be found on chess results

http://www.chess-results.com/tnr266159.aspx?lan=1

To kick things off there is a blitz tournament on Friday with a 1,000 prize fund with strong line up already registered GM Maze, IM Lopez and FM Daly. Should make for an interesting tournament.

Thats not all tho there is a U1600 tournament running along side the NCC. Details of both the blitz and U1600 tournament can be found below.

http://www.icu.ie/events/883

The tournaments are being hosted as part of the mind games festival and if anyone wants a break of chess for the weekend they can play a game of Go or Chinese Chess.

cdeb

I see Ronan Magee on the Adare team; when did he last play?

Is it top two or three qualify? There was an extra space granted last year to bring it up to three, but don't know if that applies again this year?

checknraise

Top 3 teams qualify for the ECC.

I believe the rule is so long as there are more than 10 teams playing 3 teams qualify. If any of the top 3 decide not play the place will be offered to the next highest ranked team so long as they finish in the top half.

Tim Harding

checknraise wrote: »

Top 3 teams qualify for the ECC.

I believe the rule is so long as there are more than 10 teams playing 3 teams qualify. If any of the top 3 decide not play the place will be offered to the next highest ranked team so long as they finish in the top half.

The regulations on the ECU website now make no mention of the number of teams participating in regard to a third entry. That might have been the rule prior to last year.

ECU wrote:

F.1.1.1 Three teams per ECU Chess Federation in which a national team championship is organised.

Countries can enter a FOURTH team if at least 20 GMs participate in their national competition (F.1.1.8).

http://www.europechess.org/regulations/tournament-regulations/european-club-cup-and-european-club-cup-for-women/f-1-participation/

The old rule you mention about substitute teams having to finish in the top half of their national competition appears to have been dropped.

So far as I can see, and this seems a bit strange, ICU could enter any three club teams irrespective of whether they play in the NCC or not, though such a team that hadn't competed this weekend would not be able to include non-IRL players unless they paid for them.

It's unfortunate that an odd number of clubs have entered, meaning a bye in each round and perhaps some awkward pairings - or is there any hope of a last-minute 14th team?

cdeb

A predictably dominant win for Gonzaga so; 21.5 out of 24. Well done to them!

St Benildus took advantage of the quirks of the draw to come second. We hammered the three teams we did beat, but got lucky in playing the bottom seeds in round 3, who were level with us as they'd gotten the bye in round 1. We also avoided Gonzaga. I really don't like the format, but hard to know how to improve it if it's set to allow non-local teams travel up on Saturday and home on Sunday.

Trinity took third, having beaten us 4-2, but then lost 5-1 to Gonzaga in the last round. Third seeds Dublin missed out after losing to Trinity and drawing (?) with Adare in the final round.

So off to the European Cup! This will be a bit of fun. Even if we'll get thumped of course.

Tim Harding

cdeb wrote: »

A predictably dominant win for Gonzaga so; 21.5 out of 24. Well done to them!

St Benildus took advantage of the quirks of the draw to come second. We hammered the three teams we did beat, but got lucky in playing the bottom seeds in round 3, who were level with us as they'd gotten the bye in round 1. We also avoided Gonzaga. I really don't like the format, but hard to know how to improve it if it's set to allow non-local teams travel up on Saturday and home on Sunday.

Trinity took third, having beaten us 4-2, but then lost 5-1 to Gonzaga in the last round. Third seeds Dublin missed out after losing to Trinity and drawing (?) with Adare in the final round.

So off to the European Cup! This will be a bit of fun. Even if we'll get thumped of course.

Actually Adare beat Dublin 3.5-2.5 after Diana Mirza won a very long game against Eddie O'Connor. This was the only round in which Dublin played all their top four so it was a very creditable win for Adare, but on tiebreak they finished behind Trinity.

It was rather absurd that Balbriggan also finished on 6 match points. They lost heavily to Gonzaga in round one (half a point), were given the bye in round two but won both matches today, helped by Bray defaulting two boards in the morning.

So one team had 8 MP (dropping only 2.5 game points), four teams had 6MP and third seeds Dublin were in the group on 4MP, though they didn't even play Gonzaga.

With the increased entries this year and the presence of a dominant team (Gonzaga), clubs that avoid that team have an advantage. Really a fifth round is needed to sort out 2nd and 3rd places more fairly, but how to fit it in is unclear as no long weekends seem available. Only two rounds per day are allowed for the event to be FIDE rated.

Maybe playing the event over two weekends could be a solution, but it was announced that next year the event will be held in Ballinasloe and most teams probably would not want to go there twice. Also that venue may lead to a reduction of entries anyway. Maybe this idea could be tried next time the NCC is in Dublin?

The NCC rules passed at an egm in 2015 have now been tested twice. While they are is working well on the whole, and have led to much increased interest in what had been a somewhat discredited event, some clauses in the rules were more honoured in the breach than the observance, especially team changes between closing date of entries and start of the event.

Trinity's declared top board found he had to work all weekend so we only had a squad of seven but some teams including Gonzaga were allowed to change their declared squads. Not that it made any appreciable difference to the final result.

cdeb

Balbriggan also floated down against the bottom seeds in round 4, who had been artificially up the standings after getting the bye in round 1.

Nothing against them of course - we got "lucky" in round 3 in the same way - but it does highlight a flaw in the tournament when there's an odd number of teams.

Should be said that the tournament is far removed from the farce it used to be, which is a huge positive.

sodacat11

The online commentary of the NCC provided by Alex Lopez and Stephen Jessl was really excellent. I hope that they will cover more Irish events in future.

Tim Harding

sodacat11 wrote: »

The online commentary of the NCC provided by Alex Lopez and Stephen Jessel was really excellent. I hope that they will cover more Irish events in future.

Yes I watched that when I got home. I thought the style of dialogue was rather similar to the vlogs done at Quality Chess by Jacob Aagaard and Nikolaos Ntirlis, who also do their recordings from home.

However Alex and Stephen were severely handicapped by the frequent breakdown of the rather strange mobile phone based technology employed to relay the board positions. It was the first time I encountered it though I have played on DGT boards several times.

cdeb

sodacat11 wrote: »

The online commentary of the NCC provided by Alex Lopez and Stephen Jessl was really excellent. I hope that they will cover more Irish events in future.

Missed that actually, but that's an excellent innovation as well.

The live boards are increasing in reliability as they (Curragh) get used to them. Though the names were all mixed up in round 1; I was following the completely wrong games.

But great innovations all the same; if they can be improved upon next year, so much the better.