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Bunratty 2019

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Comments

  • #32
    sodacat11
    Registered Users Posts: 1,297 ✭✭✭sodacat11


    zeitnot wrote: »
    The benefit of being seeded second, rather than 8th or 9th or whatever his FIDE rating would give, out of 83 seems so incredibly small that it's hard to believe that it was intended as special treatment.

    FIDE lists him as inactive, so that rating is out of date as well.

    I really think you're making a mountain out of a molehill here.

    It all depends whether it is just one molehill or a series of them and it also depends on where you find the molehill. A molehill in your bed or in your cornflakes would perhaps be very irritating.
    The late change of seeding that we are discussing resulted in me having to play a 10 year old prodigy instead of the sponsor having to face him, it also meant that I got white instead of black in the first round (it is always nice to have whites at the business end of the tournament) so there is a knock on effect however trivial.
    This pandering to sponsors is not a new thing, we only have to look at some of the "invitees" in the Masters sections of Bunratty in recent years and at some of the people who have been allowed into Irish Championships when their ratings didn't warrant it. Ratings should be the only currency we use in chess,not reputation, history, past achievements,potential, wealth,position or influence. The rating system isn't perfect but it is transparent and it is fair.


  • #33
    Tim Harding
    Closed Accounts Posts: 954 ✭✭✭Tim Harding


    [QUOTE=sodacat11;109527931
    The late change of seeding that we are discussing resulted in me having to play a 10 year old prodigy instead of the sponsor having to face him, it also meant that I got white instead of black in the first round...[/QUOTE]

    But was that deliberate or accidental?

    Let's face it sodacat, they are all out to get you...:D

    Better stick to Senior tournaments in future?


  • #34
    sodacat11
    Registered Users Posts: 1,297 ✭✭✭sodacat11


    Tim Harding wrote: »
    But was that deliberate or accidental?

    Let's face it sodacat, they are all out to get you...:D

    Better stick to Senior tournaments in future?

    If there were senior tournaments every month I would stick to them,they are by far the most enjoyable type of tournaments these days.


  • #35
    Bunrattyman
    Registered Users Posts: 17 ✭Bunrattyman


    Hi All,

    I was told about this little discussion and I thought I'd clarify the situation here with a few simply points.

    1. Gary O'Grady would not have been allowed to play in the Major with his Irish rating simply because his ECF grade is too high. We check the ratings of all players coming to us from abroad and his latest February ECF listing was 169, I think.

    2. As Gary plays far more ECF chess graded games than he does FIDE rated games ( and he'd originally entered using his FIDE rating ) we updated his seeding by converting the ECF to our rating. Nothing sinister going on here !

    3. We protect the tournament by checking non-Irish resident players local ratings and ensure they are not too strong for the event they are playing in, and that's what we did with Gary ( and many others too )

    4. Gary would not want any special treatment from us, he actually insists that we don't give him special treatment, he was not aware until he arrived that we'd updated his seeding.

    As it turned out, Gary hurt his back and had to pull out of the competition.

    However, I would like to point out one thing to sodacat11 and anyone else who's interested - The organising committee run the event and we occasionally invite a player to play in a section he's not really entitled to play in. We highlight this by listed them as "invitees" This is similar to the established practice of "wild-card" entries in other sports. We reserve the right to do this and will apologise to no one for it. This did not apply to Gary in this case.


  • #36
    sodacat11
    Registered Users Posts: 1,297 ✭✭✭sodacat11


    Firstly I never said that he should be in the Major but with an ICU rating of 1556 I didn't think a number 2 seeding was justified in the Challengers.
    Yes you are entitled to allow players who are not entitled to play in certain sections to play just as I am entitled to hold my opinion that such treatment smacks of nepotism.
    Apart from all that Bunratty was very well run and enjoyable :) although I must say had I been in the Masters section I would be moaning ad nauseam about the terrible lighting in the playing area. A properly run hotel would make sure that every bulb in the room was working but then they would also probably ensure that the shaving socket in my room worked, that there was milk for cereal (there was none until I complained), that the toaster worked(it didn't and had to be eventually replaced), that there was soap in the toilets and that when you ask for a dessert menu it doesn't take twenty minutes to arrive. The final straw was when I rang up about the phone charger that I'd left in my room and was asked for my credit card details to pay for postage, you'd think at 80 quid a night they could afford to post the bloody thing for free.


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  • #37
    tedjennings
    Registered Users Posts: 56 ✭✭tedjennings


    Hi, all
    Games from the bunratty Masters 2019 are now available on our website bunrattychess dot com


    Ted.


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