Chess Scotland Noticeboard

Donald Wilson · Queen Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 143

I don't know if there is a complete list of East of Scotland Champions anywhere except on the trophy itself, so I thought it might be of interest to publish the information here.

The trophy was donated by General Accident, and appears to have been contested for the first time in 1978. Whether there was an East of Scotland Championship before that time I have no idea.

I believe the competition was held in General Accident's HQ in Perth until the early 1980s, and that it moved to Grangemouth sometime in that decade, but I became involved as the main (and for a number of years the sole) arbiter only in 1997, so I have little direct knowledge of the history of the competition before that year.

List of East of Scotland Champions
1978 - CJ Morrison & AF White
1979 - DA Kilgour & CA McNab
1980 - ML Condie, CA McNab, CJ Morrison & AJ Norris
1981 - CA McNab
1982 - ML Condie & CA McNab
1983 - ML Condie & CA McNab
1984 - ML Condie
1985 - ML Condie
1986 - ML Condie
1987 - K Ruxton
1988 - CA McNab & IA McNab
1989 - JI Grant & M Shepherd
1990 - NR Farrell & CA McNab
1991 - CA McNab
1992 - G Pyrich & K Neil
1993 - C McNab
1994 - I Robertson
1995 - A Burnett
1996 - P Brown
1997 - A Burnett
1998 - I Robertson
1999 - JB Henderson
2000 - JI Grant
2001 - DW Fowler & NR Farrell
2002 - E Spencer
2003 - JI Grant & NR Farrell
2004 - K Ruxton
2005 - G Neave
2006 - E Spencer
2007 - E Spencer
2008 - E Spencer
2009 - G Neave, G Hamilton & E Taylor
2010 - I McDonald
2011 - C MacQueen & D Oswald

GN · King Joined: 30 Mar 2007 Posts: 415

Stuart Blyth · King Joined: 11 Sep 2008 Posts: 209

George, we couldn't agree more with you.
signed
M. Thatcher
G. Bush

Keep up the good work!

HughBrechin · Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 11:23 am Post subject:

The thing I like about you, Stuart, is that you always step up and debate ideas seriously, even when you don't agree with them.

HughBrechin · Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 11:29 am Post subject:

For what it's worth, I quite like the idea of equalising section size. I know it's used in tournaments in other countries (often in terms of all-play-all sections), and at a few club events: has anyone ever tried it at a Scottish congress?

George - in relation to point 5, I don't think that's so important once you've got entries being equalised unless the sections are quite small. I'd be more inclined to give organisers discretion to put the dividing lines in logical places (so the highest or second highest section might be the one with the odd number, but a tournament boundary corresponds with a 40 point gap between grades). I'd also be inclined to give organisers a bit of discretion to allow people particularly keen on 'playing up a section' to do so when appropriate, but that's just minor procedural stuff.

Stuart Blyth · King Joined: 11 Sep 2008 Posts: 209

Hugh,
thanks for that. I'm glad that my employment of wit (albeit of the lowest form) didn't stop you picking up on my point. Wink

David Deary · Queen Joined: 31 May 2010 Posts: 98

Ooooh dear… where to begin?

On point 1 if you wish me to enter a tournament without giving me the option of a section or an idea of the section I would end up in I would not enter. In my view you would end up with even less entries and this would have a detrimental effect.

On point 4 my view is well publicised. If the number of entries or sponsorship doesn’t justify the higher prize money it shouldn’t be there. Moreover, those in the lower sections with less prize money should pay a lower entry fee than those in the section with the higher rewards in my view. Its only fair.

On point 6 I actually believe this would be an improvement. However as you state this should be made clear on the entry form.

Unlike your view of considering chess a sport I do not believe that to be the correct course for attracting additional sponsorship and support into the game. Nor would I accept your premise that the manner in which sports are run such as football is the best way of doing things. Just because bigger teams, players etc get all the spoils does not make it right or fair. There needs to be a careful balance struck but in most sports this is completely missed and they get it woefully wrong.
As a final point, a tournament whereby you don’t know what section you would end up in is just crazy.

My support goes to events that encourage players at all levels to improve and enjoy their chess not to be subservant and over subsidise the elite (I accept there might need to be some subsidy but 100 players shouldn’t subsidise 10!). As I have stated a careful balance needs to be struck and several tournaments this year have missed that balance completely and I will not be entering these next season under the same terms.
_________________
Growing old is compulsory, growing up is optional!

Gary Gillespie · Pawn Joined: 16 Feb 2010 Posts: 6

I personally cant see a problem with point 1, 2 or 3. I can see the point of rapidly improving juniors or improving players being allowed up a section but some sections are degraded by people who don’t have the tools to compete. As someone who has clawed up from the depths of the minor sections to I guess the top end of the major sections over the last 4/5 years I didn’t often play above my section (I think once off the top of my head when I was feeling super confident and went in the major instead of the minor assuming I would easily win that in any case…think I scored 0 out of 4). The reason you have a grade is that’s it’s an indication of your strength and the reason you have grading bands is so that you are in a tournament of people of similar strength. If you are better than your grade then you will beat the people of “similar” strength and your grade goes up, it doesn’t take very long. Now there are a lot of people who love to pretend that there grade is far too low or are just oblivious to the fact that their grade is a fairly accurate representation of their current playing strength and enter tournaments above what they should – sometimes even when they are a few hundred points lower than the cut off for the minor or major. They end up playing majors and opens scoring next to nothing but are “happy” to be beat by what they see as good players instead of putting in hard work and ironing out the fundamental flaws in their game first. If you cant consistently beat the people around you then you will never be able to do that to people hundreds of points higher who make fewer mistakes. Tournaments should be competitive and when you end up playing someone 400 points lower than you and winning it’s a waste of time for both players just as it is getting crushed off someone 400 points higher than you…though obviously that cant be helped in the top section if a few GMs enter!

robin moore · King Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Posts: 164

Gary Gillespie wrote..

Stuart Blyth · King Joined: 11 Sep 2008 Posts: 209

I wonder if one idea might be that generally people were expected to enter the section according to their grading? Simply splitting the tournament into three or four sections, with people having to play in whatever section they fell? Though this does seem a bit draconian and arbitrary, I guess that the cut off points would vary from tournament to tournament, and so a lot of folk would experience being both near the top and bottom of tournaments? I don't wa whether this would have implications for the grand prix or anything. The issue of juniors/fast-improving players could maybe be tackled by using live grades and/or automatically adding the junior 'allowance' to a junior's grade?

Donald Wilson · Queen Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 143

When I started this thread with a few comments about the history of the East of Scotland Championship and a list of its winners, I thought there might be replies from people with a bit more information on the early years of the competition, or maybe commenting on the winners from those days - perhaps even comparing the early winners with the more recent ones. I didn't expect it to turn into a debate about the structure of congresses and the imposing of rigid rules on who could compete in certain sections and who could not.

I guess that's the way life is on this planet - you never know what direction it's going to take.

Anyways, what kicked this debate off was my comment (in another part of the noticeboard) that it was not good having only 11 players in the Championship section at the EoS. GN suggests that organisers should equalise the number of players in each section of a congress by adjusting the grading limits of the sections once the total number of entries is known, and allocating players to sections accordingly. If I had done this at the EoS the Championship section would have had 18 players, with grades down to 1714, or maybe 20 players, with grades down to 1675. At least that's the theory, but the reality would have been different: some of the top players in the Major would very likely have decided that they didn't want to play in the top section and would have withdrawn (taking their entry fees with them); remember that the EoS Championship is one of the few events in Scotland with a minimum grading requirement (of 1700), so the top 7 players in the Major this year were eligible to play in the Championship - that they chose not to play in it suggests to me that they didn't want to play in it, and would probably have refused to be moved up. Should I then have sought volunteers lower down? If I had, it's possible some of the Championship players might have withdrawn because they didn't want to play meaningless games against players rated 400 points or so below them.

In short, both equalising numbers once the entries are in and pushing players into sections they don't wish to play in will alienate players and reduce the number of them entering tournaments. And what is the main source of revenue for the vast majority of chess tournaments in this country? Yes, it's the entry fees paid by the players themselves - the players are our customers, they're the people who are buying our product, and if they are not satisfied with the product they won't buy it again.

There is a very good reason why experienced tournament organisers run events the way they do and make no attempt to impose some ideal of order: the unidealised way works. Chaos is the normal state of the universe, and it permeates everything, even chess tournaments. We can encourage events to flow in certain directions, but if we try to enforce rigid order the outcome, inevitably, is catastrophe.

(Now, let's see how many philosophers jump in to support / contradict that last paragraph!)

Phil Thomas · King Joined: 26 Mar 2007 Posts: 758

Paul Denham · Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 8:32 am Post subject:

Its not what the thread started on and GN's proposals and Donalds explanations are both interesting (I am sitting on fence here folks).

One thing I would say is that people should be allowed to play up in events in my opinion.

However, it should be limited to a certain % of the entrants e.g. 25% and go to the first to apply (1st come: 1st served)

I remember playing in an event with a 200 point gap between the top entrant in that event (at 1500) from the top grading limit in the event below (1300). Rated around 1350 ish at the time I though "great I am in the rating band my play merits and grading wise I could be a hunter and not the hunted". I was dismayed when I looked at the entry list on the morning and 60 (sixty!) % of the entrants were rated under 1300 and were all playing up.

It wasn't the event I thought I was going to play in.
_________________
It is said that life is too short for chess but that is the fault of life, not chess

Phil Thomas · King Joined: 26 Mar 2007 Posts: 758

Simplified version of the three laws of Thermodynamics

1. You can't win you can only break even.
2. You can only break even at absolute zero
3. You can't reach absolute zero.

Just like running large chess events.

QED

GN · King Joined: 30 Mar 2007 Posts: 415