We had another online 5-round Swiss tournament on lichess.org on Thursday 6th August 2020. Six of us played, everyone seemed to enjoy the event.

Congratulations to Graham Stuart (WillHeSac) who won the Tournament! Well done too Kev Lamb 2nd (me!), and David Culliford (djc202) 3rd.

The tournament this week experimented with increments: each player had a base 7 minutes per game plus 3 seconds per move (equates to about ten minutes per player per game).

Upcoming Tournaments

There are two online tournaments this week for our club on lichess.org: our regular Tuesday one-hour Arena on 11th August, and a 5-round Swiss on Thursday 13th. Both start at 8pm. The Tuesday ‘Arena’ is for ten minutes per player per game as per previous tournaments. The time control for the 5-round swiss will be 7 minutes each plus a 3 second increment per move (that is, games of about ten minutes per player).

What makes the Tuesday evening online Arena Tournaments so interesting is that, one week you’re a winner, and next week you languish at the bottom. Or, as this tournament showed, the reverse. The previous week David Culliford came last, and this week he won! And he won emphatically: as many points as the next two players put together. Congratulations David!

Well done too James Daas who came second, and Rob Sims who was third.

The tournament was a one-hour Arena event on lichess.org. The time control was ten minutes per player per game. There were 11 of us, another great level of participation from the Chandlers Ford Chess Club on lichess.

Next: 5-round Swiss on Thursday 6th August 8pm

The next online club tournament is this Thursday, 6th August, at 8pm. It is a 5-Round Swiss event in which players have 7 minutes plus 3 seconds per move each per game.

The Round 3 Draw of the Summer Tournament has been announced by event organiser Malcolm Clarke.

The Round 3 Draw

White	v	Black
James Daas		Phil Overton
Peter Przybycin		Rob Sims
Don Creasey		Sam Murphy
Maha Chandar		Keven Lamb
John Kooner		Steve Dunleavy
Rose Saunders		Rob Strachan
Bye – Steve Saunders

The Chandler’s Ford Chess Club Summer Tournament is a club event usually of five rounds – and usually over the board, so this year of course, games have to be played in a safe environment such as playing them online using such platforms as lichess.org or chess.com.

See our Summer Tournament Page for the individual results so far, and further information.

We had our second 5-round swiss online club tournament on Thursday 30th July. 10 of us took part. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the event.

Congratulations to James Daas who won the Tournament with an impressive 5 consecutive wins! Well done Keith Gregory who came second and Maha Chandar third.

Upcoming Tournaments

There are two online tournaments this week for our club on lichess.org: our regular Tuesday one-hour Arena on 4th August, and a 5-round Swiss on Thursday 6th. Both start at 8pm. The Tuesday ‘Arena’ is for ten minutes per player per game as per previous tournaments. The 5-round swiss will be 7 minutes each plus a 3 second increment per move (that is, games of about ten minutes per player).

We held our 11th online club Tuesday Arena tournament on 28th July. It was a Rapid play tournament on lichess.org, in which players had ten minutes each per game. The event was an Arena format for one hour, and there were 13 players. A great turnout, and hopefully everyone enjoyed the event.

Congratulations to Keith Gregory for winning this week’s tournament! Well done Graham Stuart (‘WillHeSac’) 2nd, and James Daas 3rd.

Next tournament

There will be another Tuesday Arena next week. In the meantime there’s our 5-round swiss tournament this Thursday 30th July.

There will be our regular Tuesday online club Arena tournament tomorrow 28th July at 8pm on lichess.org. At the moment there should be no clash with over the board chess as that has yet to resume. The event will be the usual format of ten minutes per player per game in a one-hour Arena tournament online at lichess.org.

In addition, there will be another 5-round swiss tournament online this week, on Thursday 30th at 8pm. Last week’s first swiss event was fun and players seemed to enjoy it, so let’s do another. This week, as last week’s, ten minutes per player per game in a 5 round tournament on lichess.org.

Both tournaments have been set up on lichess.org and can be joined anytime now. The actual start times are 8pm for both Tuesday and Thursday. To join, click on the relevant link above or the buttons below, and when you get to the event, click Join.

The July grades are out! The English Chess Federation has published its July 2020 List. The ECF publishes player grade lists twice a year, in January and July. See the ECF Grading Database to see how you’ve done.

How are chess grades calculated?

See the ECF Grading Database for full details. Basically, for each graded game, if you win, the grading is your opponent’s grade plus 40 points, for a draw it’s your opponent’s grade, and for a loss it’s opponent’s grade minus 40. If there is a grading difference greater than 40 between you and your opponent, the calculation cuts off at 40. That is, you can’t lose your way upwards by losing against grandmasters…

Then divide the points by number of games. If more than 30 games in the last 12 months, the system uses those results. If fewer than 30 games, then the most recent 30 games are used, going back further than the last 12 months, but not going back more than 36 months.

ECF grades have a number followed by a letter, from A to F. The letter is the Grade Category, indicating how many games, or how far back the calculation is based on. A is the most active, where the game results are all from the last 12 months.

The ECF definition of the Categories is as follows:

Category definitions:
A – Grade based on at least 30 games, all played in the latest 12 months
B – Grade based on the 30 most recent games, all played in the latest 24 months, including at least 20 in the latest 12 months
C – Grade based on the 30 most recent games in the latest 36 months, of which at least 10 were played in the latest 12 months
D – Grade based on 15 or more games in the latest 36 months, of which at least 5 were played in the latest 12 months
E – Grade based on 9 or more games in the latest 36 months, of which at least 1 was played in the latest 12 months
F – Grade based on 5 or more games in the latest 36 months, of which at least 1 was played in the latest 12 months. F grades are published in the usual way, but unlike higher categories they are not used in future calculations. A “starting grade” is used instead

Only one result of the Preliminary Round remains to be played. Enough results to make it possible to enable the draw for Round 1. Tournament organiser Steve Dunleavy announces the Round 1 draw.

2020 Knockout Round 1

Dear all the Round 1 draw for the above has been made by myself and Hanna Dunleavy this evening 21/07/20 and is as follows:

1. The winner of Peter Eales vs Rose Saunders vs Steve Dunleavy
2. James Daas vs Peter Przybycin
3. Patrick Pavey vs Rob Sims
4. Rob Bird vs John Kooner

Guidance Notes

Please make note of the following guidance notes:

A)all games can be played on lichess, chess.com, email, text, telephone, over the board or whatever format/medium that can be agreed by both players

B) games played over the internet (lichess and/or chess.com) are to have a 90 minute time control for both players, other formats can dispense with time control unless both players can reach an acceptable agreement/solution to this issue

C) the players named first play with white

D) all games to be completed by the 21/08/20 (four weeks time); in the event of a draw the time period can be extended by another week to the 28^th August (with the colours reversed)

E) please email me the results of your game as soon as you can after the match has been played

F) Rose Saunders and Peter Eales please try to arrange your game asap and as a matter of urgency to facilitate the smooth running of this competition, and let me know the result immediately thereafter

G) please enjoy your games and thanks for entering this years competition under these difficult/different conditions

H) I have checked with Roger Marsh the local ECF grading officer and these results will not be acceptable for grading purposes

I)I apologise for the delay in issuing this but one preliminary round game still remains un-played and I wanted to give both players every opportunity to play their game with minimal disruption to the competition time table

See the Knockout Tournament Page of this website for all the results.

We had our first ‘Swiss’ type club tournament yesterday, Thursday 23rd July on lichess.org. There were 9 players in the 5-Round tournament. Everyone seemed to enjoy the format, so another one will be set up soon, but the popular Tuesday Arenas will still run too.

Congratulations to Graham Stuart (‘WillHeSac’) on winning the tournament! Well done too Rob Sims second, and Patrick Pavey third.

In the table above, scores are shown for each of the 5 rounds; the next column in bold is the player’s tournament points total, and the right hand column shows the ‘tie-break’ score – the Sonneborn-Berger score (see below). A win is worth one point, a draw is a half point, and a loss is zero points.
When a player can’t be paired during a round (odd number of players), they receive a bye worth one point. If a player joins late, they get a single half-point bye (a single bye, even if they’ve missed more than one round).

What is a Swiss Tournament?

A Swiss system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament that is comprised of a number of rounds. There are fewer rounds than a round-robin as competitors do not necessarily play all the other players. Competitors are paired with opponents with a similar running score – but not the same opponent more than once. In our regular Tuesday Arenas you could play the same player more than once as Arena pairings are any available opponent with similar ranking. See the Wikipedia definition for more information on swiss tournaments.

The winner is the player with the highest accumulated score from all the rounds. The tie-break system used on lichess is the Sonneborn-Berger score (see Wikipedia definition): basically, add the scores of every opponent you beat, and half the score of every opponent you draw.

For more information on how Swiss system tournaments run on lichess.org, see their website page on the subject.

There’s an extra online club tournament this week, with a Swiss Tournament 8pm Thursday 23rd July on lichess.org.

The tournament is a 5-round event in which players have ten minutes each per game. This means that the individual games are 20 minutes: 10 minutes each player with no increment, just like the popular Arenas on Tuesday evenings. This is to give a like-for-like comparison between the two types of online tournament.

So what are the differences between an online Arena tournament and a Swiss Tournament?

The main difference is the Round structure of a Swiss Tournament. In those, all the participants play the same number of games (5 in Thursday’s tournament). In an Arena event, players can end up playing a different number of games, depending on how quickly their games end: try to get as many games as you can in during the length of the tournament to maximise your chances of points. As soon as your game ends and the system can pair you against another opponent, the next game begins. In a round-based tournament, if your game ends quickly you must wait for all the other games of that round to end before being re-paired for the next Round.

With an Arena, the Tournament ends when the pre-determined time is up: for our Tuesday tournaments that’s one hour. For a swiss tournament, the tournament ends when all the Rounds are completed: Thursday’s tournament is five rounds. There will be a 1 minute gap between the last game of a Round ending and the next Round starting (a setting that could be changed in any future tournament).

The swiss tournament on Thursday will be on the same online chess host as the Arenas – lichess.org. There are some differences between the types of tournament on that system: for example no winning streaks or draw streaks in a Swiss tournament – and no option to go ‘Berserk’. Berserk is a fun option in the Arenas where you can gamble half your time in a game for the chance of getting an extra point – if you win.

The swiss tournament is set up ready to join. The event starts at 8pm, tomorrow Thursday 23rd July.