4NCL 2024-25 dates and venues

[MartinCarpenter]

I'm genuinely intrigued to see what the make up of that Warrington team is. There's basically no clubs in the town itself.

Maybe it's a compromise to keep Lymm, Culcheth etc happy

Warrington League I expect, given their President is Team Captain

Ah, it's Peter seeking new challenges after conquering the Manchester league If he's got a similar squad to that then they'll do well!

[Neil Graham]

The only team to have dropped out from Division Four, which at the moment is a 30 team Swiss, looks to be Lancaster.

[Phil Neatherway]

Oxford 4 have dropped out.

Like us, I think Lancaster found the venues too difficult.

[Richard Bates]

I see they’ve given in to the siren calls of 90’+30’ +30”. After Hastings collapsed in a heap, possibly the last bastion has fallen. The endgame haters have officially won…

[LawrenceCooper]

I see they’ve given in to the siren calls of 90’+30’ +30”. After Hastings collapsed in a heap, possibly the last bastion has fallen. The endgame haters have officially won…

I prefer to think of them as those wanting to get home by public transport on a Sunday. I do recall one of my players arriving too late to get their Saturday evening meal after a very long endgame against yourself though.

[Nick Burrows]

One of the great pleasures of 4ncl chess was the opportunity to play an unrushed endgame.

[Richard Bates]

I see they’ve given in to the siren calls of 90’+30’ +30”. After Hastings collapsed in a heap, possibly the last bastion has fallen. The endgame haters have officially won…

I prefer to think of them as those wanting to get home by public transport on a Sunday. I do recall one of my players arriving too late to get their Saturday evening meal after a very long endgame against yourself though.

Oh I know that wasn’t the reason, or the reasoning (obviously). Although somehow most people have coped for 31 years. But they’ve still won!

Even an extra ten minutes after the time control would make a difference. As for the “socialising” argument, prominently featured. It’s amazing we got any done at all in the old days of 7hr sessions. And yet somehow we did. I guess we all like to go to bed a bit earlier these days…

Ps. Don’t suppose I won, did I? Don’t win many although I recall a long Sunday win back in 2021/22…

[Richard Bates]

One of the great pleasures of 4ncl chess was the opportunity to play an unrushed endgame.

Badly

Perhaps "haters" is too casually strong and emotive a word. Perhaps just "those who don't get any particular enjoyment (and to be fair sometimes it is perverse enjoyment!) out of long (end)games and don't feel that anything much is lost in their gradual passing"...

[Roger de Coverly]

One of the great pleasures of 4ncl chess was the opportunity to play an unrushed endgame.

Shortly before increments were introduced I played out a position as defender which was unable to win by normal means. I had under five minutes on the clock for much of it. In retrospect I should have continued scoring and thus claim 50 moves without having to draw using an arbiter's "unable" decision.

One of the last bastions of extended play now seems to be the Counties Championship where the time limits would allow in game sightseeing if the arbiters didn't issue a forfeit for leaving the playing venue.

[LawrenceCooper]

I see they’ve given in to the siren calls of 90’+30’ +30”. After Hastings collapsed in a heap, possibly the last bastion has fallen. The endgame haters have officially won…

I prefer to think of them as those wanting to get home by public transport on a Sunday. I do recall one of my players arriving too late to get their Saturday evening meal after a very long endgame against yourself though.

Oh I know that wasn’t the reason, or the reasoning (obviously). Although somehow most people have coped for 31 years. But they’ve still won!

Even an extra ten minutes after the time control would make a difference. As for the “socialising” argument, prominently featured. It’s amazing we got any done at all in the old days of 7hr sessions. And yet somehow we did. I guess we all like to go to bed a bit earlier these days…

Ps. Don’t suppose I won, did I? Don’t win many although I recall a long Sunday win back in 2021/22…

The game in mind was your ending against Marcus although it's only fair to point out that you had a convincing win against him the season before. On further reflection though it was probably his win against Peter Batchelor that caused him to arrive too late for the Queen of Hearts kitchen to be still serving.

[LawrenceCooper]

Following yesterday's deadline the list of entries has been updated: https://www.4ncl.co.uk/data/2425/runners_riders.htm

Is the system ready to accept player registrations?

A few quotes from the e-mail sent to captains by the 4NCL Chief Arbiter:

Division compositions
We are currently finalising the composition of round robin divisions; with a handful of teams in Division 3 not renewing their entries we are in the process of finding teams to fill those spots. The team allocations on the 4NCL website will be updated shortly, and the TBC spots (but not the "ToBeDecided" spot in 3 Knights, which is the name of one of the teams!) will be filled in once we know which of the teams currently listed in Division 4 will be pushed up to Div.3 instead.

Captains' logins
Your logins to the 4NCL team entry system will be sent to you by Dave Thomas (in CC) by the end of next Wednesday (9th) - this is where you can register your players and enter your team lists for each round. Dave will also send you a guide on how to use the system as a captain (which will be very useful for those who have not captained in the 4NCL before), which will tell you how to register players and enter your teams for each round.
The initial squads for all squads must be registered by the end of Thursday 31st October.
For captains with teams playing on the weekend of the 23rd/24th November, you can register additional players to play on that weekend up until the end of 14th November.
Players not registered by these deadlines may only play as a wildcard in the first weekend.

Team pairings
For round robin divisions (1 to 3), I will be drafting these up in the next week, and I hope to have these published by next weekend (although with various complications in arranging seedings and the teams playing in the divisions themselves in some cases, I cannot guarantee this will be the case). The pairings will follow a similar schedule to what we had last season (a mix of higher and lower seeded teams in the first weekends, and the final weekend with two matches against those close to you in the seedings).
For Division 4, the team pairings for Round 1 will be published around a week before the first round, as is typical throughout the season (we cannot do them any earlier, as per rule 11.8 teams may withdraw from a weekend until 9 days before the first round of a weekend).

[Richard Bates]

Ps. Don’t suppose I won, did I? Don’t win many although I recall a long Sunday win back in 2021/22…

The game in mind was your ending against Marcus although it's only fair to point out that you had a convincing win against him the season before. On further reflection though it was probably his win against Peter Batchelor that caused him to arrive too late for the Queen of Hearts kitchen to be still serving.

Ah yes, now that (the second) was definitely an ending I played very badly…

[Nick Burrows]

One of the last bastions of extended play now seems to be the Counties Championship where the time limits would allow in game sightseeing if the arbiters didn't issue a forfeit for leaving the playing venue.

[Nick Ivell]

I too am saddened by this change, albeit from the sidelines. It means endgames will be played less well.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Maybe someone can post some of these long endgames that will be no more... The bit about even an extra ten minutes after the time control being a benefit is interesting. Presumably IMs (and GMs) can come up with a plan in complex endgames in that amount of time. Mere mortals need longer!