Last weekend

[Joey Stewart]

Just to clarify - the "The top placed eligible teams......" sentence in rule 12.8 is intended to cover both the promotion and the relegation possibilities in the previous two sentences of that rule.

So is it possible for a team to be ineligible for promotion? What sort of wrongdoings would be required to be denied such a prize?

[IM Jack Rudd]

Just to clarify - the "The top placed eligible teams......" sentence in rule 12.8 is intended to cover both the promotion and the relegation possibilities in the previous two sentences of that rule.

So is it possible for a team to be ineligible for promotion? What sort of wrongdoings would be required to be denied such a prize?

The obvious one is by being a 3rd team in Division Two when the club's 1st and 2nd teams are already in Division One, or an equivalent situation with lower divisions. (To cover the case where, for example, Barbican Youth finish in the top four of Division Two, and the team finishing fifth is Guildford 3.)

I suppose you might also have unusual circumstances that meant a team wouldn't be eligible for promotion (for example, a club whose rules mandated its membership be single-sex, and its 4NCL team consist entirely of members - I suppose such a club would be compelled to decline promotion to Division One).

[Mike Truran]

Joey, I think if you (re)read rule 12.8 on the 4NCL website (which basically encapsulates what Jack has written) you should have your question answered.

[Joey Stewart]

I am not really a big fan of rule reading - I think it encourages unsporting behavior when people know the rules too well - they try and find ways to exploit the advantage.

[Mike Truran]

Perhaps if you had to deal with the number of disputes and appeals that arise through people not reading the rules properly you might change your mind.

[Alex Holowczak]

I am not really a big fan of rule reading - I think it encourages unsporting behavior when people know the rules too well - they try and find ways to exploit the advantage.

Well, when you learnt chess, you managed to successfully learn Articles 1 to 3 of the FIDE Laws of Chess. After all, players who learnt (or read) the rule about castling can exploit castling when their opponent cannot.

The rules are there to be adhered to; if you don't have clearly written rules, you end up with anarchy, claims of favouritism, bias...

I notice that there are some congress and league players who think the FIDE Laws of Chess end at Article 3, apart from bits of Article 9 a vague notion of touch move. Of course, these players tend to be the ones who complain most when their mobile phone rings, or when they're told that they need to bring their scoresheet up to date.

[Sean Hewitt]

How many 2nd division sides will have a stronger team on paper than the weakest 1st division side do we think?

[Jonathan Rogers]

Several, because both Poisoned Pawns and Guildford 2 are extremely lowly rated. Possibly six or seven teams from the promotion pool will have comparable or higher average Elos than they. But that is not much guide as to how the promoted teams will fare next year. And more to the point perhaps, I suspect that the average Elo of the "unlucky 13th" in the first division will probably match at least one of the teams which will be promoted to take its place.