East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Results of competitions with tables, or as much detail as is possible.
David Sedgwick
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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by David Sedgwick » Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:30 am

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Mon Feb 26, 2018 9:35 pm

The problems that may be unique to England are that organisers do not modernise their events, and arbiters are not necessarily suitably skilled.

One of the issues is that English organisers and arbiters still do a lot of their tournaments manually. They'll be able to find a grader to do the grading file for them in a spreadsheet once they post the results to them, but who do they ask to do the rating file? That's a skills shortage caused by years of prominent arbiters failing to embrace tournament administration by computer, often because of a belief that the British pairing system was better than the FIDE pairing system. While I think I've succeeded in getting the British organised in a more efficient way than it was when I first got involved, many other events are still wedded to the old-fashioned ways.

....

The extreme South West is a good example of this, particularly Paignton. You can only normally enter by post. Their time control remains a guillotine finish. The results are often difficult to find online. How many other events in continental Europe are organised like that? It's very old-fashioned, and it would surprise me if Exeter was different. Paignton is FIDE-rated, but only after the now traditional e-mail grovelling to you because they forgot to register it.

I am compiling a list of long established and successful events and organisations which Alex is seeking to undermine. I shall now add the Paignton and East Devon Congresses to the list.

I would be interested to learn of other instances.

Alex Holowczak
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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by Alex Holowczak » Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:34 am

David Sedgwick wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:24 am
Richard Bates wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 7:54 am
It is almost certainly true that any organiser in the UK wanting to run a weekend tournament with a starting point that they seek to run a 'prestigious' event and attract a lot of strong players to the Open should NOT FIDE rate it. In FIDE rating terms such tournaments effectively offer almost no upsides and potentially very large downsides. With the added issue that the pursuit of prizes and FIDE rating points will invariably conflict with each other. People who point to the 4NCL congress model as a counter to this are, I think, ignoring the likelihood that any stronger player entries to these are generally in spite of FIDE rating, rather than because of it. And usually based around the starting point of the offering of conditions of various sorts, that most regular weekend tournaments don't.

The ECF should bear this in mind in the context of its current policy of strongly pushing FIDE rating for weekend tournaments, most obviously through its British Championship qualifying Grand Prix.
Your posts are nearly always well argued and this one is no exception.

Sadly, I fear that it will lead to Alex Holowczak classifying you as a dinosaur, despite your relative youth.
Strong players, particularly professionals, want to play for prize money. If the money is good enough, they'll play whatever. Weekend chess tournaments in England tend not to have sponsorship, so the prize funds need to be manufactured through entry fees. By FIDE-rating the event, the tournament gets more entries to the FIDE-rated sections. If you have more entry fee income, you can offer more prize money, and so they become more attractive to the touring domestic professionals irrespective of whether any form of conditions are offered.

If Richard's argument were true, then it would apply equally to a 9-round Open played at 1 game per day as it would a weekend tournament; or indeed a 7-round event like Paignton or Guernsey.

Alex Holowczak
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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by Alex Holowczak » Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:39 am

David Sedgwick wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:30 am
Alex Holowczak wrote:
Mon Feb 26, 2018 9:35 pm

The problems that may be unique to England are that organisers do not modernise their events, and arbiters are not necessarily suitably skilled.

One of the issues is that English organisers and arbiters still do a lot of their tournaments manually. They'll be able to find a grader to do the grading file for them in a spreadsheet once they post the results to them, but who do they ask to do the rating file? That's a skills shortage caused by years of prominent arbiters failing to embrace tournament administration by computer, often because of a belief that the British pairing system was better than the FIDE pairing system. While I think I've succeeded in getting the British organised in a more efficient way than it was when I first got involved, many other events are still wedded to the old-fashioned ways.

....

The extreme South West is a good example of this, particularly Paignton. You can only normally enter by post. Their time control remains a guillotine finish. The results are often difficult to find online. How many other events in continental Europe are organised like that? It's very old-fashioned, and it would surprise me if Exeter was different. Paignton is FIDE-rated, but only after the now traditional e-mail grovelling to you because they forgot to register it.

I am compiling a list of long established and successful events and organisations which Alex is seeking to undermine. I shall now add the Paignton and East Devon Congresses to the list.

I would be interested to learn of other instances.
I think my criticisms of Paignton for the reasons I provided are justified. It is a long-running and historically successful event, but the point that you don't seem to accept in our frequent discussions on topics of this nature is that by failing to modernise long-running and historically successful events and adapting them, they eventually stop being as successful as they once were.

David Sedgwick
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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by David Sedgwick » Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:40 am

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:34 am

Strong players, particularly professionals, want to play for prize money. If the money is good enough, they'll play whatever. Weekend chess tournaments in England tend not to have sponsorship, so the prize funds need to be manufactured through entry fees. By FIDE-rating the event, the tournament gets more entries to the FIDE-rated sections. If you have more entry fee income, you can offer more prize money, and so they become more attractive to the touring domestic professionals irrespective of whether any form of conditions are offered.

If Richard's argument were true, then it would apply equally to a 9-round Open played at 1 game per day as it would a weekend tournament; or indeed a 7-round event like Paignton or Guernsey.
You have lectured upthread about how English organisers should learn from the rest of Europe.

Perhaps you should consider why the Bunratty Congress in Ireland is not FIDE rated.

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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by Alex Holowczak » Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:46 am

David Sedgwick wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:40 am
Alex Holowczak wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:34 am

Strong players, particularly professionals, want to play for prize money. If the money is good enough, they'll play whatever. Weekend chess tournaments in England tend not to have sponsorship, so the prize funds need to be manufactured through entry fees. By FIDE-rating the event, the tournament gets more entries to the FIDE-rated sections. If you have more entry fee income, you can offer more prize money, and so they become more attractive to the touring domestic professionals irrespective of whether any form of conditions are offered.

If Richard's argument were true, then it would apply equally to a 9-round Open played at 1 game per day as it would a weekend tournament; or indeed a 7-round event like Paignton or Guernsey.
You have lectured upthread about how English organisers should learn from the rest of Europe.

Perhaps you should consider why the Bunratty Congress in Ireland is not FIDE rated.
My impression is that it's intended to be much more of a social event, and so not "prestigious" in the sense Richard meant. You might add the Blitz in the Crypt as a similar example of that type of tournament. A typical weekend tournament is often much more serious; it may have a County Individual title at stake, or a Union Championship title, or count towards the British Championship Grand Prix.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by Roger de Coverly » Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:55 am

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:34 am
Strong players, particularly professionals, want to play for prize money.
I'd suspect that Richard's point is that they also want and in some cases need to play for rating points. In this context playing at 90 30 on a two rounds a day schedule can be conducive to upsets and if you are a top seed there's limited upside by playing and beating your peers.

East Devon runs on-line entry and no doubt incurs the ire of at least one poster by putting the entries on its website.

David Sedgwick
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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by David Sedgwick » Tue Feb 27, 2018 12:34 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:46 am
My impression is that it's intended to be much more of a social event, and so not "prestigious" in the sense Richard meant. You might add the Blitz in the Crypt as a similar example of that type of tournament. A typical weekend tournament is often much more serious; it may have a County Individual title at stake, or a Union Championship title, or count towards the British Championship Grand Prix.
Thank you for posting that you don't regard Bunratty as prestigious.

I give up.

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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by Alex Holowczak » Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:01 pm

David Sedgwick wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 12:34 pm
Alex Holowczak wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:46 am
My impression is that it's intended to be much more of a social event, and so not "prestigious" in the sense Richard meant. You might add the Blitz in the Crypt as a similar example of that type of tournament. A typical weekend tournament is often much more serious; it may have a County Individual title at stake, or a Union Championship title, or count towards the British Championship Grand Prix.
Thank you for posting that you don't regard Bunratty as prestigious.

I give up.
I'm really referring to amateur players here, rather than professionals. Events like Bunratty will be successful whether they're FIDE-rated or not, and they're going to attract the top players. They have sponsorship/donors, so FIDE-rating isn't important. I think many of the amateur players who go to Bunratty regard it much more as a social event, and a chance to mingle with the stronger players.

If you have an amateur tournament (i.e. most weekend tournaments in England), then I think you need to FIDE-rate it to attract more players. My experimental evidence is that this is what happens. They tend not to have sponsors, so you need to engineer a prize fund, which in turn is of benefit to the professional players. Some Warwickshire players rated 2100 to 2200 will regard the county title as serious (or noteworthy) to them, and so an event like the Warwickshire Championship will be more serious to them in a way that Bunratty wouldn't be. So why not FIDE-rate the local county event?

If someone offered me £20,000 and told me to organise a weekend tournament attracting professionals, then I accept that FIDE-rating it would not be important. If I'm running it on a break even basis with a prize fund manufactured from entry fees, then I think it would be important. Would CCF be as successful as it is if its events were not FIDE-rated? Would the 4NCL Congresses be as successful as they are if its events were not FIDE-rated? My suspicion is that they wouldn't be.

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IM Jack Rudd
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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by IM Jack Rudd » Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:07 pm

Number of players playing in the 2018 East Devon Open: 49.
Number of such players with an ECF grade of 200 or higher: 1.

I don't think this tournament is particularly having a problem attracting amateur players.

Alex McFarlane
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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by Alex McFarlane » Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:28 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:01 pm
If you have an amateur tournament (i.e. most weekend tournaments in England), then I think you need to FIDE-rate it to attract more players.
Blackpool? Scarborough?
The two biggest weekenders on the circuit. Neither are FIDE rated. (And neither qualify for entry to the British.)

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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by NickFaulks » Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:45 pm

David Sedgwick wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:40 am
Perhaps you should consider why the Bunratty Congress in Ireland is not FIDE rated.
I've never played there, but my understanding from those who have is that the top players are happy that they can take advantage of the event's legendary hospitality without putting their FIDE rating at risk the following morning. While that's fine in a special case, which Bunratty certainly is, I wouldn't want it as a template for all weekend chess.
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by Roger de Coverly » Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:04 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:01 pm
Some Warwickshire players rated 2100 to 2200 will regard the county title as serious (or noteworthy) to them, and so an event like the Warwickshire Championship will be more serious to them in a way that Bunratty wouldn't be. So why not FIDE-rate the local county event?
The Warwickshire event is next weekend. Without checking in detail, I get the impression that entry numbers so far are down. Unless there's a flood of late entries, well short on last weekend's East Devon. This is after a switch from a 3 game Saturday format with session lengths under 4 hours to a FIDE compatible format with a round Friday evening.

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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by NickFaulks » Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:05 pm

David Sedgwick wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:24 am
Richard Bates wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 7:54 am
It is almost certainly true that any organiser in the UK wanting to run a weekend tournament with a starting point that they seek to run a 'prestigious' event and attract a lot of strong players to the Open should NOT FIDE rate it. In FIDE rating terms such tournaments effectively offer almost no upsides and potentially very large downsides. With the added issue that the pursuit of prizes and FIDE rating points will invariably conflict with each other. People who point to the 4NCL congress model as a counter to this are, I think, ignoring the likelihood that any stronger player entries to these are generally in spite of FIDE rating, rather than because of it. And usually based around the starting point of the offering of conditions of various sorts, that most regular weekend tournaments don't.
Your posts are nearly always well argued and this one is no exception.
Richard is arguing that England should largely withdraw itself from FIDE's titles and ratings systems. I do not doubt that he has his reasons for believing this, and that he given careful thought to them, but he stops short of telling us what they are.

I'm not taken with the conflict between the desires for rating points and prizes. That is inevitable in any system, and why does it not apply equally to ECF grades? I imagine the answer is that titled players don't generally care about their ECF grades, but if they don't play FIDE rated games that is all they will have left to care about.
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Alex Holowczak
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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by Alex Holowczak » Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:37 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:04 pm
Alex Holowczak wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:01 pm
Some Warwickshire players rated 2100 to 2200 will regard the county title as serious (or noteworthy) to them, and so an event like the Warwickshire Championship will be more serious to them in a way that Bunratty wouldn't be. So why not FIDE-rate the local county event?
The Warwickshire event is next weekend. Without checking in detail, I get the impression that entry numbers so far are down. Unless there's a flood of late entries, well short on last weekend's East Devon. This is after a switch from a 3 game Saturday format with session lengths under 4 hours to a FIDE compatible format with a round Friday evening.
Indeed, because Warwickshire's Open team has a county match on the same day. :oops:

Edit: 6 days before the event 12 months ago, the event had 68 entries. This year, there are 63 in the spreadsheet at the same date.
Last edited by Alex Holowczak on Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:43 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: East Devon Open, 23-25 February

Post by Alex Holowczak » Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:39 pm

Alex McFarlane wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:28 pm
Alex Holowczak wrote:
Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:01 pm
If you have an amateur tournament (i.e. most weekend tournaments in England), then I think you need to FIDE-rate it to attract more players.
Blackpool? Scarborough?
The two biggest weekenders on the circuit. Neither are FIDE rated. (And neither qualify for entry to the British.)
Indeed they are the biggest. I think they'd get even more entries if they were FIDE-rated; but it would depend on which section you FIDE-rated them down to. If you just FIDE-rated the Open, then I suspect all you'd end up doing is having a redistribution such that some players ended up playing up to the Open more than you get now.

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