English Chess Forum

Anyone know the result of yesterdays Shropshire v Staffordshire match?!

Shropshire 5 Staffordshire 11

Puzzling, these results, at times.

Bd Grade Shropshire Staffordshire Grade

1 156 Iain R Wilson ½ ½ John Staniforth 157
2 156 Gerald C Link 0 1 Ben Zitha 156
3 152 Andrew Tunks 0 1 Max Wootton 154
4 149 Glyn Randle 0 1 Martin May 154
5 147 John A Westhead 0 1 Peter Leary 153
6 143 Eugene BD Raby 0 1 Steve Hill 152
7 147 Steve Tarr ½ ½ Derek Perks 152
8 141 Gary M White 1 0 Mike Groombridge 151
9 139 Graham C Shepherd ½ ½ Phil F Staley 147
10 138 Richard G Thompson 0 1 William Rea 146
11 138 John A Tunks 0 1 Alan Thomason 142
12 131 Nathanael Paul 0 1 John Day 134
13 136 Stefan H Tennant 1 0 Matthew P Wyza 137
14 134 Windsor WA Peck 1 0 John Button 135
15 129 Richard Gillespie 0 1 Peter Broomhall 133
16 117 Roger R Brown ½ ½ Brian Birchall 125

TOTALS 5 11

Rules.....always a tricky issue, and can cause much agitation.
Look at rule 10 in the MCCU Qualifier event to illustrate what you get when rules are drafted too losely or vaguely.

Regarding rule 10 which says....
> 10 Within three days of the match a copy of the full score, as far as
> completed, shall be forwarded by the appropriate official of both counties
> to the County Championship Controller. Failure to report the result or
> postponement of a match by either county within twenty one days of the
> original scheduled date for the match shall automatically result in that
> county being awarded no points for that match.
Can you guess what that means..?? ..or what penalties should apply to each situation?
Or what penalties would be fair in the circumstances...?
ie, failing to send in a score sheet after 3 days?
Should both teams be equally punished?


I wont mention defaults, except to say that any defaults, unless specifically declared the day prior to the match, and communicated effectively, should only be categorically declared 1 hour after the start of play, to ensure that any unexpected arrivals are not (accidentally??) ruled out from taking part? Very strange practice...??
But, despite these foibles, the MCCU Qualifier events remain of great interest, and are deservedly well supported within the MCCU

David Pardoe wrote:Rules.....always a tricky issue, and can cause much agitation.
Look at rule 10 in the MCCU Qualifier event to illustrate what you get when rules are drafted too losely or vaguely.

Regarding rule 10 which says....
> 10 Within three days of the match a copy of the full score, as far as
> completed, shall be forwarded by the appropriate official of both counties
> to the County Championship Controller. Failure to report the result or
> postponement of a match by either county within twenty one days of the
> original scheduled date for the match shall automatically result in that
> county being awarded no points for that match.
Can you guess what that means..?? ..or what penalties should apply to each situation?
Or what penalties would be fair in the circumstances...?
ie, failing to send in a score sheet after 3 days?
Should both teams be equally punished?

It seems straightforward enough to me. If a county submits its result within 3 days, it scores however many match points and however many game points it actually scored in the match. If it fails to submit a result within 21 days, it scores 0 match points and 0 game points for that match. If the delay is somewhere in the middle, there is no specific penalty applied by that rule, and the normal disciplinary rules for the event apply.

Hi Jack,
I read it slightly differently. To me it says that penatly points should be deducted for failure to submit results (by either team), within 3 days. But the second part is trying to say that penalty points would also be deducted for postponments occuring within 21 days of the original match date. Both parts have been tangled up together to create confusion, I think.
But a `comma` placed after "Failure to report the result " might make it read slightly better.
Then you`ve got to question the sense of this, if we`re talking of a match played, say, in late March? Imagine what would happen if both teams were feeling bolshy and decided to wait 20 days before submitting the result? What fun, specially for any team waiting to know who was going through to the Qualifier stage/Preliminary matches.
Also, you cant talk about deducting match points in the case of a postponment, because, by definition, you wont know from whom to deduct the points...cause the match has been postponed!??

David,

I think you are confusing an unclear rule (which this isn't - you appear to be the only person taking the interpretation that you are) with a poor rule (which I think everyone agrees is the case here).

The question as to whom to deduct points from in the event of a postponement is equally clear - it's the county which fails to report the fact that the match was postponed (which could be one of the two counties or both and is unrelated to which county requested the postponement).

I am sure that the 21 day period should be reduced to 7 days in this internet age.

Sean

Sean,
I think we both agree this rule needs sorting out and clarifying.
I think it needs to be split into two separate rules. One dealing with a failure to submit a results sheet within three days, detailing the penalties that would apply (my suggestion would be for 0.5 of a match point for either team not complying).
Then a second rule dealing with postponments occuring within 21 days of a scheduled match. Again, I`m tempted to suggest a modest `half match point` penalty for the offending team.