Does your League still have adjournments?

[Matt Mackenzie]

Add the Northumberland League to those that have neither adjournments nor adjudications.

That certainly wasn't the case in the late 80s when I was there

And yes, the "stick in the muds" who opposed changing to QPFs back then used EXACTLY the same arguments as now

Good to see they lost this one, anyway (when was the switchover?)

[Alasdair MacLeod]

Longest league round trip in an evening could become a whole new thread!

... or greatest time spent travelling to an adjournment divided by number of moves played (30 minutes for me - 2 hours of travelling for a game that lasted a further 4 moves). Attempts to beat this by dividing by 0 moves don't count!

Last season a fellow club member travelled something like a couple of hours for an adjourned game. Upon his opponent's arrival, he opened the envelope. There was a scoresheet but no sealed move enclosed! So effectively, within a few seconds of sitting down, my fellow club member won the game already without a move being played.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"A 120 mile round trip! - it just shows what a different world it is in London! I think you would have to get through 3 or 4 adjournment sessions here before you could reach comparable levels of inconvenience."

This is a good point. Taking Surrey as an extension of London, I worked out that there are places which were less than half an hour's drive to eight or nine clubs! Having said that, there are a few clubs that do not like to travel and when I was League Secretary, I could predict which matches would be defaulted as they were "too far" to go.

Another problem with adjournments is that after your hours of analysis (with your team of seconds and computers) and several attempts to arrange a date for resumption, you turn up to discover that the opponent has sealed the move which is the only one to win/draw.

[Alex Holowczak]

Another problem with adjournments is that after your hours of analysis (with your team of seconds and computers) and several attempts to arrange a date for resumption, you turn up to discover that the opponent has sealed the move which is the only one to win/draw.

The ideal scenario for adjournment if you can would be something like:

29. Qh6+ Kg8 30. Qg6+ Kh8 31. Qh6+ (sealed)

So you guarantee a draw by repetition, and can get your computer to find a win. If there isn't one, then you can agree a draw, or make your opponent travel to play 31... Kg8 32. Qg6+ ...

[IM Jack Rudd]

Which is all very well unless the only winning move is 32.Qg6+ (this is not entirely fictitious - something very similar once happened to Mestel; luckily, there was another winning line).

[John Upham]

Following a most refreshing AGM (23-07-2010) in which common sense prevailed (I can scarcely believe it happened) the Surrey Border League has harmonised its time controls choice across Divisions 1-5, it has improved the Fischer time control default and downgraded the adjournment option such that both the perpetrator and the victim have to agree to an adjournment type time control

so, no more being forced to adjourn scenarios!

Also, there are was improved acceptance of digital clocks.

The registration / eligibility procedures were cleaned up.

[Michael Jones]

I've played in the Lincolnshire, Hunts & Peterborough and Coventry leagues, which have time controls of 75 minutes for the first 36, 36 and 30 moves respectively, and all of which then play to a finish with 15 minutes added. No adjournments or adjudications in any of the three cases - adjournments would have been unpopular in the first two due to the distances involved (Spalding are the southernmost club in the Lincs and the northernmost in the H&P, giving a round trip of 90 miles in one direction and 80 in the other). Coventry is less of a problem solely with regard to distances - we had a round trip of 60 miles for the couple of seasons Littlethorpe joined it, since their departure nothing further than 35 - but more of one in that, being a university club, very few of our players have cars so a lot of the time we have to rely on public transport to get to away matches, which especially in the evenings isn't that great around here. Even if your team does have a driver, unless he happened to have an adjournment to he'd hardly be likely to offer to drive you to yours!

Or you could just play quicker so as to reach the endgame with enough time left - or memorise those lines which leads to an early endgame (there are a few!)

A radical idea! In the above paragraph I deliberately said "play to a finish" with no mention of the word "quickplay", because it's only a quickplay finish if you want to make it one by using every last minute of the first time control. Knowing that a chess game can easily run to 60 moves or more, and that however many it does require you'll still have the same 90 minutes in which to make them, it doesn't, as far as I can see, make a great deal of sense to spend 5/6 of that time on the first 30 of them. More than once I've reached the first time control with 20-30 minutes to spare, had much more time for the endgame than my opponent and consequently achieved a better result than I might have done otherwise.

(Admittedly this can be taken too far though, as in the case of one opponent who finished a game with more time than he started it. He made the first 30 moves in 10 minutes so had 1h20 for the rest of the game, and we agreed a draw on move 32. I had to wait for a lift, but he'd probably got home and made himself a cup of tea before the other games were out of the opening)

[Alex Holowczak]

I play far quicker than I did 12 months ago; I realised that at my skill level, wasting time on the opening and middle-game was pointless. I would end up sitting for two or three minutes, often ending up doing what I planned to do three minutes prior. So now I get on with it a bit more, leaving more time for the ending. My results seem to have improved...

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I play far quicker than I did 12 months ago; I realised that at my skill level, wasting time on the opening and middle-game was pointless. I would end up sitting for two or three minutes, often ending up doing what I planned to do three minutes prior. So now I get on with it a bit more, leaving more time for the ending. My results seem to have improved...

I agree absolutely with what you say here, but sadly I still think for ages over moves in the opening and middlegame. With me, it is more think for 10-20 minutes and then play what I was thinking about anyway. Hopefully some of what I thought about in that period helps me later on, and sometimes it is worth it. I won one game recently because I realised my opponent's position was rubbish and my pieces looked perfectly placed. So I kept looking for the win until I found it! (Well, I actually missed something in one of the lines, but by the time we got there I spotted the mistake and still won).

[Alex Holowczak]

Sorry to beat this horse again, but some interesting things have happened in the Birmingham League.

Its website (which is excellent, by the way) has the results of the annual quickplay-adjournment election. Looking back at the last few seasons, the result has nearly always been 45-29 to adjournments (or similar). But all of a sudden, something dramatic has happened: http://records.birminghamchess.org.uk/S ... Finish.htm

It's now 37-36 to adjournments, with 1 team yet to decide (but history suggests it'll plump for adjournments). So that's 38-36, so quickplay fans in the area either need a few new teams are required, or a switch of 1 team from A to Q, and no longer will adjournments be the dominant choice in the Birmingham League. There has been a swing of 7 from A to Q, 1 from Q to A, with 2 new teams joining the league, both Q (replacing two outgoing teams, 1Q, 1A). 2 divisions have a majority of Q, and 3 have a majority of A (with 1 draw). On a club-by-club basis, the score is 13-11 to Q (with 1 draw). I can't think why there'd be such a sudden thrust of support for quickplay finishes, but I'm glad there's been one!

Once there's a triple majority of quickplay support (i.e. more teams, clubs and divisions), then a proposal to make them the default will surely be accepted.

[Paul McKeown]

Hmmm,

Here's a Halloween story for adjournment fans...

About twelve years ago, having returned to Blighty from years abroad in Germany, wo es gar kein hängepartie mehr gibt, and Holland, waar het al lang erg ungewoonlijk is geworden, partijen af te breken, yours truly had started to play chess for Staines in the Thames Valley League and the Border League.

Early in the season our German player, Ralf, had adjourned a whole rook up in the Thames Valley, with the attack as compensation for his material advantage, to boot, against a particular player from another club. His opponent said that he would, "look at it". Nothing was heard. No sign, no signal, for months. Telephone calls, fixed line and mobile, failed to contact the invisible man. Text messages, too. Electronic mail vanished into the ether. A letter failed to produce a response. Quite mysterious.

Then, it was time for the away return match. As if by magic, the invisible man hove into sight... "but I resigned that game ages ago, didn't you get my message?" Incredulous looks all round. Then shrugs.

It turned out, after team lists were exchanged, that I was to do battle with this particular fellow. He played a gambit, which I accepted; it soon became apparent that he didn't know it well enough, I comfortably held the pawn, safely gained another, rearranged my excellently centralised pieces to attack his backward d6 pawn three times. Session ends. By the rules of the TVL, I said that I would like to have the game adjudicated, my opponent unsurprisingly preferred to carry on. Contact details exchanged, the other fellow didn't have his diary with him, "I'll give you a call, tomorrow".

Tomorrow. No call. Then the next day.

After a week or so, I sent an email, tried to contact the fellow by telephone. No success. Months later, three days before the season officially is to end, I manage to get hold of the fellow's work number.

"Yes, sorry, been busy, no trouble. Errr, no can't make that day, no, that one neither. Tell you what, why don't you come round to my house in ---- --------- on Saturday?"

"Oh, okay, then."

Saturday, rail journey of an hour and forty five minutes, woman answers door.

"He doesn't live here, we're getting a divorce..."

Door slammed in face.

[MSoszynski]

I remember turning up at a certain resumption. I had the slightly better position and had carefully prepared (or so I thought) for whatever my opponent had sealed. But when I opened the envelope the sealed move was something I hadn't even considered. It got me very worried for a few moments until I realised that it wasn't the right move number, for my opponent had sealed the wrong scoresheet!

He was the opposition captain, and towards the end of the first session he had got up from the board to resolve some issue on the lower boards. Soon enough I chased after him to remind him about the adjournment envelope, etc. He simply dived into the pockets of his jacket and carelessly extracted the first scoresheet he found and sealed that.

Obviously I won on the spot. It's merely another example of adjournments perverting the proper course of a chess game, in this case accidentally.

[Roger de Coverly]

By the rules of the TVL, I said that I would like to have the game adjudicated, my opponent unsurprisingly preferred to carry on. Contact details exchanged, the other fellow didn't have his diary with him, "I'll give you a call, tomorrow".

If a league insists on retaining adjournments, there's a simple way out. Insist that the rule should say
(a) you agree on adjournments before play starts or at the latest when both players are present.
(b) if you agree an adjournment, you also have to agree the time and place of resumption. It will help to have a rule for the venue of the resumption, it may not matter whether it says same place or travel. If you cannot agree the resumption, you cannot agree adjudication so the multiple choice questions are reduced.

Those of us who recall congresses with adjournment sessions will know that the time and place of resumptions was always laid down in the tournament schedule.

[Jonathan Bryant]

It will help to have a rule for the venue of the resumption ....

Not always. The rule for adjournments in the London League is that they are played at Golden Lane (the central league venue for those who live outside the capital) unless both sides agree otherwise.

You'd think this would be clear but I personally - and a club mate recently - have experienced opponents arguing for some time over the venue of the adjournment. You might expect that demonstrating the rules are very clear on this point but in my experience (and also that of my clubmate) clarify the rules does not end the debate.


That said, I do by and large agree with you.

[Alex Holowczak]

I just had a great evening.

Left Uni at 6pm after a lecture. Got fish and chips from the chip shop on Aston Street. Walked to Birmingham Moor Street, ate my dinner, and then caught a train to Tyseley railway station. Admired the GWR decor for a moment. Then walked to the social club for the resumption of my game. Unfortunately, my opponent never made it that far. Under Birmingham League rules, I started his clock, and won on time.

Luckily, a fellow adjourner was playing, so could give me a lift back towards Birmingham City Centre when he finished (won on time; did well to defend an iffy endgame that was probably lost but not easy - a few of us showed him this on Saturday of course...).

A thoroughly enjoyable evening.

I'd best leave it at that in case there's a dispute.