County Championships - time for a change?

Discussion about all aspects of the ECF County Championships.
Brian Valentine
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Re: County Championships - time for a change?

Post by Brian Valentine » Mon May 26, 2014 5:33 pm

Sean Hewitt wrote:
John Swain wrote:First, we ought to set up regional competitions on a Saturday or Sunday where two or three games on a Swiss format, perhaps with an hour each on the clocks, could be played. A leisurely start time of, say 11.00 a.m. would still permit two more rounds with a "traditional" finishing time of about 6.00 p.m.
I suspect this would put most people off, including myself. Can't imagine many fancying or valuing what is effectively a quickplay format.

This type of format would not be a change in the EACU open section. While agreeing with Sean's sentiment, even playing one game a day after travel leaves no time for much else. Next season we are expecting to play 8 games over 4 days with a slightly slower time control than mid-week chess. Saving 4 weeks to negotiate playing in an e2e4 weekender!

The EACU meet at a central venue expected to be over 5 weekends next season. Often grading restricted matches take place there as well.

David Sedgwick
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Re: County Championships - time for a change?

Post by David Sedgwick » Mon May 26, 2014 8:44 pm

Sean Hewitt wrote:
John Swain wrote:Secondly, the timing of county matches needs to be adjusted. Playing the Quarter-Finals on 17 May and the Semi-Finals on 14 June is a very effective way of excluding juniors with GCSE and A Level exams. If we really want to encourage the participation of juniors, the Finals should be in March/April at the very latest.
This is an eminently sensible suggestion.
One glance at the SCCU fixture list for 2013-14 (http://www.sccu.ndo.co.uk/fixt.htm) should suffice to indicate that this suggestion could only be achieved by destroying the SCCU Counties Championships in their present form.

It's not clear to me why encouraging the participation of juniors should be an objective of this competition. I've no objection to juniors playing if they're available, but I've always regarded the Counties Championships as an event aimed primarily at adults.

Mike Truran
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Re: County Championships - time for a change?

Post by Mike Truran » Tue May 27, 2014 12:26 am

David

I think we agree on many matters, but I do differ with you somewhat regarding your second paragraph, if only because while 'encouraging' need not be an objective, ' discouraging' (to my mind at least) definitely should not - even if unintended.

Mike

Sean Hewitt
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Re: County Championships - time for a change?

Post by Sean Hewitt » Tue May 27, 2014 7:38 am

David Sedgwick wrote:One glance at the SCCU fixture list for 2013-14 (http://www.sccu.ndo.co.uk/fixt.htm) should suffice to indicate that this suggestion could only be achieved by destroying the SCCU Counties Championships in their present form.
I'm not convinced that rescheduling the SCCU event equates to destroying it. That said, there have been discussions previously about decoupling entry to the national stages from qualification via the union stages. Such a decoupling would allow the national stages to finish earlier (thus allowing juniors to continue playing) whilst causing minimal disruption to union events.

David Sedgwick
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Re: County Championships - time for a change?

Post by David Sedgwick » Tue May 27, 2014 8:38 am

Sean Hewitt wrote:
David Sedgwick wrote:One glance at the SCCU fixture list for 2013-14 (http://www.sccu.ndo.co.uk/fixt.htm) should suffice to indicate that this suggestion could only be achieved by destroying the SCCU Counties Championships in their present form.
I'm not convinced that rescheduling the SCCU event equates to destroying it.
The suggestion is that the Finals take place in April at the latest. That would presumably necessitate the Union Qualifying Stages being completed by the end of January. I simply don't think that there are enough available weekends.
Sean Hewitt wrote:That said, there have been discussions previously about decoupling entry to the national stages from qualification via the union stages. Such a decoupling would allow the national stages to finish earlier (thus allowing juniors to continue playing) whilst causing minimal disruption to union events.
The historic link between the Union Qualifying Stages and the National Stages has served both the Unions and the BCF / ECF well for over a century.

In fairness, breaking the similar link for the Counties U18 events (and younger age groups) seems to have been beneficial.

However, once again we have the problem of fixture congestion, with the proposal that the ECF Counties Championships and separate Union competitions should take place during the same months. In the pre-4NCL days, that might have been feasible, but now?

In the SCCU area, I would expect that at least some teams would have to make a choice between taking part in the SCCU Counties Championships and the ECF Counties Championships.

For me personally, that would be a no brainer. When other commitments prevent me taking part in Union Stage matches, I miss them. When I don't get to take part in National Stage matches for whatever reason, I don't miss them.

MartinCarpenter
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Re: County Championships - time for a change?

Post by MartinCarpenter » Tue May 27, 2014 10:09 am

Fixture congestion would definitely be a huge problem for trying to move the timing very much. Even with the small NCCU competition there are already vanishingly few free weekends during the main season.

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