English Seniors 2024

[Matt Mackenzie]

Hopefully, we won't get any more protests taking place outside the hotel. Yesterday morning we had someone with a megaphone protesting about the Israeli invasion of Gaza and reading out a list of Palestinian children who've been killed.

How dare they, what a monster.

[Tim Spanton]

The "compressed schedule" is why I immediately decided not to play. A normal local weekend tournament is ok, and I don't care about ratings, but a serious event should have a more relaxed time-limit.

The notional five hour session of 90 moves in 40 minutes with an extra 30 minutes to finish alongside 30 second increments can work for tournaments with two rounds a day. The squeeze points are a potentially earlier start, shorter time between rounds and later finish.The last orders for food at the local pubs seem to be 9pm. That's comfortable with a four hour game starting at 4 pm but potentially less so with a five hour game.

One aspect that some players are unhappy about is that the pairings are not being published until one hour before the round. Some tournaments including the British Campionships seem willing to do this immediately on completion on the previous round.

One good thing about last-minute (actually last-hour) pairings is that they cut the chance of players being paired and then failing to show.

[Tim Harding]

As a spectator (online) I found these last-minute pairings somewhat strange and annoying.,
Anyway as of noon (approximately) today the final round is in progress and games are live on Lichess.

https://lichess.org/broadcast/ecf-engli ... 7/ojc7mQFu
(From there you can also migrate to the 50+ games.)

In the 65+ there are four players on 4.5/6 and the pairings are Large v Chapman and Paul Hutchinson v Littlewood.
Some other players (including Tim Spanton) could reach 5 points if they win and in fact Ian Snape has already done so and is "leader in the clubhouse" as I write.

In the 50+ Peter Wells (5) is playing Andrew Brett (4.5). Mark Hebden (4.5) has White v Neil Bradbury (4) and Stephen Homer (4) has White v Stephen Dishman (4.5). Nobody else can get more than 4.5 which Andrew Ledger and Nigel Davies (having drawn their game) have just finished with.

[Mick Norris]

Wells, Hebden & Dishman won

Large & Chapman drew, Littlewood won

[John Saunders]

I've now posted the games and crosstables from these tournaments on BritBase...

https://www.saund.org.uk/britbase/pgn/2 ... iewer.html

[Mick Norris]

GM Peter Wells (50+ Senior Open Champion), WIM Natasha Regan (50+ Senior Women’s Champion), IM Paul Littlewood (65+ Senior Open Champion) and WGM Sheila Jackson (65+ Senior Women’s Champion)

[NigelCollins]

The revised published prizes and a revised list of prizewinners for the English Seniors Championships have been updated at https://www.englishchess.org.uk/english ... 4-results/ . There is no direct link from the ECF home page at https://www.englishchess.org.uk/ .

[Roger de Coverly]

The revised published prizes and a revised list of prizewinners for the English Seniors Championships have been updated at https://www.englishchess.org.uk/english ... 4-results/ . There is no direct link from the ECF home page at https://www.englishchess.org.uk/ .

From the link

Over 50 Rating Performance Prizes
1800-1999 Eric Gardiner £100
Under 1800 Neil Homer £100

Additional prizes were awarded based on points scored in band as follows:
50+ Under 2000 prize: Shared three ways between Eric Gardiner (Hull), Clive Walley (Bath) and Barry Hymer (Lancaster) all on 3 points.
50+ Under 1800 prize: Neil Homer (4NCL Pitstop) on 2½ points

Over 65 Rating Performance Prizes
1800-1999 Philip Neatherway £100
Under 1800 Nigel Collins £100

Additional prizes were awarded based on points scored in band as follows:
65+ Under 2000 prize: Norman Hutchinson (Cambridge City) on 4½ points.
65+ Under 1800 prize: Robert Wall (East Grinstead) on 3½ points.

chessmoves from a few days ago had the rating prizes as

Rating prizes were as follows:
50+ Under 2000 prize: £100 shared three ways between Eric Gardiner (Hull), Clive Walley (Bath) and Barry Hymer
(Lancaster), all on 3 points.
50+ Under 1800 prize: £100 Neil Homer (4NCL Pitstop) on 2½ points

Rating prizes were as follows:
65+ Under 2000 prize: £100 won by Norman Hutchinson (Cambridge City) on 4½ points.
65+ Under 1800 prize: £100 won by Robert Wall (East Grinstead) on 3½ points.

So they decided to award prizes both on W-We and best score in the rating range.

[NigelCollins]

The full official list of prizes was published at https://www.englishchess.org.uk/english ... hips-2024/ before the championships started. Apart from the championship prizes there were only best performance prizes listed for the rating bands. It was stated that these would be based on W-We.

After the championships a different list of rating prizes with a different calculation method, together with prizewinners, was published on the results page - see an archived version at https://archive.ph/2024.06.04-055507/ht ... 4-results/.

Then on 6 Jun the live web page https://www.englishchess.org.uk/english ... 4-results/ showed the revised lists of prizes: firstly, rating best performance prizes based on highest W-We in band, and, secondly, additional prizes based on points scored in band.