The format is beautiful. There are 4 qualification tournaments during the 2015/16 season. Inverness, Livingston, Perth and Ayr. In the top section, if you score 5/5 you qualify for next seasons Super 8. The other places are determined by points gained in the 4 tournaments.
In an attempt to increase the number of FIDE graded players in Scotland, the Open and Major are FIDE rated with the plan to extend this down to the Minor as we get more players with a grade.
What a fantastic idea! Current standings can be seen at http://www.scotchesstour.co.uk/
We need more people like David!
The three main arbiters are yours truly, David and the terrifying John McNicol
One of the many features of the tournament is David's drive for innovation. Nothing like getting us techie guys scratching our heads :) As well as having a FIDE graded Major, we are using computer pairing (yes you are reading this correctly, I am using computer pairings!! Alex has just fallen off his seat in complete shock!), incremental times, results being tweeted in real time, provisional draws being published online. I could go on. If it is an innovative idea, you can bet David is wanting to try it!
The 8 qualifiers will then play in a game a day tournament next season.
I love this series of tournaments and I am grateful to be allowed to be part of the team!
So this weekend we are in Livingston. As usual David has found a really good venue in a hotel. One thing we didn't consider is the weather. Someone forgot to tell Storm Gertrude that we are playing chess this weekend. This is what the Met Office have to say
First round went off without a hitch, well apart from the unnamed player who thought it would be a good idea to kick the cable and disable the top boards in the open. Sigh, there is a reason I prefer the wireless boards!
Day 2 was upon us, we awoke to this...
Oh boy, more that 0.1mm of snow on the ground and you just know that the country is going to grind to a standstill!
Most people made it to the venue. It was fun travelling on untreated roads as it seems none of the councils quite got the message that there was an AMBER alert for snow. What do we need to do to get these people to notice???
I seem to be doomed in incremental tournaments. So far I have had a 160 odd move at the London Chess Classic., a 168 move monster at the Commonwealth and yesterday, in the Major section, board 2 had a good attempt at eclipsing these. The game resolved to King v King, Bishop and Knight, and I quickly made the calculation for a 50 move draw or a 75 move Arbiter wanting to go home claim.
Thankfully on move 106 (and after missing a mate in 8) the game came to a sudden abrupt end when black forgot about the bishop and left it en prise. As we were already an hour after expected finishing time, this came as a relief to all and sundry!
Day 3 and we caught a glimpse of this strange yellow ball in the sky. Allegedly it is called the Sun. After all this rain, wind and snow, we have had not a bad day today. Calm before the storm, Henry visits us tomorrow!
At the tournament, I have been testing a piece of tournament management software called Vega. I have to say I really like it. Connecting to a printer we get a really pleasing round draw which allows players to be able to read my draws. Only thing I didn't like is the draws it produced and I ended up doing a draw on a piece of paper and putting it in manually. It has 9 engines so it is just a case of playing about with them until we find one that is more like what we use here. Lots of promise.
I think in Perth we are going to try Swiss Manager. I have been dying to get my hands on that for some time as the web output is out of this world. Really looking forward to that.
Only real "drama" was losing one of the wireless boards in Round 4. I calculated that we had enough battery power for that round but forgot to take into consideration it was a bit cold. Woops :D
Overall a really enjoyable tournament. Had a lot of players coming up to me to say that they loved the format and would be back. Well done David!
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