Can anyone confirm if the Grangemouth Congress will run this year. I'm hoping to fix the date of the Lothian's Congress soon, and I don't want a clash of dates.

Yep, it's that time of year again, where I've been set thinking about how we organise tournament sections by the existence of the Hamilton Stars-Barred, as well as by the Lothians Allegro last Saturday. When I raised some issues with the former tournament last year, one reply was the entirely fair point that the Open the year before had attracted 8 entries, whereas the Stars-Barred garnered a rather healthier 24. Moreover, this increase can't wholly be attributed to players simply switching sections - the Minor and Major dropped to 56 between them in 2012 from 64 in 2011, but no further than that.

A couple of people have, on occasion, argued on this noticeboard that since the lower sections tend to be larger than Opens then the occasional perks accompanying congress chess (prize money and live boards, for instance) should be doled out accordingly. After Saturday's tournament - where it was very noticeable that the Open was much smaller than the other sections, with 22 entrants (well, 23, but one didn't turn up) against an average of 46 in the Challengers, Major and Minor - I started wondering about the extent to which this is true.

Accordingly, I took a look at the entries to congresses last year (so there's a full set to compare; one year is a rather small sample, but I couldn't be bothered with more) to see what emerged. I considered the entries to all sections in the Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Glenrothes, Grangemouth, Lothian, Marymass, Oban, Perth and Prestwick Congresses - those that I considered qualified as full-scale weekenders with an Open section. To cut a long story short, there's not very much of a difference - Opens had a mean of 31.4 entrants, with 33.0 for the 28 other sections (most tournaments following the Open-Challengers-Major-Minor model, some eschewing the Challengers and Edinburgh having five sections). It occurred to me that the large prize funds at Edinburgh and Dundee might be affecting things: when you take those two congresses out of the dataset the averages drop to 26.6 and 30.8, which is a bit more of a gap, but still not huge. (For what it's worth, the single smallest section was the Lothians Open, at 17.) I'm not really sure where all of this points, but I thought it was worth taking a look at. (I was expecting a much bigger gap: this makes the Hamilton Open's tiny 2011 entry look very strange indeed, and I'd be interested to know if anyone has an explanation.)

The second issue I was wondering about is an idea I've had before. I'd like to know how players would react if the organisers of one tournament, rather than publishing grading bands, simply announced that there would be four sections (say) and that entrants would be allocated to one or another based on their rating, to ensure roughly equal numbers in each section, which has obvious implications for the speed at which a tournament can be run (accordingly, it might be especially handy for an allegro, where round-to-round turnover is more important). Obviously that would need some tinkering to work (perhaps players could be asked to indicate when entering if they would like to play up to face stronger opposition, in which case they could be placed in a higher section than their grade alone would suggest; some kind of system like this would be crucial for improving juniors, for instance), and the boundaries would need to be drawn with care to avoid isolating players, while it might also be a good idea to accompany this with relatively beefed-up grading prizes to compensate for the difficulty in entering tournaments looking to win the things. As a basic principle, however, it might solve some of the problems of lopsided tournaments like Saturday's.

Anyway, that's an extremely long and seriously rambling post, but any thoughts on any of it are very welcome.

Was somewhat surprised to find a double page chess article in this (Tue 15th Jan 2013) morning's Metro.
There's a slightly abbreviated version available online.

Andy Burnett has withdrawn
Anyone want to play ? free accommodation & share a room with Alan Tate
Chance to beat some GMs like Steve Mannion did
Please contact me asap

Hi to all, just a reminder that the next CFK heat is on Saturday, in Airdrie, usual venue with a 12.30pm start. If you want to enter just e-mail me.

Michael.

Just some pics of the Minors

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Quote:News Biscuit: In light of recent concerns with the celibacy of gay bishops, FIDE, the World Chess Federation has announced that the rules of chess will be changed for matches played in 2013 and beyond.

From now on, bishops may not ‘take’ other bishops in the diagonal fashion we are used to seeing. FIDE are still under continued criticism for only allowing black bishops to take white ones and vice versa. ‘Same-race bishop interaction is still not allowed’ a FIDE spokesperson admitted. ‘And of course bishops taking horses, queens and those little ones will continue as normal’.

Anyone else seen the latest from the Zadar Open?

2200 Ivanov had some smashing results:

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but his own countryman, FM Lilov seems to think he played very "houdini-ishly" (by very, I mean 95 to 97% of the time!!):

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Quite a long video but very intriguing indeed! Lilov is suggesting organisers in big tournaments invest in some anti-cheating devices... certainly a sad state of affairs if such a measure is deemed necessary.

I would like to think that any player can significantly and quickly improve with effort, hard work and belief. And that an in-form and improving 2200 could play to 2600 hundred strength. In fact we have seen this with our very own Alan Tate (Congratulations again for your efforts on getting that GM norm).
However, after watching Lilov's video it appears that maybe Ivanov's "success" has not been merited honestly...

Any thoughts?

I am pleased to announce that Hugh Brechin has agreed to help out as a moderator on the forum.

Are the dates and place known yet?

Thanks Iain Hope