12-09-2016, 05:06 PM
The smaller than expected entry would have hit the prize fund badly, in conjunction with the high cost of the hall. If the resulting prize fund (outside the rating prizes) was £250 it would still only come to about £125 each if it had been split into a first and a second prize. Of course you would normally win more from 4.5/5 in an open but I don’t think Gary had much leeway in the circumstances.
I would prefer not to have a tie break (ironically, Alex would have been very happy to split the prizes) especially when there is one prize as it can be pretty random and seems to me to run counter to the points system itself. It’s interesting that the original Sonneborn-Berger idea was to add the players’ points to their existing Sum of Opponents Scores - which had been used on its own instead of the players’ points!
Thanks to Gary and co. There were plenty of positive notes - eg Rosie Giulian, Ian Marks and Steve Smith did well, only giving way in the last round, and presumably picked up some Fide points for themselves, and there was a big junior entry.
Well done the first two on getting 4/4. I’d also like to say thank you to Alex for lifts (and his family members for squashing in and around my bike!) without whom I would have had ridiculous journeys due to the Greenock road being closed. On the Saturday morning (the Gillies entourage having taken a football-inspired bye) I was half expecting to be pulled back by a police car after having to disobey a road workman who thought ‘safety’ was more important than making it to a chess game!
I would prefer not to have a tie break (ironically, Alex would have been very happy to split the prizes) especially when there is one prize as it can be pretty random and seems to me to run counter to the points system itself. It’s interesting that the original Sonneborn-Berger idea was to add the players’ points to their existing Sum of Opponents Scores - which had been used on its own instead of the players’ points!
Thanks to Gary and co. There were plenty of positive notes - eg Rosie Giulian, Ian Marks and Steve Smith did well, only giving way in the last round, and presumably picked up some Fide points for themselves, and there was a big junior entry.
Well done the first two on getting 4/4. I’d also like to say thank you to Alex for lifts (and his family members for squashing in and around my bike!) without whom I would have had ridiculous journeys due to the Greenock road being closed. On the Saturday morning (the Gillies entourage having taken a football-inspired bye) I was half expecting to be pulled back by a police car after having to disobey a road workman who thought ‘safety’ was more important than making it to a chess game!