Ayr 2015

[hamish olson]

Chicken

[Jonathan Livingstone]

Well deserving of a mention is the great Ayr congress by DG and his team again.

- Entrant numbers up on last year.
- 6 titled players.
- As many as about 1/3 of the entrants seemed to be juniors.

Most congresses would be delighted to claim one of the above, let alone all 3.

[andyburnett]

Agreed. Fantastic weekend of chess in a great venue - so good I'll be doing the report for the magazine myself

[Alex Gillies]

Big thumbs up for Ayr. Good to see so many top players and juniors playing. I think the venue and location make it worth the effort - we stayed at Craig Tara so it doubles up as a family break away (the real extra cost is the entry fees)

I was talking to a couple of folk about Andrew Greet's point about more money for the open . I can see it from both sides but its only a few tournaments that offer even prizemoney so I think it balances out given the financial constraints within the game. Ironically the volume of strong players that turned out suggests that other factors do matter.

Protecting grading is one of the factors that is always going to affect some players- It would be interesting to see how that could be addressed.

I think it adds to the event when you see top players and as a result some really good games. This can only encourage juniors to watch live and challenge the top players.

A few suggestions I would like to put forward:

1 £50 or perhaps a little more for 5/5 in the Open.
2 If no 5/5 roll it up to the next year or perhaps the next weekend congress. (Might be controversial to select events that qualify for that so that might be a problem)
3 Pay a bounty of say £20 or so for the first player to beat the top seed
4 Picking up on Alan Tate's post re the Grand prix create an over 2150 section. If sponsors don't cover it then perhaps £10 or so from each congress.