Seasonal report: 2023
The 2023 County Championship open league season has just finished. Our first fixture for the 2024 season will soon be open for registration. We remain in Division 2. Here is the report on how we did in all the leagues. You can see all the tables here (use the tabs at the bottom to move between leagues).
Open league
The league table shows us comfortably mid-table with 8 points: 3 wins, 2 draws, four losses ( we finish 5th of 10, three teams go up, three relegated). In fact, until the very last minute, we were going to finish on 6 points and be relegated on head-to-head with Channel Islands. Then a player from Dorset was banned for fair play, and the reversed games were enough to turn a narrow loss against them into a narrow win. So we escape—nice for us, gutting for the Dorset admins who see promotion snatched away by a cheat, annoying for Channel Islands too.
The overall picture in the open league is that there are more and more large, well-organised teams. Since we're rather smaller, we often find ourselves quite outmatched on the ratings below the top couple of boards. The four matches we lost, we mostly lost pretty heavily; our wins were all pretty narrow. It's hard to say how we'll do next season, since I don't know how strong the teams coming up and down are, but I'd say that promotion will be very tough, avoiding relegation would be a decent result.
U1600 league
This is actually not yet over, and looks like going down to the wire. We're currently 5-5 in our last match, with two games to complete. If we win that match, we'll be promoted. If we don't, it'll be a solid mid-table finish. I thought we had a decent chance of promotion in this one, and we might still get it! I'll update when it's settled.
U1300 league
Also not yet over, and we're waiting on the final result in a match between Devon Chess and Highlands and Islands Team to see if we stay in Div 4 or get relegated to Div 5. I'll update on this when it's done, too. I do feel we could do a bit better in the U1300 league—we have quite a few players within the rating, and our issue seems to be getting a good turnout for matches. Especially with the increasing strength of the open division, it's the U1600 and U1300 leagues where our lower-rated players are more likely to actually get games, even more so games they'll be competitive in (I include myself in this, by the way!).
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So all in all, not a bad season in the three leagues. I hope everyone has enjoyed their games and enjoyed playing for the team. I am (as ever) happy to take comments and suggestions about how the team might be better run, organised, etc, though I get the sense people are fairly fine with the low-key way we do things here. Enjoy the first window of your Advent calendars tomorrow, and good luck for next season's games.
