Tournament planning

Welcome, all.

We have four competitors (Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield, and York) who will be vying to become Pride of Yorkshire. This thread is for us to organise things, decide on rules, etc.

First on the agenda (because having an agenda makes me feel like a responsible adult):

1. Name. It's a League and it's in Yorkshire, hence Yorkshire League, but it's not set in stone. If you have any more imaginative names (Yorkshire Cup, Yorkshire Rose, Pride of Yorkshire, Yorkshire Battle Royale, etc.), we can discuss changing it.
2. Format. With only a few teams, I suggest we keep things simple and make the tournament a round-robin league. This makes for three matches each, which could start in January, February, and March 2020.
3. Start date. It happens to be new year soon, which seems like a nice starting point, with matches following once per month. We could start match registration in December for a January start. Or we could just get on with it and start in December.
4. Rules. I think we can use the UKICCC's rules as a starting point. If you want to do things differently, now's the time to say.
   1. Do we want a minimum number of boards? Probably not necessary, or set it at something low like 3.
   2. What happens if teams are equal on points in the league table (quite likely with only four of us)? Are shared wins allowed? Personally, given how likely it is, I would suggest we use game won minus games lost as a tie breaker.

Never let it be said that you are not a responsible adult. Yorkshire Cup sounds good to me (It reminds me of when the old Bradford Northern used to win it). A nice round-robin in 2020 with a couple of weeks to get a team together should work fine.

Chris

Sounds good to me 👍 Can we put it on TV and get Fred Trueman to present the coverage? 

I've been talking to his agent, but apparently he's 'currently unavailable,' for some reason.

"Well in my day we didn't have anything like that".

"My grandmother could have hit that with a stick of Rhubarb."

'Anyone foolish enough to predict the outcome of this match is a fool.' 

Let's decide on a name.

Current options: 

• Yorkshire League
• Yorkshire Cup
• Geoffrey Boycott Appreciation Trophy

Any more thoughts, ideas?

The 'ee bah gum-ball rally'?

If you have an opinion on the name, vote here: https://www.strawpoll.me/18992124

'ee bah gum-ball rally will be our subheading.

THE RULES

This is a draft of the rules, largely based on Matt's UKICC rules (thanks Matt), and everything is subject to change if you want it to change.

Yorkshire Cup Rules

November 2019

General rules

1. All teams must represent a city or town in Yorkshire. Players can choose to represent any team of their choice but teams should make every effort to only field players who have a connection with that city or town (e.g, live, work, have lived, have worked, or have relations/ancestors from there).

2. Players can be members of more than one team, but a player cannot play for more than one team in the same season. It is the responsibility of the team admins to make sure that their members are aware of this rule and to report when it is broken. Once a player has played for one team, that is their team for the rest of the season; any results gained for any other team will be forfeited. If it is unclear which team the player played for first, all their results will be forfeited.

3. Each competing team, represented by their Super Admins, has an equal say in the running of the competition. Where disagreement arises over decisions and rules, a vote may be conducted with each team having 1 vote. (If a team has more than one Super Admin, they share equal parts of that 1 vote.) If this does not produce a result, the vote can be expanded to Admins, and then to all members.

4. No player should be removed from a match once they have registered, unless they have a timeout percentage higher than 25%. If a player is removed for this reason it should be noted in the notes below the match details. If a team is found to be removing players unnecessarily or to gain an advantage, they will forfeit the match.

5. If a player’s account is closed for fair play reasons by Chess.com, they will forfeit all their games for the season and results will be reversed where necessary. Once the season is complete, however, results cannot be reversed.

Match settings (refer to here when setting up a match)

6. Matches should start in the first week of the month. Include the start date in the match settings so that it starts automatically. Registration should be opened for these matches at least two weeks before the start date.

7. The minimum number of players for each match is 3. If a team fails to reach 3 players by the start date, they will have 1 extra week to find the required players. If they fail to do so in the extra week, their opponent can claim victory or agree to play as normal.

8. The match name should be in following format: ‘Yorkshire Cup 2020 RX, Team vs Team,’ where X represents the round number (1, 2, or 3).

9. The description should include a link to the Yorkshire Cup group (https://www.chess.com/club/yorkshire-cup) to make it easy for participants to follow the competition.

10. Matches must use the following settings:
    1. Standard chess
    2. 3 Days per Move
    3. 2 concurrent games per player
    4. No minimum or maximum rating
    5. No minimum games

League Table

11. Teams receive 1 point for a win, 0.5 points for a draw, and 0 points for a loss.

12. If teams are tied on the overall league table, their position will be decided by
    1. Results between the teams in question (e.g., if one team won their match against the other)
    2. Total games won in all matches, minus total games lost in all matches

13. If this still does not break the tie, the teams will share the position on the table.

Miscellaneous

14. All players and teams should conduct themselves in a polite and sportsmanlike manner. Teams may be required to remove players that do not follow this from the competition.

15. Any television coverage of the competition must be presented by Fred Trueman.

All looks OK Alex.