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British Columbia Chess Federation - Tournament InformationVancouver Team Tournament - Gladiator Format - Report by Bruce Harper On January 15 and 16, 2005, the University of
British Columbia Chess Club hosted a Team Tournament.
I liked the anti-draw rules, although I think they could be improved. I have a feeling that some people don’t understand the object of the rules, which were discussed at length on ChessTalk some months ago. They are not aimed at the players who contest an ultimately drawn game in a spirited and sporting manner, but rather at players who don’t make any effort to win, either tacitly or expressly agreeing to make a fast draw. Most of us have been in both categories at different times. The idea is to make a peaceful splitting of a point impossible, therefore removing the temptation from players to play for a draw. I think exhortations to fight hard are a bit silly, especially at the higher levels of competitive chess. There are just too many reasons to draw. It will be interesting to see how the big money tournament in Minnesota in May turns out (all participants apparently have to sign a pledge not to make quick draws). I think such efforts are doomed to failure. The 1/3 anti-draw system takes a different approach – you keep playing until someone wins. The only problem with the system as we tested it, in my view, was that the “playoff” games became too short. In one playoff game, one player had something like one minute and the other player had 30 seconds. One obvious alternative is increments, but the problem is that two players who are determined not to play can then just go on forever. I think the system might work better with a hybrid time control. Each player gets (say) one and a half hours to start, with or without increments. If the game is drawn, each player receives an additional five minutes and a second game is played, with no increments. If a third game is required, each player receives an additional four minutes. Eventually (if the players get to a seventh game), the players fight it out with whatever time they have left, and so one player might just run out of time. There is always a balance between the length of the round and giving the players enough time to play more than one game. In the above example, a 40-move draw which went to the wire would take about three hours, with 10 minutes for the second game, 8 minutes for the third game, and so on. Each round would therefore take a maximum of four hours. In the Team Tournament, around 20 games went
to a second game. Only a handful went to a third. In part this was because
players ran out of time, but I think in practice no more than two or
three games would be required because with less time, someone usually
wins. Turning to the event itself, here were the final standings:
The Lucas team was winning most of the way and were only edged out on the last "speed game" of the day between Tyler Johnson and Len Molden.
The scoresheet to the right says it all. Father playing against son and all in the spirit of competition. This is such a classic photo. Many thanks to Vas Sladek for taking almost all of the photos in this event.
Tyler finally prevailed and the win (2/3 of a point) put Paul's team ahead of the second place team by 1/3 of a point. The Individual results:
Below are some team shots taken on day 1. There
are many more taken today on page
2.
Thanks to everyone for volunteering
for this experimental event, which saw a lot of good chess!
All reports: Dan
MacAdam Memorial 05
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The
third place teams were represented by Bruce Harper and Alfred Pechisker.
The
photo to the right is the final round battle between Tyler Johnson and
Len Molden. This first game turned out to be a draw. The second game,
played with the balance of time remaining was also a draw although pieces
were flying and nobody claimed a win on time. It was decided to play
a 3 minute absolute final game. 
