The Best Format For a City Championship

Running Chess Tournaments
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We here in Peoria, Illinois are about to begin our annual City Championship Tournament. What we have done in the last few years is to have 12 players qualified or invited to play. The qualifications include winning the event the previous year and placing in the top 1 or 2 places in specific local tournaments throughout the year. We also invite people that are the highest rated in the area that haven’t qualified and we also basically invite/recruit others to fill the open spots as we can.

We then split the 12 into 2 groups. The staggering is designed for equal strength. Group A is usually the #1, #4, #5, #8, #9 and #12 rated players, with Group B being the #2, #3, #6, #7, #10 and #11 rated players. Each group plays a round robin to determine the winner from each group. If someone misses a week, they need to contact their opponent and play the game. We do have a week where make up games can be played. The two winners then have a 3 game playoff for the championship.

The problems I see with this system is the staggering players to make up each group is kind of odd. It takes a lot of time to get all this played out at one game per week. We also inevitably have at least one player not make a number of weeks. Of course we usually get one person that will obviously be the section winner and the resulting games need not be played.

I was talking with my friend Dennis from Normal, IL today and he was telling me that the Twin Cities Chess Club is having their City Championship on their club nights. They run a standard Swiss Style event. The problem they have is that a couple of the guys took first round byes for 1/2 point, giving them easier games in the next few rounds. Last year one fellow had his opponent forfeit and he got 1 point for not playing, and that put his score at the top, giving him the City Championship. Dennis made the point that he could take that if it were a regular tournament, but this is their city championship where the winner gets put in their history books. To win a city championship by taking the 1/2 point bye that they allow, and/or being able to win the championship with a 1 point bye because of a forfeit, just doesn’t seem just.

What format do you folks think would be the best for a city championship like this? How would you place people in the sections of our Peoria Championship? What are your thoughts?

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Perhaps more of a breakdown? Your current format allows for 8 games–5 in the first session, 3 in the second. The ideal format is a round robin with everyone invited, but 11 games are presumably too many for your group. So I’d do either:

  1. Reduce number of invitees to 10, do a 9 round RR, or
  2. Do the first round in 3 quads, with the top 2 moving on from each quad.

Stagger the quads as:
A: 1, 5, 8, 12
B: 2, 6, 7, 11
C: 3, 4, 9, 10

Then do a 5 round round robin between the six qualifiers. Ties in the opening round on the bubble broken by 2 game blitz or rapid matches.

If you want to reduce the number of rounds, perhaps stagger in 2 sections, run each as a 3 round Swiss, and then have the top 2 players in each section merge to play a 4 player round robin.

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Removed…similar to another post.

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You could go with the Quads idea, but only advance 4 players. 1st place in each of the 3 quads, & best score among the remaining players. A tie in just 1 Quad would eliminate the need for the 4th [best of rest] player. The problem is if you have a tie in more than 1 Quad. Then you start getting into tie-break problems.

Once you have gotten this down to 4 players, then you could do mini-matches like the US Closed does.

-Larry S Cohen

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OK, setting the record straight, as the TD for both events… I don’t deny that something like both of the above that Dennis described can happen. But neither is quite the full story.

In last year’s championship, we nearly had it as described. But, as is omitted constantly despite my putting it forward, is that I went back after the round concluded and did a “what if” pairing as if that forfeit hadn’t occurred. As it turned out, the player who would got the forfeit win would have been naturally paired to an opponent that he would have beaten.

Yes, one can always imagine what if an upset had taken place… but honestly, I can say with a clear conscience that I have extremely high confidence that in this case the forfeited player’s opponent would have gotten the point anyway. Assuming I’m right, events would have played out the same way… Except that we had under and youth champion trophies, and one of the under players had a real chance to have gotten a win in the forfeited round that would have given that player undisputed first for that class trophy. (And nobody seems to still recognize this, either.) Though that was luck of the pairings that it honestly didn’t affect the final result.

Also, in that year, we tried the concept that there would be a ‘worst result dropped’ over the six rounds in six weeks. (Which turned out to be in most cases a missed week.) There was only one player who liked the concept, and I hated it from a directing standpoint. We also had a blizzard and cancelled one week’s games which extended the tournament.

In any kind of open format, I don’t see how one can work over six weeks without expecting a lot of drops before the tournament ends. (Especially as players drift off who cannot possibly win anything decide to quit the tournament.)

So, we evolved a different system: No, “Put me in and pair me for the whole tournament.” A player is either present or has called me on Monday to request a pairing or a bye before pairings. No call, not present, not paired. And that’s finally worked pretty well this year - after I put my foot down and feeling like I’ve had to be a jerk about it - but I may have a problem yet that I’ll have to solve tomorrow for this upcoming week.

Byes… Yes, players are allowed to take half point byes this year. (Including final rounds, but those had to be declared before second half began.) I’m not sure in a championship if that’s all that wise. On the other hand, when a championship is spread out over several weeks, there should be some mechanism which recognizes that maybe people cannot be present for x consecutive weeks. And, in this case, I have been way too busy to allow make-up games and the schedule is tight. One of our players who took a first week bye did so because his first child was born two days before the first round.

And, on the other other hand this year, we decided to run a four round Swiss, to be followed by tiebreaking playoffs the two following weeks. The cream rises, and when the cream starts to clot, we do a blender of playoffs.

What I’m becoming convinced of is a couple of things: One, no matter what format is tried, someone will complain. (And I’m not talking about Dennis here – want to be very clear about that!!!) Second, my strong suggestion for next year (expecting to be the one called upon to direct again,) is that we move to a Round Robin or DRR format. It takes as long as it takes, we actually put in the strongest players in the club without any other form of seeding, and we do what we have to in getting that to work. Evaluating that may be tricky, even though we all pretty well know who our strongest players are. Quoting the noted strategic genius Ellen Ripley, “It’s the only way to be sure.” :wink:

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I know that you are running those tournaments correctly. The problem is with the format for a city championship. Any other tournament would be fine with the byes and forfeits. The city championship needs to have the winner be one that played the best chess of the group.

The one thing we found good about our setup was that the champion did perform well and there is no way he ever could have gotten the championship by not playing and winning. Our champion had to play everyone in his section and then beat the winner of the other section. The problem with our format of 2 sections and all is the distribution of players in each section.

Yes, it is inevitable that someone will not show up to play when they are supposed to. With our round robin setup the players contact their opponents and either play the game before or after the date. That has worked out alright. It’s the players’ responsibility to get the game scheduled and played, reporting the results to the TD and even giving the TD the game score. We put the game scores in a player on the club web site. The TD doesn’t need to expend any time or energy in the makeup games.

Talking with Wayne tonight, he told me that a few of the others have been talking about this. I had discussed this with them before as well. They came up with the idea of stopping at 10 players instead of 12. We currently have 9 guys committed with another pretty much secured. Rather than recruit another 2 we are stopping at 10. Now with 10 players we are going to have a single round robin. It won’t take any longer than our previous system as we are not having the playoff weeks or the makeup week.

With a round robin everyone plays everyone. No one misses out playing anyone else in the competition. The person that wins this event has indeed performed better than anyone else with no points given for not playing.

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When I played in a city championship many years ago, the format consisted of a 10 player round robin. Seven players were seeded by rating. Two qualified by a special tournament. One player was the reigning junior champion. The tournament was played over 9 weeks, on a non-club session day. Spectators were welcome to come and watch the 5 games. A small gallery of seats was set up. The games were also shown on demo boards in another room with commentary from a prominent player. A young player quietly observed and took the played moves over to the demo room. The hushed atmosphere made it seem like an international event. The rate of play was 40/120, 20/60 with adjournments and special sessions to complete the games. As I recall, the adjournments were a real lesson in quality endgame analysis. Of course, all of this was pre-computer programs and databases.

To insure that all of the games were played, each player was required to post a refundable $50 escrow. If all games were completed, then it would be returned. Any unplayed game forfeited the escrow. No games went unplayed, but probably as much because of the honor of being invited than because of the penalty.

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Here in Columbus, we run our annual championship with 10 players in a round robin over two consecutive weekends. No byes.

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Thank you, Ron. I agree that the format is what’s at issue. One of my concerns is that of player reputation (and not just my own.) The player who forfeited did in fact try to reach out to indicate he wouldn’t be there, but communicated that to someone else who did not come that evening. (Another lesson - my phone number is now very prominent in all of the weekly web updates. :slight_smile: ) And it was the foundation for the must be present at pair time or call me day of rule this year.

And I agree with you and Dennis, that having byes (elected or otherwise) does mean that players get elevated without having proven the elevation over the board. The flip side, in any swiss system, means that without byes the tournament may have stronger players missing rounds who stay in lower score groups than they really should be (and again a distortion if one is offering Under or Age/Grade trophies as somebody gets crushed by a player who probably should have been elevated already.)

My question would be: What if during one of those outside games there is a claim or dispute that takes the TD to settle? (Rare, I’m sure. I think I’ve only made one board ruling this cycle on a board where the players were seeded into the tournament - when players get to playing Championship level one hopes they are familiar enough with the rules to not have issues.)

I like that, and I think it is what I’ll advocate for next year. Do you intend, if there are any tied scores, to just use the tiebreaks to settle places? (Seems fair to me in a RR.)

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Actually this has never been a problem. The players that usually require the make up game, played off site are veterans and higher rated players, and these guys do play within the rules leaving little to no possibility of there being a problem. Both Wayne and I are certified TDs with Wayne being the official TD of this tournament, and I can tell you the rules are followed with no problems requiring a TD judgment, even at the club night with all the games going.

It’s a good point you make though. I guess if the dispute is large enough then the game played off site just wouldn’t count and the players would need to play it on a regularly scheduled night, under TD supervision.

If there is a tied score then we will go to a playoff between the tied players.

By the way, the 10 player round robin is not yet etched in granite for this year. We still might have 12 players, and if we do then we will be going to the 2 section option of previous years.

The major organizers and officers and all, agree that the 10 player round robin is more desirable and that’s probably what will happen in the future, in Peoria, Illinois.