Civil Service Rapidplay 2

The second in the series of Civil Service Rapidplays took place at the Maynard Sinclair Pavilion in the Stormont estate today. "Intensive" is the buzzword for this series (translating to plenty of games within a short time frame) but this second edition also sported the paradoxical "lackadaisical" in its title.

The idea this time was to allow intending participants a lie-in on a Sunday morning, a leisurely breakfast and time to read the newspapers before setting forth to battle over the chessboard. An alternative suggested by the organisers was to turn up early at the venue and make use of its facilities to prepare for the games ahead. No, not a quick trip to the fitness suite, but something instead designed to take in calories. When I arrived at the venue, a number of players were taking this option, availing of the Sunday lunch in the Whistles Restaurant.

During a rapidplay there is usually very little time to observe what your rivals are up to, but what was abundantly clear was that top seed Michael Waters was cutting a swathe throught the opposition. After the penultimate round he had a perfect 100% score having dispatched Alan Burns, Calum Leitch, Nicholas Pilkiewicz, Damien Lavery and Ian Woodfield along the way. At that stage Michael and his victims filled the top seven positions in the standings with one interloper in the shape of yours truly.

My reward was a final round top-board pairing with the leader. In a Queens Indian, while pursuing as White an apparently logical positional path, I was suddenly subjected to a small tactical demonstration and had to resign immediately. Waters thus finished with a perfect 6 out of 6 and overall victory. Meanwhile on board 2, second place was decided in the game between Leitch and Pilkiewicz with the former prevailing in a hard-fought struggle by weaving a mating net in a Rook and minor piece endgame which forced the win of a Rook.

The Civil Service Club hope to run their next rapidplay towards the end of March with the finale of the series probably late May/early June (depending on exactly when the UCU organise the City of Belfast Championships and the rumoured revival of a Cup competition).

Groundhog day

About a month and a half ago, the League Controller woke up one morning and decided it was time for him to make a decision about the "Divisional Split". Something along the lines of doing something unexpected, like 7-4. The next morning he woke up to find himself reliving the day again, and it kept happening, morning after morning. So he reckoned this must be occurring because of his decision on the composition of the Leagues after the preliminaries. So one morning he decided to change his mind and offer up a different scenario, but he was still stuck the next day, and the next day.....So he made another different decision, and then another. He tried everything, adding an extra team, then two, then three. However, nothing could get his League Controlling life going forward from that fateful day in early December 2013.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the chess players of Belfast and its environs were getting on with their lives. League matches were played, Christmas came and went and the New Year was welcomed in. League matches resumed, getting ever closer to the end of the preliminaries. Throughout all this, they were receiving the League Controller's increasingly desperate attempts to find his route into the future. The most recent announcement that permeated into the real world was the confusingly titled "7+7=12" - the poor lad must be in a terrible state by now.

Anyway ("Final answer?"), apparently it's to be the Magnificent Seven in Division 1 (he always did hanker after that) and a different, slightly less magnificent, seven in Division 2, with 3 of those starting from zero. However, I'd keep checking the Ballynafeigh blog, just in case the League Controller is still having trouble rejoining us in 2014.

The greater good

My last two posts had focussed on the divisional split in the Belfast and District League. Since then there has been a dizzying sequence of events apparently orchestrated by the League Controller. Like a music-hall conjurer producing rabbits out of a hat, he has foreshadowed and then announced the arrival of extra teams into the League. Well done to him for not merely adminstering the League, but going out of his way to expand the number of teams. Muldoons and Belfast South have each sprouted a second team and the Controller's own Ballynafeigh has gone as far as reaching a number 4.

Rumour has it (and seeing it emanates from the Controller himself, presumably it will come to pass) that there will be 8 teams in Division 1 after the split. So it seems, after all, that the Magnificent Seven will compete for the Silver King, along with plucky Bangor. This will then leave Division 2 populated by the bottom three from the preliminares plus the three "newbies".

The greater good may well be served by this increase in teams for the second part of the season. In recent years the League has diminished in size as clubs have shied away from entering more than one team. With his recent efforts the Controller has decisively reversed this trend and hopefully the future will see increased levels of competition in the League.

However, someone concerned with process (and your correspondent confesses to being such a person) cannot help point out that the League Controller (and/or the UCU Board) has driven a coach and horses through the League protocols. When a query was raised earlier ths season as to when the rules governing the League would be published the Controller trenchantly pointed out that they remained those propogated by the UCU Board on the 22nd October 2011. The assumptions underlying those rules no longer seem to apply and the bold step to jettison certain parts of them has been taken to what seems to be large-scale approval. Obviously a re-write will be needed next season.

However, it doesn't stop there. The revival of interest in team chess is bringing forward new ideas. The Champ (over at Off the Chest) has floated an interesting suggestion for an experimental half-hour League at the end of the regular season. At the same forum the League Controller has unveiled a few radical ideas for a Cup competition. I'm not sure about these: 3-player teams - sorry, no; genetically engineered line-ups - a bit too Brave New World for me. Still, the return of a Cup competition is definitely to be applauded, but my own view is that the emphasis here should not be so much on gimmicks (though I'm not against a sensible handicapping system) but in achieving a greater geographical spread with matches (or at least some of them) played at the weekend to facilitate this.

Anyway, seems like we live in interesting times!