On Saturday 20th August 2011 Leeds Chess Club put a rapidplay event on staged at their venue at the North Leeds Working Men's Club, inviting all comers. However, this event was a bit different to the regular rapidplay tournaments. It was a handicap-based event with the idea of making the whole thing a much more wide-open and challenging production. The tournament system was as follows:
Handicap System:
The handicap system in place worked in this manner:
- The lowest graded player was allocated 15 mins in each game that he played. Those rated higher would have less time on the basis of the YCA grading points. For every ten points above the lowest rated player that others were rated then one minute and thirty seconds was deducted from their time.
- In the event of ungraded player taking part then recourse to an estimate grade based on any previous grading data would be used. Of course, all grades would be rounded up or down to the nearest 10. This was necessary as Leeds Chess club were not employing digital clocks for the event.
The time allocation is demonstrated below:
| ECF Grade |
Time Per Game |
| 70s |
15 mins |
| 80s |
13.5 mins |
| 90s |
12 mins |
| 100s |
10.5 mins |
| 110s |
9 mins |
| 120s |
7.5 mins |
| 130s |
6 mins |
| 140s |
4.5 mins |
The rules were as follows:
- The tournament will be split into two groups with each group being an all play all, I will generate all of the pairings in advance to ensure that the competition runs smoothly.
- If there is a tie after the final group round has finished, then the player with the highest grade goes through to the final. This is simply because he is the one who had less time on his clock during the group phase.
- When you are allocated your time control, you must stick to this during the whole competition. Including the final.
- The final will start at 10pm and this will be a 2 game match. If there is only time for one game then a toss for colours will be necessary.
The entries for the event were as follows:
| |
Name |
Grade |
Clock Time |
| 1 |
Rob Letton |
151 |
4.5 mins |
| 2 |
Andrew Cowan |
136 |
6 mins |
| 3 |
Tony Ibbotson |
133 |
6 mins |
| 4 |
Jon Mahoney |
118 |
9 mins |
| 5 |
Eric Davies |
116 |
9 mins |
| 6 |
Dave Summerland |
114 |
9 mins |
| 7 |
Neil Broatch |
106 |
10.5 mins |
| 8 |
Barry Fulthorpe |
89 |
13.5 mins |
| 9 |
Dominic Gallagher |
89 |
13.5 mins |
| 10 |
John Light |
84 |
13.5 mins |
| 11 |
Alan Riddle |
82 |
13.5 mins |
| 12 |
Phil Higgins |
82 |
13.5 mins |
 Despite being the worst handicapped player due to his higher rating, Rose Forgrove's Rob Letton (pictured left) showed his class at rapidplay chess. Having faced a summer's worth of different rapidplay events back at the Rose Forgrove club, Rob was fine tuned to deliver a winning performance here. Rob stated that he thoroughly enjoyed the event, not just because he won it!, and would fully welcome similar such turnaments in the future. It is to Tony Ibbotson's credit organising such an event to keep the interest in chess in Leeds during the off-season, so to speak. By such efforts as this can we hope to maintain the growth of chess in our city.
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