I have been very impressed with CJ de Mooi, who has put a tremendous amount of work into his stint as ECF president, driving up and down the country to attend prizegivings far and wide and also organising the Staunton Memorial Dinner, generously sponsored by Darwin Strategic, held at Simpsons on 8th September. One of the results of his efforts is a considerable increase in budget for next year’s British Championships.
This year the general strength in the British seemed to be less than I remember, I don’t know if there are any plans to try and restrict the number of lower rated players or those who qualify from feeder events next time, it would probably be desirable for the tournament but perhaps not very fair to players who have supported the event in less promising periods. I remain somewhat baffled as to why players from non-UK federations, eg. Russia or Poland, are able to participate; nothing against them personally, but to me residency seems irrelevant and would recommend only allowing players from a qualifying federation or who are at least in the process of moving to one.
Pairing systems are not a great strong point of mine but it seemed to me that there was little or no effort to limit the difference in average opposition which would have made for a more level playing field. Swiss tournaments are inevitably unfair but this injustice should be minimised as much as possible.
A suggestion I have seen regarding the future of the event is to switch the championship to a 12 player all play all. Whilst this has some merit in boom times I think it would be pretty dire in less well financed years. Instead of changing the British format, I would prefer reviving an event that has been sorely missing for many years: an English championship. This would have the advantage that the new tournament would have flexibility over location, dates and format that the British would only ever be able to acquire with massive detrimental changes.
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