Canadian Youth Chess Championships
Kapuskasing, Ontario - 7-10 July 2003
Technical Report
Tournament Director's Report

CFC Rating Crosstables

General

Info sheet;    Renseignements.

Registration was taken by the CFC, with very few at the site.

Schedule: games were at 10 am and 4 pm. Time control 30/90, rest/60. This was a good time control.

The tournament, as organized by Denis and Ellen Nadeau, took place before the Canadian Open, with one free day in between. Some players took part in both events. Some did well, for example 9-year-old Yuanling Yuan won the under-1600 section. Some faded, perhaps due in part to fatigue. Parents should consider their child's stamina and energy levels before entering them in the Canadian Open. They should also inquire, before pairings are made, into the possibility of half-point byes in early rounds of the Canadian Open.

No cellphones were allowed in the playing hall. There was a time penalty for a first offence of using a cellphone or hearing one ring. Second offence penalty was loss of the game. There was one offence.

All equipment was provided.

The playing conditions were good, except for infrequent but loud construction noises at the Canadian Tire outlet being constructed above. Trying to reduce these noises took a lot of effort on the part of the mall owner, the organizers, and me. However, the results were marginal.

By popular demand of the parents, parents, coaches and spectators were excluded from the playing hall. This worked out very well. It should be made a rule of the competition. If not, it should at least be mentioned so that potential organizers can know what to look for in a playing site.

Pairing

As this was a closed event, I decided not to honour any requests for half-point byes, even in the Swiss system sections.

By popular demand of the parents, no sections were amalgamated. The result was well-received, but there were some problems: Sections with an odd number of players had a bye every round; sections with a small number of players had to have their number of rounds reduced from seven, or had pairing problems, or both.

For the 9- and 11- player events I have recommended knocking 1 or 2 rounds off the planned 7 rounds.

We used the SwissSys software to produce tentative pairings, then I would examine and possibly adjust them. SwissSys does a pretty good job, but from six years' experience at North Bay and two years at the US Championship, I know that it is not perfect.

At Kapuskasing, the U-12 girls was 9 players, and I posted the shortening of the event to 6 rounds with the round 2 pairings. Even then, I was able to avoid a pairing disaster only by giving the leading player (who was in excess of 1 point ahead of the field) a bye in the final round.

The U-10 girls was 11 players. In the 6th round I adjusted what the computer suggested, so that one of the weaker players, who had met a weak field, would meet one of the contenders. If she had beaten one more weak player, she would be in contention for the WYCC and I could see that a fair pairing in the last round might be impossible. This look-ahead didn't work because the weaker girl defeated the contender in round 6. A parent expressed annoyance at this pairing, but the problem with the last round pairing would have arisen anyway, assuming the same result by the contender. Anyway, the only way to avoid extreme unfairness in round 7 was to give one of the players at the bottom a second full-point bye.

What is extreme unfairness? For example, two players are tied, in contention for third prize, one of them gets a tough game and the other gets a full-point bye.

What are the alternatives to cutting one or two rounds off the 9- or 11- player swisses? One alternative is to adopt a pairing system with superior look-ahead, but that system would need to be developed. And it would be a complex task. Another alternative is to pair the tournament entirely in advance, as a Pseudo Swiss. For example, a 9-player event might use the standard 10-player RR chart (which starts with 1x10 2x9 etc in the first round), assign #10 as the bye, eliminate rounds 1 and 2, assign the numbers according to rating as follows: 1 9 6 7 8 2 3 5 4 (i.e., the 9th rated, bottom-rated, player is given pairing number 2), and make Round 6 in the table be the final round in the event (in order to have as many of the top players meet each other as possible in the last round). This provides 7 rounds, even for a 9-player event, gives byes (I recommend these be half-pointers) to players 3 through 9, and has the top players not meet the bottom players. The downside--and there always is a downside--is that it gives an easier route for an under-rated player to qualify or win, without playing two other contenders at all. But on balance it might be better than taking two games away from the youngsters.

Finally, we come to the 5-player group, the girls under-16. As it turned out, one player was significantly stronger than any of the others. She ended up with 6.5 points out of 7. The RR part of the event was, of course, fair. In the 2-round supplementary Swiss, 2 players would get (half-point) byes, and some parents were upset that their girls would be at a huge disadvantage to be given those byes. However, after careful explanation, they came to appreciate that the bye was not at all bad. What was bad in the 2-round Swiss was the bad luck to meet the girl who was winning the tournament. The two girls who did meet the winner (a second time) did not qualify, even though their point total after the RR was greater than the two girls who did qualify. The two unlucky ones were Dominik Migneault and Andrea Cheng. I assigned the byes by an intricate and public drawing of lots among the players with the least points. It had been suggested that the top girl be given byes, but despite her tremendous score, she could have been caught in the Swiss if other girls had defeated her twice. So the supplementary 2-round Swiss turned out to be a bad experiment. There must be a better solution than a RR, which gives the players only 4 games to decide the championship. Suggestions?

Tiebreak Playoffs

The standard length of the sections was set at 7 games by the organizers to allow reasonable time for playoffs, yet still finish by 5 pm on the last day. That allowed families, if they wanted, to make several hours' driving before dark.

In each section, the 1st prize was airfare, while 2nd and 3rd received nomination only. All ties involving 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, were played off. The posted tiebreak rules are here. They are tailored for a tiebreak session that could be as little as 90 minutes. On further consideration, I would expand the 30-minute playoffs to include 2-person ties for 3rd place.

Three-person playoffs did not play according to a standard schedule. If the playoff was for 1st-3rd, or 3rd-5th, the winner of the first round game would sit out the 2nd round. If the playoff was for 2nd-4th, the loser of the first game would sit out the 2nd round. This minimizes the chance of having a 3rd round game that is meaningless.

Playoff incident

There were some challenges in the playoff for third place in the under-18. The playoff between Glen Barber and Mathew Cooke was set to be a single 15-minute game. Barber complained that 15 minutes was too fast for such an important game, and Cooke kindly conceded to play at 30 minutes, even though it seemed to both players that he was the better player at faster limits.

In the playoff game, Cooke carried an advantage into the endgame. Just when it seemed that this advantage would become decisive, Barber sacrificed all his mobile pieces, and when Cooke took the last one, Barber said: Draw! Cooke looked at the board for a few seconds and said Yeah, draw, thinking that it was stalemate, but in fact Barber had a move and would soon have lost the game. However, the two players had agreed to a draw.

In the first replay, I came to the board which still seemed to have a lot of play, and when Cooke told me it was a draw. Huh? A draw? Glen felt bad about the way he salvaged the first game.

The second replay (i.e., third game), a 5-minute Blitz, Barber was pushing a small advantage, but Cooke had found a repetition. Cooke moved, pressed his clock and said  Draw, three-time repetition. I said:  Not in Blitz Chess. Barber was frozen and after a few seconds, his flag fell. He said he was waiting for the next word from me...  Not in Blitz chess ....what? I might have said  A three-fold repetition isn't a draw in Blitz chess because nobody's keeping score and it's not that easy to count, so instead of arguing about it you usually don't claim a draw until it's happened four or five times. So, what were my choices? I could award the game to Cooke because Barber's flag had fallen. I could award extra time to Barber because Cooke had made an illegal draw claim. At the very least, you should not start the opponent's clock when you claim a draw. I could add time to Barber's clock because Cooke had bothered him. I could add time to Barber's clock because he had good reason to expect me to stop the clocks and give a fuller explanation. I could award Barber more time because I did not believe that a three-fold repetition had taken place (see FIDE Rule 9.5b  If the claim is found to be incorrect, the arbiter shall add three minutes to the opponent's clock... I find this rather Draconian for a Blitz game, so I preferred to question the form of the draw claim rather than its content. Later I discovered that some International Arbiters also apply 9.5b to a correct claim made with incorrect form. I find that over-zealous.). Or I could just declare the game a draw, which is what I did. Giving more minutes to Barber would effectively have won the game for him. There were other playoffs in progress at the same time, I was the only arbiter present, and all volunteer scorekeepers had refused to attempt keeping score at faster than 15-minute, so keeping score was never an option. As it turned out, Barber won the third replay. The FIDE rules of Blitz reflect the regular Laws of Chess, as modified (only slightly) in the Appendix. In retrospect, I should not have used the phrase: Not in Blitz Chess.

Complete Playoff Results

U-10 girls:
1. Yuanling Yuan won 1-0 the 30-minute playoff with
2. Catherine Frenette.
3. Stephanie Smith

U-10 boys:  no playoffs
1. Lloyd Mai
2. Brendan Fan
3. Kevin Gibson

U-12 girls:   no playoffs
1. Hazel Smith
2. Alina Sviridovitch
3. Minh Ly Nguyen

U-12 boys:
1. Nikolai Noritsyn
2. Justin McDonald  2-0 in 15-minute playoff with
3. Gabriel Brown   1-1
4. Evan Raymer     0-2.

U-14 girls:
1. Cornelia Dinca
2. Valentina Goutor won 1-0 the 15-minute playoff with
3. Lara Heppenstall.

U-14 boys:
1. David Wang
2. Raja Panjwani
3. Aaron Rodriguez 2-0 in the 15-minute playoff with
4. Geordie Derraugh 1-1
5. Jonathan Lawson 0-2.

U-16 girls:
1. Anastasia Kazakevich
2. Inara Aliev 2-0 in the 15-minute playoff with
3. Dominique Nadeau 0.5-2.5 followed by 1-0 in the 6-5 Blitz Shootout with
4. Dominique Migneault 0.5-2.5.

Maybe I was too terse.  There was a 3-player RR playoff, then the tie
for third was broken with a shootout.

U-16 boys:
1. Tomas Krnan
2. Fanhao Meng 1.5-0.5 in two playoff games (15 then 5) against
3. Sebastian Predescu

U-18 girls:
1. Dina Kagramanov 1-0 in the 1-hour playoff against
2. Yamei Wang.
3. Jada Neumann

U-18 boys:
1. Gary Ng
2. Liam Henry
3. Glen Barber 2.5-1.5 in four playoff games (30 then 5 5 5) against
4. Mathew Cooke.

Arbiting

The staff was Ellen Nadeau, Louis Filion, John Rutherford, Ed Rohanchuk with occasional help from Dilip Panjwani (outgoing CFC Junior Coordinator). Patrick McDonald (incoming CFC Junior Coordinator, though he prefers the term Youth Coordinator) did the pairings using SwissSys, made any changes that I specified, and produced the certificates which were given to each player.

CYCC Rules in the CFC Handbook

The CFC President told me to interpret the rules exactly as in the CFC Handbook, but the rules there varied greatly from the body of experience. For example, the Handbook rules give complex qualification routes, and a 45-day-in-advance deadline for entries, neither of which is enforced. On the other hand, the Handbook rules contain nothing about banning spectators, about amalgamation of sections, about girls playing in boys sections, or about younger players playing in older groups. Many details of the tournament are left empty, or to be determined by the CFC Executive.

Success builds dynamism, but the rules really do need to be revised, or rewritten from scratch.

URL: This web page is:
http://members.shaw.ca/berry5868/cyr.htm
Last modified February 20, 2007