Tag Archives: London League

A tale of two teams

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If you play for an active chess club in the London area, fixture congestion is a fact of life. So last night, two of my teams were in action. Streatham EC in the revived London League Eastman Competition, 4 boards, away v The Hung Pawns (yes really) in Hammersmith at 6.45pm. Also Streatham 2 in London League Division 2, that’s 8 boards, away v Metropolitan 1 some miles further east at Aldgate, at 6.30pm.

I captain the Eastman team. It’s not difficult finding 4 players from our 12-man squad to play in this team, so I set that up and left them to it, with the very capable Graham K as acting captain. As it happened our opponents gave us advance notice of a default on board 4, so I was able to stand down one of our team.

For myself, I turned out for Streatham 2, who have had a challenging season in a division full of other clubs’ 1st teams. We’re in the relegation zone but have matches in hand on the teams above us. Our captain Martin S assembled a decent team and I was down to play on board 3.

I arrived in London early, around 5.45pm, to pick up a message on my phone from one of our Eastman players who had just had a domestic emergency and needed to withdraw. With only one hour before the match was due to start, I asked a couple of players who I thought might be available, but they couldn’t make it.

I hate defaulting boards more than most things in life. I think I hold the club record for the highest number of players approached to fill a team. That’s 34 players asked, for an 8-board team, and yes we did turn out a full team on that occasion. So I hatched a cunning plan to rescue the Eastman team. I texted the Hung Pawns captain to say we were trying to find someone. I was the first to arrive at the Metropolitan venue. In the absence of our captain, I exchanged team lists and tossed for colours (I lost. We were black on odd boards).

I then explained the problem to their captain and my proposed solution. I would be happy to agree an early draw with their board 3 (in the trade we call this a Grandmaster Draw), leaving me free to dash across London and join the Eastman team before the default time of 7.45pm. Their captain quite rightly said I would have to discuss it with my potential opponent. So I did. But as it happens, this was his first game for Metropolitan, and he wanted to play a proper game. I understood that and I don’t blame him for insisting.

My next idea was to swap positions in our team so that I would move up to board 2 and my colleague Robin H down to board 3. There’s only a small difference in rating points, so that would have been acceptable. Facing an old stager on the Metropolitan board 2, I thought I had a good chance of agreeing an early draw. But here their captain stepped in and said he was unhappy with the idea of changing the board order once team lists had been exchanged. Nothing in the league rules prevents it, and I should know because I wrote them, but there was no point arguing about it so I let it drop. Unsporting or what?

At this point I resigned myself to the inevitable. I texted the Hung Pawns captain again to say that we would default board 3. I then turned my whole attention to the match in hand against Metropolitan, determined to make them pay for thwarting my attempt to be Captain Marvel. Here’s the game against my Swedish opponent.

White: Lars Astrom (FIDE 2098), Black: Rodney Barking (2070). London League 2023.
B22: Sicilian 2.c3
Online game: https://lichess.org/SWoQsZyK
1.e4 c5 2.c3 d5
These days I usually play the other move, 2…Nf6, but I know the 2…d5 line well (years of practice against my SW Surrey sparring partner) and my results have been good.
3.exd5 Qxd5 4.d4 Nf6 5.Nf3 Bg4 6.Be2 e6 7.Be3 cxd4 8.cxd4 Nc6 9.O-O Be7 10.h3 Bh5 11.Nc3 Qd6 12.a3 O-O
All theory so far – although my opponent had taken quite a long time over his moves. I like this position for Black. The isolated d-pawn is going nowhere, my pieces are actively-placed, and I have a clear plan of exchanging pieces to emphasise the structural weakness.

13.Qd2?!
The first sign that my opponent didn’t really know what he was doing. In this line the queen belongs on the white squares, rather than further restricting the passive bishop on e3. So 13.Qb3 with an eye on d5 and b7 was the way to go.
13…Rfd8 14.Rad1 Rac8 15.b4 Nd5
Stockfish slightly prefers 15…Qb8 followed by …Bd6 and …Ne7, gradually improving my pieces. It’s not as if White can do anything here.
16.Ne4 Qc7 17.Rc1 Qb6
To escape the pin and nullify the threat of b5. Possibly better was …Bg6 and …a6, since the queen is slightly better-placed on c7 than b6.
18.Nc5 a6 19.Rfd1 Bf6 20.g4 Bg6 21.h4
My opponent decided to get active with his kingside pawns. But this just creates weaknesses. He’d be better off concentrating on piece play and trying to arrange Ne5 under favourable circumstances. The problem is the weak d-pawn, as he always has to work out if I can take it.
21…h5 22.g5 Be7 23.Bc4
Again not good. I thought he probably wanted to sac on e6 in some lines. So I took time out to strengthen my kingside defences.
23…Bf5 24.Re1 g6 25.Bf4 Nxf4
I was happy to exchange off the bishop now that he couldn’t recapture with a pawn.
26.Qxf4 Bd6 27.Qe3 Qc7!
With the awkward threat of …Bf4 winning the exchange. At this point the engine evaluates the position as –1.20 in Black’s favour. But now my opponent blunders – again trying to be too active when his pieces aren’t ready for it.

28.Nxa6?? bxa6 29.Bxa6
Hoping to recoup the sacrificed material through the dual threat of Bxc8 and b5.
29…Bf4 30.Qc3 Bxc1 31.Rxc1 Nxd4!
My opponent clearly hadn’t seen this thematic tactical counterblow, which wins a piece and the game. Stockfish actually prefers 31…Qf4, also winning material and maintaining the tension in the position, but I think the move played is clearer and simpler.
32.Qxc7
He has no choice since 32.Nxd4 Qxc3 and 32.Qxd4 Qxc1+ both lose immediately.
32…Nxf3+ 33.Kg2 Rxc7 34.Rxc7 Be4
Now I’m a piece up in the ending. White has connected passed a- and b-pawns but they’re not dangerous.
35.Kg3 Ra8 36.Kf4?!
I was expecting 36.Rc8+ Rxc8 37.Bxc8, but I just transfer the king to the queenside and it’s an easy win.
36…Rxa6 37.Kxe4 Rxa3 38.b5 Nxh4 39.b6 Rb3 40.b7 Kg7 41.Kd4 Nf5+ 42.Kc4
One last mistake, but it’s all over anyway.
42…Rxb7 0–1
He resigned since 43.Rxb7 allows the fork with 43…Nd6+. I was pleased with the way I had played the game, even more so when the later engine analysis put my centipawn loss (as they call it) at just 0.07 with no blunders or mistakes and only four inaccuracies. That’s as close to perfection as I’ve ever come at the chess board.

So I made them pay for turning down the Grandmaster Draw offer. What was happening elsewhere? Our captain lost on time on board 7 in a complicated middlegame position. On other boards, it was draw after draw, reflecting the evenly-matched ratings. Most satisfying was Jagdip’s draw on board 5. He couldn’t find the venue and arrived almost 60 minutes late, leaving him just 15 minutes plus the increment for the entire game. He played quickly and eventually reached a rook, knight and pawn ending. He actually missed a couple of wins in time trouble, but had no difficulty notching up the half-point. So we drew the match 4–4, a good result against a team still hoping for promotion to Division 1.

In the Eastman match, the Hung Pawns fielded a very strong player on top board. We lost that one but won on board 2, also drawing the match with the final score 2–2.

What would have happened if I’d succeeded in getting an early draw in the Division 2 match, and travelled to Hammersmith where I would have faced a much lower-rated player on board 3? We would probably have won the Eastman match and narrowly lost the Division 2 match. But the Division 2 match actually mattered in terms of league position, whereas the Eastman match didn’t – we were always going to finish second in the Eastman, behind one very strong team and ahead of five others who don’t seem to be taking this competition seriously. It’s rather like the chess equivalent of the old League Cup in football. No one really cares. In the end it was right for me to stay in East London and do my best for the 2nds.

The Professionals

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What does the title of this post mean to you?

  • A crime-action TV series broadcast in the UK from 1977 to 1983 and featuring Cowley, Doyle and Bodie from the unit CI5
  • the sort of people who do bad things without getting emotional, such as Bond villains like Dr Kaufman in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), “I’m just a professional doing a job”
  • trained, skilled and experienced members of a set of respected occupations including doctors and lawyers
  • members of a chess team who get paid to play chess.

Yes, today’s correct answer is the last of these. We turn the spotlight on professional chess players in English chess, or more precisely in the London League. But first, some context. Arguably the strongest national chess league in the world is the German Bundesliga, founded in 1980 and home to many of the world’s top players. The nearest domestic equivalent is the 4 Nations Chess League (4NCL), founded in 1993. This is the UK’s premier chess league competition. Many of its teams are sponsored, enabling them to bring in top players. This is expected, and no one gets worked up about it. Professionals have to make a living somehow and being paid to play for a team in a league is just one more source of income.

The London League was the strongest league in the UK before the advent of the 4NCL and remains its strongest amateur league. This happened naturally. England’s capital city is the most populated in the UK and has the largest concentration of chess players of all abilities. Most of these don’t – or can’t – make money from chess and play for enjoyment.

Then along came Wood Green. This is a chess team composed almost entirely of professionals and managed by the controversial Brian Smith, formerly Secretary of the League. Although some professionals turn out for other clubs, Wood Green are the only team that could be described as a professional team. They have won the League title for as long as anyone can remember.

A look at the latest Division 1 league table for 2022/23 makes the point. This is up to date as of today. 11 teams have between them played 39 matches out of a total of 55.

[ninja_tables id=”233″]

Wood Green are the only team to have won all their matches. They stand out as consistently higher-rated on average, at around 2400 each match. Most of the other teams are in the range 2000 to 2200. The lanterne rouge goes to Imperial College, rated just under 1800 and already certain to be relegated. The overall average is 2079.

It’s interesting to note the narrow rating range of only 24 points across 7 matches for Wood Green – much lower than for any other team. This arises from a core squad (see table below for more details) where a small number of players turn out for most matches. To be exact, 7 players out of a squad of 14 have each played in at least 5 out of 7 matches. You would expect this from a paid team. If turning out for the team is a source of income, you would naturally prioritise that over other non-paid chessplaying opportunities.

[ninja_tables id=”236″]

The presence of one professional team in a league of amateur teams has both positive and negative points. On the positive side, the professional team is a benchmark for others to aim at. Matches against Wood Green provide an opportunity to play a GM or an IM, which is a valuable experience in itself. As long as you leave your ego out of the equation, losing (which usually happens) is manageable and you can learn a lot from the way the strongest players approach the game.

Against that, the league is not as competitive as it might be, because one team always wins and everyone else is playing for second place. This devalues the status of champions. Is a title worth having if you can buy it for money? And it’s easy to say how players / teams on the outside can resent the one team with the most resources. Compare the Premier League in English football. Many people resent Manchester City, unquestionably the strongest team of the past decade, because their financial resources have enabled them to buy many of the world’s best players. It’s not a level playing-field.

Finally, a note on payment. I don’t have any inside knowledge of the financial arrangements in operation at Wood Green. About 15 years ago, the going rate for a GM or IM in the London League was £100 a match plus expenses. That may have gone up since then with inflation. I’m assuming that what is now paid is still a flat rate rather than relating to performance. In some sports you get a bonus if you win rather than draw or lose. But in the London League, most Wood Green players win most of their games, so this is normal. I imagine the manager is prepared to take the occasional hit as long as the team gets the result – as it always does.

Incremental time controls

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Rodney Barking brings you further original research on the playing rules of league chess in England. This time the subject is incremental time controls. This arose from an internal consideration of a potential attempt (not by the league committee) to amend the rules of the London League. Currently the rules stipulate a time control of 75 minutes for the game plus a 15-second increment from the start.

The main issue is whether the basic game time should be shortened, and the increment lengthened to 30 seconds a move. The point of the 30-second increment is to provide more thinking time in the later stages and to ensure that all moves are recorded throughout the game. The drawback is that reducing the basic game time may impair the quality of the chess played in the earlier stages.

Bear in mind the maths underlying the different ratios. In considering the effect of increments on the length of the playing session, the chess authorities assume that a game will last typically 60 moves. So a 15-second increment adds 1 minute for every 4 moves, whereas a 30-second increment adds 1 minute for every 2 moves. If the game lasts exactly 60 moves and both players use all the available time (without actually losing on time), then both G75 + 15s and G60 + 30s will result in a total playing session of exactly 3 hours.

There are 86 standardplay leagues in England (excluding online and junior leagues). Information on the playing rules is available online for 63 of these leagues. Of these, 52 provide for an incremental time control (either mandatory or the default option or simply an option) and 11 do not.

Almost all leagues with an incremental time control are based on a single session of play (49 out of 52). In these cases, this is the frequency of the different incremental controls (in ascending order of length).
G60 + 30s – 5
G65 + 30s – 1
G70 + 10s – 1
G70 + 15s – 2
G75 + 10s – 8
G75 + 15s – 6
G80 + 10s – 20
G80 + 15s – 2
G85 + 10s – 2
G110 + 10s – 1
G135 + 15s – 1.

The last two of these stand out from the rest, but they are afternoon leagues where more time is available.

In three leagues, the rules provide for two sessions of play. The first session is a set number of moves in a set time (eg 30 moves in 70 minutes). The second session is a guillotine with all remaining moves in a set time (eg all moves in a further 10 minutes). In all cases the increment applies from the start of the game.
G30/70 + all/10 + 10s – 1 (Coventry & District)
G35/70 + all/10 + 10s – 1 (Bedfordshire)
G40/100 + all/50 + 30s – 1 (4NCL).

There are some particular points I want to make about these results.

Although the most common time control is G80 + 10s, in one case known to Barking the relevant league moved from this to G75 + 15s and not the other way round. This was the Central London League, which made the change about 10 years ago. The league’s decision-makers agreed that the extra thinking time provided by an increment of 15 seconds rather than 10 seconds was more important than the reduction of the basic game time from 80 minutes to 75 minutes.

They may have been influenced by the early starting time in the Central London League (6.30pm). Late finishing was less of an issue. In contrast, the Surrey Border League rejected the same proposal (to move from G80 + 10s to G75 + 15s) at its AGM in 2022. Games in this league start an hour later, at 7.30pm, and the potentially-extended finishing time would have run up against venue closing time constraints in some cases.

The session length at the two London League central venues is limited to 3 hours and 30 minutes. This applies whatever time control is used. So although it is the case that a longer increment will prolong the game where more than 60 moves are played, that is not an argument against the longer increment, at the central venues at least. Barking knows of only one case where the game was not finished on the night. 

Finally, going all the way to G60 + 30s, in other words reducing the basic game time to 60 minutes, would have a direct implication for the default time allowed. As Barking has argued elsewhere, a league the size of London with regular transport problems requires a generous default time of 45 or 60 minutes and this is not easily accommodated within a basic 60-minute game time.

Determining colours, and the default time

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As a former civil servant, I like to know what I’m talking about before I express an opinion on something. They call it Evidence-Based Decision-Making, or in other words, Knowledge is Power.

The London League is in the process of revising its rules. Back in October, an issue arose about whether teams should be selected on playing strength or in rating order. This blog carried out some research on the practice in other chess leagues the length and breadth of the land. The results appeared in the post The board order in league chess. Today we address two further issues: (1) how do you decide which team has white or black on each board; and (2) if you’re not there at the start, how much time do you have before you lose on default?

Determining colours

Traditionally the two teams would toss for colours and the winner would choose either white or black on top board (with the colours alternating down the board order). This was open to abuse in that if your player had prepared a particular line as white or black, winning the toss meant you could ensure the player got the preferred colour. So a refinement was to remove the choice and if you won the toss you automatically got a specified colour (in practice white) on top board.

Tossing for colours has its own issues: for example at what time before the scheduled start do you decide colours, and what happens if one team is not represented at the appointed time, for example running late in travelling to the venue? You could decide that the team which was there on time automatically had white on top board – at the risk of annoying the other team which might be late through no fault of its own.

So a further refinement – and this may reflect a modern trend towards simplification in procedure – was to eliminate the toss altogether and automatically allocate colours by a pre-determined principle, for example the home team or away team would always have white on odd boards.

Which brings us to the research. There are 86 chess leagues in England (excluding junior-only and online leagues). In 63 of these, the league rules are available online. (Previously it was 62, but one has emerged since then.) This is the frequency of the different options for determining colours.

  • home team has black on odd boards – 35
  • home team has white on odd boards – 5
  • toss for colours, winner chooses – 10
  • toss for colours, winner has white on odd boards – 9
  • not stated – 4.

In the London League, the fourth of these applies. Teams toss for colours and the winner automatically has white on odd boards.

The research shows that the clear preference in practice is for the home team to have black on odd boards. This must reflect the disadvantage to the away team in having to travel to the venue. This works fine if teams play their home matches at their home venue and their away matches at the opposition venue. But in some cases, including the London League, several clubs play all their matches at their home venue rather than a central league venue. Under this rule, their top board would have black in every game. That’s not a desirable outcome. The available information does not disclose – at least, not without a lot more digging – how many leagues feature clubs that always play at home and how many clubs are affected in each case. So we don’t know whether the London League is unique. If it’s not unique, the leagues which allocate colours automatically have not addressed the issue.

For the London League, a simple but unique solution has been proposed. This is that the home team has white on odd boards if the date of the match falls on days 1 to 15 of the month, and black on odd boards if it falls on days 16 to 31. Assuming a natural layout of the fixtures, roughly half of the fixtures would fall in each of the first and second halves of the month, so the colour distribution would be roughly even. At the time of posting, the proposal remains under consideration internally.

The default time

Here too, practice varies. The official FIDE Laws of Chess take a hardline approach:

6.6 a. Any player who arrives at the chessboard after the start of the session shall lose the game. Thus the default time is 0 minutes. The rules of a competition may specify otherwise.

This rule was introduced a number of years ago. It seems appropriate in official FIDE events, which are strictly controlled. In less formal conditions – applying in the typical weekend tournament in England, and in league chess played on a weekday evening – it would be completely impractical. Hence the discretion for local rules to specify otherwise. And they have done. There are no known cases in English league chess where the default time is 0 minutes.

In the 63 leagues where information is available, the default time is as shown below.

  • 30 minutes – 30
  • 45 minutes – 8
  • 60 minutes – 18
  • time control (75+ minutes) – 2
  • not stated – 5.

In the two leagues with a “time control” default system, the player may turn up at any time while the clock is still running, losing only when the time control is reached. In one case this is 75 minutes. In the other, a range of time controls are available and 75 minutes is the minimum.

The available information does not disclose the reasons for deciding on a particular default time in each league. Rules are rules and they rarely include explanatory material.

If you were developing a set of rules based on reason and logic, you might decide on a principled approach so that (for example) the default time was half the time available for the game. So if you had 90 minutes to make all your moves, you would have 45 minutes after the start to arrive at the board. Arriving just before the cut-off would still leave enough time for a sensible game.

An alternative approach would be to recognise that leagues operate in different circumstances and that no one solution would suit every league. If the league operated in a very small catchment area, and the travelling time to the venue was not significant, it might be appropriate to specify the short default time of 30 minutes. In other leagues, for example in large metropolitan areas, players might need longer to reach the venue. This may be what happens in practice – more detailed research would be needed to establish a correlation.

In the London League, which covers a large area, the current default time is 60 minutes. This is long enough for any reasonable journey. The downsides are, first, that if you’re present and your opponent is not, and you don’t know whether your opponent is running late or has simply forgotten there’s a match on that night, it’s a long time to wait for a no-show. And second, that if your opponent turns up just inside 60 minutes, with an incremental time control allowing a game time of 75 minutes, it’s practically impossible for the latecomer to play a serious game.

At its AGM in 2022, the London League considered a motion from one club to reduce the default time from 60 minutes to 30 minutes. This was no doubt motivated by the downsides of the longer default time. It was, however, clear from the debate that 30 minutes was in practice too short a default time for a league whose catchment area was the whole of London. Players could well miss the cut-off for no fault of their own, for example problems on public transport (and, more recently, one might add industrial action resulting a reduced service or none at all). The motion was defeated by 18 votes to 4.

During the debate, a compromise was suggested of a default time of 45 minutes. This reflected the experience of the person proposing the compromise (no prizes for guessing who that was) that players often turned up within 45 minutes of the start, but he did not recall anyone turning up between 45 and 60 minutes late. So nothing would be lost, and players wouldn’t have to wait a whole hour for a no-show. The amendment was defeated by 12 votes to 9. This was not because the majority of the clubs represented thought it was a bad idea in itself. Rather, it was tabled at no notice, and they had not been able to consult their membership. So in 2023, the proposal (and again this is still under consideration, well in advance of the summer AGM) is to reduce the default time from 60 minutes to 45 minutes.

Anyway, the lesson for any person of a sound mind is, Vote For Barking – You Know It Makes Sense.