Website update

Now that our congress has concluded for 2024 we're now looking ahead to 2025 so this is a good time to look at updating our website .... currently, this site is built on Joomla! 3 which is now no longer supported so we'll be updating to Joomla! 4 very shortly which may go onto version 5 so you may experience odd things with this site during this process. The aim is to get everything up and running before the new year when we'll have everything in place for 2025 including leaflets. We'll notify everyone who has entered our congress during the last 3 years when it's all up and running and full details of Congress 2025. Thanks for your support and interest.

Further Update (29th October)

We have now submitted all results for rating to both the ECF and FIDE.

We're hoping to confirm the booking of the Spa for 2025 on 30th October.

Winnings

Having collected banking details at the end of the congress has allowed us to make prompt payments and out of the 48 winners we now only have 1 person left to pay ....

Adamjeet Singh

So please forward your bank details to allow us to transfer your winnings.

Update (29th October)

We are receiving many, many remarks on how well the congress went and how much they enjoyed it which is very much appreciated. It's also appreciated how many people have donated towards the congress .... several of the people who could not make it due to illness donated their entry fees and Roger Greatorex is even wanting to donate his winnings! We must also mention John Cawston who kindly donated a box of Quality Street for our arbiters to consume during the event - many thanks.

We are overwhelmed .... yes, a lot of work goes on behind the scenes and yes, the Spa isn't the cheapest of venues but it's all worth the effort when we receive this kind of feedback. And we'll endeavour to make it better ... we tried to include the Junior Rapidplay but it's probably likely we'll now concentrate on the congress and add something into it for juniors. And its highly likely we'll make it a 6 section event next year but we must first wrap up this years and book next years before we can finalise anything so watch this space!

Scarborough 47th Congress - Report

Despite the withdrawals due to illness, we had a good 350+ entry level with many travelling over 300 miles to attend noting our regular attendee, Reinhard Schmerwitz, who travelled over from Germany. So many thanks to everyone. The weather was good and our congress ran very well thanks to our arbiting team from Doncaster and Douglas Vleeshhouwer from Hull looking after our FIDE rating Open & Major sections. James Fisher once again provided the bookstall from Chess & Bridge in London. We found the Spa's Ocean Room having had a refurbishment since last year resulting in their canteen area being removed from the near the entrance resulting in the bar being used for refreshments instead. This area would normally have been for our Open section but the expected higher noise levels in this area meant we had to move the open into the window area at the side. The downside here was the relatively poor lighting in the evening. In the end with Saturday evening also proving awkward we took the decision to make some adjustments and moved the tables to where the lights were best - this made a huge difference but did mean renumbering all the boards but worth the effort and ensured there were no further problems. The Open in this new location also benefited on having a sea view although we suspect they were more focused on their games. This year we welcomed Nigel Davies GM as the only grandmaster present and he was on course of claiming our first prize but blundered and just missed out allowing newcomer Koby Kalavannan FM to claim it for himself with a good 4.5 score after a long battle in round 5 being one of the last to finish. In the other sections we also saw some good first place scores of 4.5 scores from Tony Quaite in the Major, Utku Deniz Demir in the Intermediate and Nathan Madzia and Vladyslav Drabych in the Minor but only one person managed a clean sweep of 5 out of 5 and this was Daniel Wilson in the Foundation. In all we had 48 people winning a prize. Congratulations to all of them but very much hope everyone else still enjoyed their weekend despite missing out. Our full list of winners is shown below.

All results are published on chess-results.com with the following links ....

Open, Major, Inter, Minor, Foundation.

 

Open

1st	Koby Kalavannan FM	4.5 points	£700
2nd=	Jacob Connor Boswell	4 points	£125
	Donald Mason	4 points	£125
	Alan Peart	4 points	£125
	Adithya Vaidyanathan	4 points	£125

 

Rating Prizes

Under 2100	Paul Hutchinson	3.5 points	£25
	Christopher Bak	3.5 points	£25
	Hao Ran Leung	3.5 points	£25
	Sai Vaddhireddy	3.5 points	£25
Under 1980	Shambavi Hariharan	2.5 points	£50
	Andrew Ponting	2.5 points	£50

 

Major

1st	Toby Quaite	4.5 points	£500
2nd=	James Hall	4 points	£117
	Mohammad Mozaffari	4 points	£117
	Sathya Vaidyanathan	4 points	£117

 

Rating Prizes

Under 1930	Leo Keely	3.5 points	£34
	Francis Best	3.5 points	£34
	Alan Jelfs	3.5 points	£34
Under 1860	Richard Sanger	3 points	£100

 

Intermediate

1st	Utku Deniz Demir	4.5 points	£500
2nd=	Robert Clegg	4 points	£58
	William Clinton	4 points	£58
	Simon Maydew	4 points	£58
	Keith Aitchison	4 points	£58
	Paul Butterworth	4 points	£58
	Paul Doherty	4 points	£58

 

Rating Prizes

Under 1765	Roger Greatorex	3.5 points	£100
Under 1704	Jon Blackburn	3.5 points	£100

 

Minor

1st=	Nathan Madzia	4.5 points	£375
	Vladyslav Drabych	4.5 points	£375
3rd=	Chris Tinker	4 points	£25
	Arthur Hibbitt	4 points	£25
	Luke Julyan	4 points	£25
	Christopher Lund	4 points	£25

 

Rating Prizes

Under 1625	Ted Ronald	4 points	£100
Under 1565	Anthony Jinks	3.5 points	£100

 

Note that Ted Ronald shared 3rd place but he has been awarded the rating prize instead.

Foundation

1st	Daniel Wilson	5 points	£400
2nd	Alan Tunnacliffe	4.5 points	£200
3rd=	Adamjeet Singh	4 points	£17
	Ethan Gaffney	4 points	£17
	Naill Bower-Costigan	4 points	£17
	Sara Kundan Khan	4 points	£17
	Michael Springett	4 points	£17
	Peter Galloway	4 points	£17

 

Rating Prizes

Under 1460	Stephanie Brown	3.5 points	£34
	Patrick Coleman	3.5 points	£34
	Martin Fletcher	3.5 points	£34
Under 1300	Malcolm Green	3 points	£100

 

The 47th Scarborough Chess Congress

Date 

Friday 25th to Sunday 27th October 2024

Venue

The Ocean Room, Scarborough Spa Complex, South Bay, Scarborough. YO11 2HD

 

Details

5 round Swiss tournament for all playing abilities.

FIDE rated Open & Major.

Leaflet to download can be found here.

Entries received so far can be found here.

Timetable

	Date	Start time
Round 1	Friday 25th Oct 2023	19:00
Round 2	Saturday 26th Oct 2023	09:30
Round 3	Saturday 26th Oct 2023	14:30
Round 4	Sunday 27th Oct 2023	09:30
Round 5	Sunday 27th Oct 2023	14:30

Note that BST ends on Saturday 26th October 2024.

Games are defaulted 30 minutes after the start time.

Time Control

All moves to be played in 110 minutes with a 10 second increment after each move.

All moves must be recorded until your time goes under 5 minutes remaining after which this is optional and remains so even if time remaing goes back over 5 minutes.

Sections

		Prize money
		1st	2nd	3rd
Open		£700	£350	£150
Major	under 2050	£500	£250	£100
Intermediate	under 1850	£500	£250	£100
Minor	under 1700	£500	£250	£100
Foundation	under 1550	£400	£200	£100

There will be £100 rating prizes in each section subject to entries.

The July ECF and FIDE's published rating lists will determine which section you can enter. In the Open & Major the highest ECF/FIDE rating will be used. The October published rating lists will be used for pairing at the event. In the event that your October rating means you are no longer eligible to enter the section requested you may be automatically be moved into the higher section - there would be no additional fee payable if this is the case. If your October rating allows you to enter a lower section, you must request this transfer, again the entry fee will remain at the original value.

You can only win 1 prize - if you are eligible to win a rating prize then you will be awarded with which ever has the highest payout.

Prize money will be shared if there is a tie.

Entry fees

All ENG Open & Major players must be ECF Gold or above membership at the time of the event, non ENG Open & Major players must have a FIN. Other sections require ECF Silver or above membership. Otherwise a Pay to Play fee is to be added to the entry fee for your section below.....

Open £45

Major, Intermediate and Minor £40

Foundation £35

No late entries will be allowed at the event. Closing time for all entries is midday on Thursday 24th October 2024.

All fees must be paid in full to confirm your entry before the event.

Refunds will be paid subject to a £5 administration fee for any withdrawals.

Pairings

Swiss Manager will be used to pair the rounds using Octobers published ratings.

In the Open & Major, the highest FIDE/ECF rating will be used.

Pairings/results will be published on chess-results website.

Arbiters

Douglas Vleeshhouwer

Nigel Hepworth

Jim Burnett

Peter Ackley

Neil Lowther

Nicholas Mahoney

2nd Scarborough Junior Rapidplay

Date

Saturday 26th October 2024

Venue

The Sun Lounge, Scarborough Spa Complex, South Bay, Scarborough. YO11 2HD

Details

6 round swiss tournament with an U11 qualifier section for the EPSCA England team trial plus sections to suit all playing abilities.

For juniors wishing to also particate in the main 3 day congress, this can be done by taking two half point byes for the Saturday games and the total cost to enter both tournaments is £25. 

Leaflet can be found here (combined with the main congress).

Time control

15 minutes plus 10 second increment (there's no requirement to record moves)

Timetable 

	Start time
Opening Ceremony	9:50
Round 1	10:00
Round 2	11:00
Round 3	11:45
Round 4	14:00
Round 5	14:45
Round 6	15:30
Prize Giving	16:30

Sections

Open

Major (U1200)

Minor (U800)

U11

Entry fee

£15 (or £25 if also entering main congress)

Prizes

Trophies & medals in each section

Tie breaks

If points are equal then sum of progressive scores will be used to determine a winner

Pairings

Swiss Manager will be used to do the pairings and seeding order will be determined by date of birth in the U11 section.

All games will be ECF rated so all entrants must have a valid ECF membership - the first year is free - see this link for details

Arbiters

Andrew Wainwright

Jon Hipshon

 

News

 

Our congress has now finished and we've received a lot of positive comments reagarding how it's gone which are appreciated.

Games in the Open, Major & Inter have already been submitteed for rating, Minor & Foundation will be done later today along with a list of winners in each section.

In the end we had a decent entry of around 350 again but sadly, we had many people having to withdraw at the last minute due to illness. We suspect something is going around?

The junior event went well and thanks to Andrew Wainwright for his help - it wasn't as popular as would have hoped which we're suspecting is down to the location and most of the juniors decided to just play in the main congress. It's interesting to note that the average age in the open was in the 30's due to the high number of juniors in this section. Anyway, it's probably more than likely that we'll not hold a junior rapidplay next year and concentrate on the main congress instead and we're pencilling in an extra section ... watch this space. The dates for next year is likely to be the weekend 24th-26th October 2025 but we've not booked the Spa as yet so this is currently provisional.

All results are published on chess-results.com with the following links ....

Open, Major, Inter, Minor, Foundation.

The Junior Rapidplay was made into 2 sections with results on these links ....

OpenMajor, Minor

Then we'll start preparing for next years event.