First British Internet Schools Championship

Foreword

Welcome to the First Internet Schools Championship of the British Isles, sponsored by ChessBase and PlayChess.com, Specsavers, Chess and Bridge (London) and endorsed by the British Chess Federation.

This is the most exciting development in schools chess for many years. If we are successful, we hope to widen the event out into Europe, and eventually all over the World. You are at the gateway to the future of chess in education.

We cordially invite you to join us in this tournament.

On the following pages we list the rules, conditions and technical requirements for you. For the sake of clarity we structured this information sheet according to the main functions of the persons concerned, and thus some information appears more than once.

We recommend that you print the relevant sections and distribute copies to the persons concerned. We hope to "see" all of you in the virtual chess world.

The Idea

• Teams of four, composed of pupils from one school, qualify in preliminaries for a national final, in which the champion is established by knock-out mode.

• Any pupil and any team will play at least a couple of games in these event against opponent from anywhere on the British Isles without spending money and time for travelling and accommodation.

About Us

The organisers of the tournament will be well-known to the British chess public:

• Overall Tournament Director is International Master Andrew Martin

• Tournament Arbiters are Peter Purland and David Welch, two of the most senior officials in Britain. David Welch is the current BCF Director of Congress Chess.

• The sponsors and supporters must also be mentioned :

• ChessBase is a company producing very high-quality data products, which assist chess players the world over. They are responsible for PlayChess.com, possibly the most popular playing server on the Internet, where tens of thousands of games are played daily. They are very keen to support the development of chess in education.

• Chess and Bridge (London) are providing trophies for all winning schools in the first stage of the event.

• Specsavers Opticians are kindly providing assistance with the considerable start-up costs.

The Rules

Time-limit
The Championship is played with a basic time-limit of 50 minutes plus 10 seconds increment per move (50+10, Fischer-mode).

Strength / Depth of Team
The matches will be played on four boards. Every team can enter up to two substitutes. Regular players can only be entered for one team, substitutes for several teams. However, during the tournament every player can play for one team only.

Scoring on Level 1 and 2
For matches on level 1 and 2 a team-win scores three points, a draw one point and a loss no points.

Qualification for level 2 or the final is decided by

• the number of match points, after that
• the number of board points, after that
• the direct encounter.

If all scores are identical a tie-break will be played. The rules for the tiebreak will be set if a tiebreak is required.

Scoring in the final
In case of a draw a tie-break will be played. The tie-break will be played as a blitz-match with a time-limit of 7 minutes + 3 seconds increment per move. If necessary, the tie-break will repeated until a winner has been found.

The Age Groups
The tournament will by played in two age groups, U-18 and U-13. The starting date set is October 1, 2005.

The Mode

Groups and pairings on all levels will be decided by the drawing of lots. There will be no seeded teams. However: On level 1 and 2 and in the 1st round of the KO-mode we will take care that two teams from the same school will not have to play each other.

Tournament Director: Andrew Martin
Arbiters: Peter Purland and Dave Welch

The Prizes

• Winner: 5000 ChessBase-ducats
• Runner-Up: 3000 ChessBase-ducats
• Semi-Finalists: 1000 ChessBase-ducats each

Winners of each section will receive trophy prizes. Runners-up will receive book prizes.

ChessBase-ducats are the virtual currency on the chess server. With ducats players can pay starting fees for tournaments, pay for training lessons or buy products in the ChessBase onlineshop. Ten ducats are worth approximately 1 Euro.

Schedule

• 15th June until 1st October 2005 – Registration
• 10th October to 19th December 2005 – Level 1
• 9th January to 2nd March 2006 – Level 2
• 3rd April to 5th June 2006 – Final KO-Mode

The matches will be played on the playchess.com server. They start in the afternoon, weekdays, at 4.00 pm. On level 1 each team match should be played within two weeks. The match will be scheduled for the first week, but the teams may play in the second week if they have trouble with the scheduled date.

On level 2 the teams have ten days for every single match. Again the matches will be scheduled. In the KO-final the first two rounds will be played before the Easter-Holidays, the semi final and the final after the Easter-Holidays.

The semi-final and the final will be played over a mutually convenient weekend in the Summer Term in order to receive greater publicity.

With registration each team gives a time at which it would like to play the matches. Every day between Monday and Friday, at 4.00 pm is possible. If the team plays a match at home (virtual home) this match will take place at the time given in the registration by this team. The team playing away from home has to adjust to that.

Starting Fee and Registration

Every school pays for

• one team £20
• two teams £35
• three teams £40

Every additional team plays free of charge.

You will find an online registration form at the end of this page. After registering you will receive a CD with the program to play chess on the server Playchess.com. In addition, you will receive seven serial numbers which provide access to the server for a full year with all features the server offers. You will receive seven serial numbers for the four players, two substitutes and the team-captain.

Along with the CD you will receive information how to install the software, how to create an account on the server and how to play on the server. In the meantime you – and all of your pupils – may try the server and download a client under http://www.playchess.com. You will have 30 days free access to the server.

Technical Requirements and Software Provision

Please note that on those PCs, from which your students take part in the Championship, port 6002 must be activated. Please clarify this absolute requirement for participating in the championship in advance with your system administrator if necessary.

Important Information

Following we define the three functions needed by each team:

It is possible for one person to fulfill two or all three of these functions. Moreover, the responsible person does not necessarily have to be a teacher. He/she might well be a student, parent, chess coach, manager of the junior team of a chess club or something similar.

a) For the attending teacher

Your tasks comprise:

• Responsibility
  By sending the registration you and your team members accept the rules for participating. Violating these rules might – depending on how severe the violation is – lead to an exclusion of the team or the school without refunding the starting fee.

• Registration of the teams:
  You have to fill out the internet form and name the team captains. We would like to save you and us the effort of an official postal registration by your school. Nevertheless, you are obviously still responsible for giving the correct data, which we reserve the right to check in individual cases.

  If any problems arise please try to solve them by first referring to your local system administrator and contact us only if the problem continues to exist.

b) For the Team Captain

First of all we would like to ask you to keep in mind that this is an Official Schools Championship. This means that we first of all expect one thing from you and your team mates, who you lead: fair play.

Grave violations – such as e.g. interfering with the games of others, using computers or other technical equipment or even culpable failure to attend – will be punished by us, in the worst case by exclusion from the tournament.

As team captain you have to fullfil the following tasks:

• Communication with the tournament directors and arbiters: In all cases, in which questions concerning your team arise, you will be our first contact person, and only after attempting to contact you will we turn to the attending teacher. Therefore we expect that you regularly check your email.

• Organizing your team for the matches

• You are responsible for playing the match against the other team on the set dates. Obviously it is also your task to direct your complete team at the respective day into the virtual tournament room.

• Reporting the results There are home and away matches in the Internet Schools Championship. The home team is responsible for the match and to enter the result in the appropriate form immediately after the end of the match.

• Every team captain will receive extra information about some server-features, with regard to the execution of the matches, the pairings and so on.

c) For the technical attendant

There aren't many technical requirements for taking part in the Schools Championship, but each of them is unfortunately absolutely necessary. One after the other:

Operating system
The software to access the server runs only on Microsoft Windows – on all versions.

Installation of the software

• After registration the attending teacher will receive five copies of the software by mail, and with this the students should later log on to the chess server.
• Please install this software at least on four PCs (this is the number of students who will later have to play at the same time).
• If the students later have to register at Windows-User Accounts, please take care that these have permanent writing rights in the folder „Your files\ChessBase“, because here the games will be saved.
• If necessary open the port 6002. The software can only and exclusively connect to the chess server via the port 6002. If a firewall or a proxy-server blocks this port, please do open it.

Contact

You will find the Internet site of the Schools Championship with lots of further information and links under www.chessbase.com. Here you also have the opportunity to contact us through a form.

Contact persons:

• Andrew Martin. Email: Andrew (at) wizard100.demon.co.uk
• Peter Purland. Email: petepurland(at)btopenworld.com

Online registration

• Click here to register for the First Internet Schools Championship