
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
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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.
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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:
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Overall Tournament Director is International Master Andrew Martin
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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.
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The sponsors and supporters must also be mentioned :
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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.
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Chess and Bridge (London) are providing trophies for all winning schools
in the first stage of the event.
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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
Level 1
The teams are divided into groups of five or six teams. The drawing of lots
will be completely random and there will be no seeded teams. These six teams
play a round-robin tournament against each other; the first two teams of
each group qualify for the next level.
Level 2
The teams are divided into groups of six teams. The same rule as on level
1 applies: the two best-placed teams qualify for the next level.
Level 3 – Final
The remaining teams play against each other in knock-out 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:
a) The attending, responsible teacher
b) The team captain
c) The administrator
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:
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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.
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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:
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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.
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Organizing your team for the matches
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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.
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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.
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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