Worcester & District Chess League

2009-10 Ball Cup

Junior Ashley Davis wins delayed final!

Final - The showdown between Robert Mitchell and Ashley Davis, was much delayed, because players were unable to meet during the summer. The fixture was eventually played on 30 November and junior Ashley Davis was the winner.

Semi-finals - Both games have been played: Robert Mitchell beat John Gittus with the black pieces. In the second game, junior Ashley Davis beat Giles Stanton.

Triangular Play-off for semi final place - All players scored one point and the lowest graded, Giles Stanton, goes forward. Congratulations to Giles, who took advantage of Farthing's greed to win that game in fine style. The first pawn was safe enough to grab but the second had a distinct whiff of poison. Against Richardson, Giles disdained a likely perpetual - when all he needed to qualify was a draw - in a sporting effort to go for the win, but it didn't come off.

Qualifying stage results

The groupswere generally closely fought. Sadly, thenearest thing to a "cup shock" (based on grades) was the Controller'sfailure to head his group, but he lived to fight on squeezing into secondplace. See below for final tables of the Qualifying stages.

The draw for the qualifying groups was carried out by ranking the players in grade order and then ‘slicing’ the list into five sets of three. A name was drawn at random from each of these five sets and placed in each qualifying group. In this way, the strength of the three groups should be roughly similar, but the spirit of a Cup competition (the “luck of the draw”) was retained. After this had been done, the initial allocations of who should play with the white pieces was also decided by lot. The tables were completed by ensuring that each player had two games with white and two with black. John Clark had to withdraw for personal reasons from pool A.

Pool A suffered from two uncompleted fixtures. Although players tried arrange the games, it was clear that the games could not be completed within the next few weeks. Since the competition needed to move forward, the Controller took the decision to split the points in each instance John Varilone therefore scored the most points, but his available time for chess was extremely limited and he has decided to concentrate on the Bennett Cup where he has also qualified for the semi-finals. John stepped aside, to allow someone else to continue in the competition. The outcome of the group is as follows: Automatic Semi-Final place Ashley Davis and Next stage qualifier Giles Stanton.

Pool B produced a convincing first place for John Gittus. The defending champion never looked like winning either of his two drawn games and was therefore fortunate to be able to hang on to the second qualifying place. Automatic Semi-Final place: John Gittus Next stage qualifier: Andrew Farthing

Pool C was very hard fought as might be expected with little to separate the players' grades. Several of Phil Smith's opponents commented that they felt fortunate to win so it is clear that every player helped make this a tight fight. In the end, Robert Mitchell came top of the pile, but David Ricahrdson progresses only after using tie-break. Automatic Semi-Final place: Robert Mitchell Next stage qualifier: David Richardson.