North Kildare Junior Chess Club

https://lichess.org/team/north-kildare-chess-club

https://lichess.org/swiss/Do0qrJEg

Hi Chess Parents/Guardians …. this Friday Evening, 6th November 2020, we’ll try a different tournament type:

A Swiss system Tournament.

This is by far the most common type of real-world Chess tournament and will give the players a feel for a typical Rapid tournament.

Swiss tournaments differ from our usual Arena by having:

-a set number of rounds (5 in this case)
-all the games in each round begin at the same time.

If games finish quite quickly, there will be a reasonable wait of a few minutes, so the players will need to keep an eye on the tournament to be prepared for the next round (the time of each round will dynamically depend on how quickly the longest previous game finished).

What do you and the players need to know?

-The tournament is starting earlier than normal at 7:10pm

-There will be a quick 10 minute gathering and explainer session for the players at our usual time of 7:00pm. (The Zoom invite will be sent out earlier in the day as normal).

-Players will tend to naturally play suitable opponents after the 1st round and throughout the rest of the tournament (players will face opponents with the same/similar score in each round).

-It is possible that some players will have a “bye” where they miss 1 round (due to uneven player numbers), however I’ll try to prevent this from happening.

-The tournament is limited to lichess.org Team members of: https://lichess.org/team/north-kildare-chess-club (just make sure to join and be accepted in lichess.org to this team (if not already joined) in plenty of time before the tournament – preferably at least 1 day before (I’ll keep an eye on requests and approve them – please whatsapp Andrew the lichess.org name if it’s a new nickname so I’ll know who I’m approving).

-Join the tournament when you are a Team member at: https://lichess.org/team/north-kildare-chess-club/tournaments

-There’s a statistical possibility that the tournament could last a bit longer than our usual Arena tournaments. The time control is 7 minutes + 2 seconds with 30 seconds between each round for 5 rounds. It’s very unlikely that games will last 20 minutes, but it’s theoretically possible. We’re not sure how will run for sure until we’ve tried it — so apologies in advance if it becomes a problem.

Depending on the success of the experience and how popular it proves to be for the Club members, we may consider running Swiss Tournaments periodically (mixed with our usual Arena tournament line-up).