Season 2004 / 2005 Open Analysis

Team Information

Player Performance

Board Analysis

2004 - 2005 West of England County Matches Analysis

This is a personal view completed by me (Graham Stuart) and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Hampshire Chess Association. Please feel free to supply your own thoughts / comments on the season.

The first thing I would like to say is a thank you to Chris Priest for doing the data analysis this year, which means you don't have to put up with my errors. In fact Chris has supplied more data than I am publishing, but I have limited time, so cannot publish it all. If you are interested in the data, drop me or Chris a note and we can supply you with the original analysis. The data is in OpenOffice format, so you may have to download this to read it. News@HampshireChess.co.uk 

More changes happened this year, with a number of stronger players, both old and new playing for Hampshire. This certainly helped us at the top, but from board 5 onwards we were a lot weaker than last year. In total the average grade was actually 7 points less than last year (149.7 from 156.1), which was disappointing. One of the reasons for this is a loss of a couple of key players from last year, who were unable to play this year - hopefully Peter Roberson and Oliver Payne will be able to play for Hampshire in the next few years, but studying will probably take priority.

On the bright side, the new players included a number of players who never thought they would be able to play for the county, and this experience can only benefit them and Hampshire in the long run. Team Captain, Dominic Tunks was most impressed with the team spirit and I was also very pleased to receive match reports from Dominic, which added to the website reporting.

We scored the same number of match points as last year, but where as last year this was from 2 draws, this year this was from 1 win, when we finally managed to beat Wiltshire. This turned out to be a very important win, as due to this we qualified for the quarter finals of the BCF Minor stages, despite having less points than Wiltshire (2 to 3).  This was due to their draw against Cornwall not counting, as Cornwall were not in this competition (I think). Personally I think we deserved this, as the game that Wiltshire won, was against a weakened Somerset who had already qualified for the Open Stages. Somerset's team against us averaged 163 and against Wiltshire it was 133.1 with two defaults.

The other Hampshire teams were not that successful this season, with both the under 150  and under 125 teams failing to qualify for the BCF stages.

The BCF Minor County Quarter Final match against Surrey was always going to be tough, but was made ever more difficult as we played right in the middle of Surrey. If we are going to stand any chance against a London County, I think we have to make them travel. In Dominic's absence I felt that I got a reasonable team together, but we came up against a team that averaged just 0.7 under the average U180 limit. This was also with an ungraded Susan Lalic being given a grade of 179 or thereabouts. On the day we were doing a bit of analysis to work out their team grade, as this seemed the only way that we were going to get a result! Personally I cannot see how Surrey got the controller to give Susan Lalic a grade this low (she is a IM with an ELO of 2362!). That said we were never going to win the match so maybe next year!

Whilst talking about the BCF stages, congratulations to Devon, who won the U175 Championship, the first West of England team to win a BCF title for a number of years. They were without Hampshire Secretary John Wheeler this season as well, as his grade was much too high.

As always the Players Performance is in points scored order, and it is pleasing to see Martin Newbury at the top of the pile. Martin, along with John Wilkinson can now definitely be called the stalwarts of the Hampshire teams, playing for the last 30 years or so. Martin has played a lot more than John, who was not always available in the 70's and 80's. Martin had an excellent season both for the County and the League and the pick of his games was probably his demolition against Dan Rosen in the BCF Minor quarter final. This was the only game that Hampshire won in this match.

Other players that performed well were Chris Priest, Dominic Tunks, Gillian Moore, Ian Van Delft, Ken Coates, Mike Krawczuk, David Thompson and Richard Perrin. 

Once again it is thanks to Dominic Tunks for captaining the County Teams and don't forget, if you have a game from the season which is worth publishing, send to me at News@HampshireChess.co.uk 

Average Strength of A Team

149.7 (inc BCF quarter final)

Average Strength of Opposition A Team

151.7

Highest Hampshire Graded Team

162.9 (Somerset)

Highest Opponent Graded Team

163.3 (Devon) - 179.3 (Surrey)

Average Strength of B Team

127.8

Average Strength of Opposition B Team

123.0

Highest Hampshire Graded Team

127.8 (Against Dorset - U150 match)

Highest Opponent Graded Team

123.0 (Dorset - U150 match)

Board Differential between Hampshire and Opponents - A team

Board

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Hampshire

192.2

182.8

172.2

167.6

159.8

156.6

150.8

146.8

141.6

143.0

132.8

127.6

123.7

106.6

124.0

118.0

Opponents

193.6

180.5

178.2

166.0

159.8

155.5

154.2

151.6

144.4

143.4

146.3

133.0

128.8

123.6

121.3

130.7

Difference

1.4

1.7

6.0

1.6

0.0

1.1

3.4

4.8

2.8

0.4

13.5

5.4

5.1

17.0

2.7

12.7

Player Performance