Competitive Chess

Competition chess is not just for the best players - most competitions have two or even three tournaments running simultaneously, with sections for Novices, Intermediate and an Open event for the top players. A majority of the club's members play every week in the UCU Chess league. In League chess, each team has 5 players. They are ordered from Board 1 *the strongest) to Board 5 (the weakest). Each team pairs off their players according to their board number. One point is scored for every win, a half-point for a draw and no points for a loss. For example, if Bangor won on three boards, drew one board, and lost the fifth, the match score would be a 3½ - 1½ win. For league table purposes, a team can claim up to 2 bonus points for a match win, teams share a point each for a match draw and no bonus for a match loss. In the example above, Bangor would gain 2 bonus points so the league match score would be a 5½ - 1½ win. Other tournaments are dotted throughout the year, and are usually one, two, or sometimes 3-day events.

Rapidplay

The one-day events are rapidplay events with each player having 25 or 30 minutes per game. The tournament has a number of rounds with players changing opponent often depending on previous results. Usually 6 games will be played through the day.

Match Play

Longer tournaments feature 1½ hours per person games, or sometimes 1 hour each. This is the standard for competitive games. Like rapidplay tournaments, players change opponent after each game. Depending on the period of the tournament, there may be 6 or more rounds. Only longer games are used to calculate official player ratings.