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. The league is split in two divisions and currently bangor have two teams in each division. 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. The club keeps its members informed on club nights and through the Bangor Spectator weekly article.

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 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 for to calculate official player ratings.