The European Club Championship has just started on the Greek island of Rhodes. At the top end it is incredibly strong, with the strength of the top 4 teams averaging 2700 and above. Obviously these teams (and anyone in the top 10) is here to try and win the tournament, but the bulk of the field is made up teams representing their national leagues. For these teams it is either about mixing it with the big dogs, or aiming for a bit of personal glory.
The first round mainly went to script, although there a couple of mid field upsets. Amazingly not one, but two English players managed to lose their games to the dreaded zero default rule. Even more surprisingly they were on different teams. The problem for at least one player was that he simply forgot to adjust his watch when arriving in Greece, and was still operating on GMT. Apparently he was relaxing in the bath when the round started.
It is worth pointing out that 'zero default' will no longer be in the Laws of Chess from 1 July 2014. The wording has been changed so that the organiser is required to specify a default time for the tournament. This is up to the organisers discretion about what that time will be. Of course I am sure that some organisers will still insist on 0 minutes, but hopefully common sense will prevail in most cases.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Shaun, Peter Gayson is currently ill and still in the UK & hoping he will be able to travel soon. Archer & Lewyk r there but it has not proved possible to register them.
Post a Comment