LCU League Cups 2013 not rated?

cdeb

What cover-up? There was no cover up.

The cheat didn't get off scot-free. Yes, there was effectively no ban in place (bar the four-month voluntary suspension while the investigation was on), but the cheat has suffered in other ways.

There's no issue over calling the assault IMO; the person has confirmed it several times in the media (here's one example; a google search will show up more)

I would much rather the cups were rated. I've said nothing which would allow you to extrapolate that I'd rather it was let drop. I've merely called you up on your statement that a tournament going unrated is worse than assault of a minor. It clearly isn't.

Airbender

You are putting words into my mouth. When and where did I say that "that a tournament going unrated is worse than assault of a minor"?? What I said was the following: "This (holding the ghost tournaments which were folded up as soon as the LCU got the entrance fees) is much worse than the toiletgate", and I later defined it more exactly: "Toiletgate involved the confirmed (and self-confessed) fact of cheating." Please do not misquote me.

The cover-up was organised by the cheat's parents who brought a lawyer (!!) to the ICU hearing. The four-month suspended ban given to the cheat was backdated, so it wasn't really a ban; this is what I call getting off scot-free. I am not aware of any other ways in which he suffered.

Talking about the alleged assault, I would never put any trust in what appeared in sensation hunting media; we all know how they operate.

And I still stand by my statement that "Cupgate too involved what may be regarded as cheating (clubs cheated of their moneys paid to the LCU for the entry for non-existent competitions), which affected a couple of hundred players." Let's see what the other clubs have to say about it.

Celtic What?

I don't think there was an assault.
He pulled him out of the toilet

The lad cheated, he isnt a child.
The other fella got mad and over reacted....

never assaulted anyone...

the 'child' has a huge legal support which is moot anyway as he is a cheat.
I really dont think there was any wrongdoing from the Limerick fella.

Seems its about who has money..

cdeb

Celtic What? wrote: »

I don't think there was an assault.
He pulled him out of the toilet

Kicked the toilet door down to get in at him, and dragged him out.

I'd look up the definition of assault if I were you...

Gerry Graham, a witness, was happy to call it assault.

And that's before we get to the version the Gonzaga people put forward at the AGM, which was entirely consistent with the Gardaí being called.

I'd ask around a bit to get full information before saying that two tournaments going unrated - annoying and all that that is - is worse than Toiletgate.

The cheat didn't get off entirely scot-free (though I agree the ban was lenient). He was national news, everyone knew who it was, he brought shame on his club, his school and his family. Major enough stuff at the age of 16. Again, the ICU ban was lenient, but there's other forms of punishment than just the ban.

We need to get some sort of perspective here. I think it's clear ye don't really understand what happened in Toiletgate.

brilliantboy

cdeb wrote: »

Kicked the toilet door down to get in at him, and dragged him out.

I'd look up the definition of assault if I were you...

Gerry Graham, a witness, was happy to call it assault.

And that's before we get to the version the Gonzaga people put forward at the AGM, which was entirely consistent with the Gardaí being called.

I'd ask around a bit to get full information before saying that two tournaments going unrated - annoying and all that that is - is worse than Toiletgate.

The cheat didn't get off entirely scot-free (though I agree the ban was lenient). He was national news, everyone knew who it was, he brought shame on his club, his school and his family. Major enough stuff at the age of 16. Again, the ICU ban was lenient, but there's other forms of punishment than just the ban.

We need to get some sort of perspective here. I think it's clear ye don't really understand what happened in Toiletgate.

That's the thing. We (the rank and file members) shouldn't have to ask around to get information, or try to piece it together from whisperings in clubs and shouting matches on forums. There should be a full report of the whole saga up on the ICU website. Instead people seem happy to gloss over what happened with "ah sure it's a once off and the young fella has learned his lesson"

Airbender

Isn't it funny to watch how CDEB is trying to turn the discussion away from the CUPGATE?

Not only two of the LCU cups went unrated, they were practically ABANDONED by the LCU as soon as they received the entrance fees. The teams had to get in touch with each other to arrange fixtures, as no fixture lists had been given. That's why the Brennan Cup final was played in September (!): the team waited for their players to return from holidays.

In early September, every mention of the League Cups was removed from the LCU website. The results have never been posted or submitted for rating. Poor performance, if you ask me; the clubs definitely deserve better. There should be a full report of the whole saga up on the LCU website, and an apology from the LCU officers wouldn't go amiss.

Sparks

Cupgate? Ah ffs, doesn't anyone in chess have any sense of proportionality?
Someone screwed up and didn't do the job right. Yes, notice should have been given that there was a problem and that's a failing; but given that the person responsible for the work resigned from the post, you could reasonably assume they weren't able to keep up with the workload for some reason. You can either line up to throw rocks at them, which won't fix the problem, or you can offer to help, which would. So why are there so many rocks in flight? Do people prefer the fight to the game or something?


And yes, it does affect more people directly than the incident in cork; but indirectly it affects fewer people (seriously, do you think anyone trying to get sponsorship or recognition for the sport in Ireland has seen their job get any easier because of the PR and the fighting surrounding that incident?). And in terms of how serious the immediate incident was, failing to do the paperwork on time doesn't really get into the same league as something that gets the Gardai called out.

Airbender

I am afraid, you've got it all wrong, Sparks. The Leinster League and the Cups are among the main tournaments for the grass-root chess players in this country. The Cupgate was one the most serious failures in Irish chess for years. This is a mountain rather than an anthill, or should we call it the elephant in the room, which you prefer not to notice? It is disheartening to see people who seem happy to gloss over what happened with "Ah, somebody screwed up. Who cares?" It may come to you as a surprise but many people do, and some of the posts on here reflect the clubs' concern.

Sparks

I am not saying "who cares", I'm saying "okay, it's a screwup, now how do we fix it?".
How is it so easy to get from "let's focus on fixing the problem" to "who cares"?

Airbender

"How do we fix it?" is the right approach, Sparks. Do you have any suggestions?

Sparks

Airbender wrote: »

"How do we fix it?" is the right approach, Sparks. Do you have any suggestions?

Recruit a replacement for the LCU tournament director seems like the obvious choice; feel like you could do the job Airbender?

Airbender

I could if I were a FIDE arbiter. We only have three or four of them in this country. The tournament director has to be one of them, otherwise the Leagues (at least, the first three divisions) won't be FIDE rated.

Another thing, I don't see how recruiting a tournament director for the 2013 - 2014 season, however important it might be, will fix the screw-up with the 2012 - 2013 League cups.

Myrddin

Airbender wrote: »

Isn't it funny to watch how CDEB is trying to turn the discussion away from the CUPGATE?

If you have problem with posters/mods, please report the posts you feel are problematic. It's the moderators role to keep threads on topic, please don't back-seat moderate. Warning issued.

Because both forums mods were new to modding, I've made myself available to guide & advise cdeb & reunion where possible until they're happy enough with the inner workings of boards & the rules we're all bound by. I've been watching this forum closely for the last few weeks, & they've done a great job in settling in & keeping things running as they should.

Let it be clear though, I've read some vitriolic posts too over the few weeks, & from here on, I'll be advising reunion & cdeb to take a stronger line against people parading their inflated egos on boards, defamatory posts, & all round dickishness.

Please keep posts civil, on topic, & constructive. Warnings, infractions, & bans will follow further childish carry on.

Airbender

Right-o. So I call upon all the participants of the discussion to keep their posts as close to the announced topic ("LCU League Cups 2013 not rated?") as possible. For other things we have other threads. I would be delighted to hear any serious suggestions how we can rectify things with the League Cups 2012/13, which, as I see it, shall include two things:

1. Get the results posted on the LCU website.
2. Get the LCU officers to submit these results to the ICU Rating Officer, Mark Orr, for rating as soon as possible.

Sparks

Airbender wrote: »

I could if I were a FIDE arbiter. We only have three or four of them in this country.

Got a new one today, perhaps someone could have a word?

Another thing, I don't see how recruiting a tournament director for the 2013 - 2014 season, however important it might be, will fix the screw-up with the 2012 - 2013 League cups.

Any reasonable person would presume that the new director would work to fix the problem with the 2012-13 season (either with the old director or without them). No, it wouldn't be perfect. Yes, this shouldn't have happened. Yes, someone ought to have apologised to the players for the screwup. But (and I will use any excuse to make this analogy), if you have a problem it's usually best not to blow it out of proportion...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0Hx5ka1FiA

(Yes, I will use any excuse to post that video). :pac:

But seriously, when the first reaction of anyone to anything going sideways is to call for public flayings, it discourages people volunteering for jobs that need to be done - and it's not like the 2% rule makes things easy to start with.

Airbender

Sparks wrote: »

Any reasonable person would presume that the new director would work to fix the problem with the 2012-13 season (either with the old director or without them). No, it wouldn't be perfect. Yes, this shouldn't have happened. Yes, someone ought to have apologised to the players for the screwup. But (and I will use any excuse to make this analogy), if you have a problem it's usually best not to blow it out of proportion...

But seriously, when the first reaction of anyone to anything going sideways is to call for public flayings, it discourages people volunteering for jobs that need to be done - and it's not like the 2% rule makes things easy to start with.

I sincerely hope that the new tournament director, whoever he is, will try to fix problems with the LCU Cups 2012/13, even though my experience tells me that the current affairs will keep him too busy to do so.

It is hard to blow the cupgate out of proportion because it has been the most serious LCU screw-up in years, and it still hasn't been rectified, no one has apologised to the players, etc. etc. How many clubs do you think will want to enter teams for the League Cups 2014? How many clubs will actually trust the LCU enough to do that?

As for the alleged 'discouraging', I've always supported Rory Delaney because it is hard to do what he was doing as the Tournament Controller. What I didn't like a single bit was his empty promise to submit the results for rating: his e-mail came just two weeks before the rating was published, so he must have known by then that he wasn't going to submit anything.

Airbender

I believe that waiting for the appointment of a new tournament director can take ages. The clubs will have to approach the LCU officers and ask them to submit the Cup results to Mark Orr for rating before it is too late.

Ciaran

I assume the LCU have the results of the games in these cups. Surely it's a small job to format them and send them to be rated? If they need help to get it done, just ask for it and I'm sure they'll find people willing to help. This doesn't reflect very well on the organisation.

I've played in the Killane in the past and I'd have been pretty annoyed if this had happened those years.

zenobi

hi enter now
this is my first post here .i am a regular chess player in a Dublin club and have been watching this forum for months and saddens me to see the vitriol here , could you please yourself be the moderator for this forum and i think you'll be great ? this forum needs moderators that do not engage heavily in discussions here with biased view and make inflammatory comments . if someone report a moderator post for abuse who gets to review it ? the moderator himself or someone else ?

Myrddin

zenobi wrote: »

hi enter now
this is my first post here .i am a regular chess player in a Dublin club and have been watching this forum for months and saddens me to see the vitriol here , could you please yourself be the moderator for this forum and i think you'll be great ? this forum needs moderators that do not engage heavily in discussions here with biased view and make inflammatory comments . if someone report a moderator post for abuse who gets to review it ? the moderator himself or someone else ?

Again, this is the type of post that really shouldn't be in public, it derails the thread & alters the natural flow of discussion. However, given the forum is new enough in its new position, & we're getting some new users, I'll address it here this one time:

Both cdeb & reunnion are doing a standout job, in a very turbulent arena of discussion. Both have requested advice & independent intervention a few times so far, so as not to appear publicly biased, & the fact they're both willing to not abuse their positions as moderators, while still engaging in discussion as they're fully entitled to, is fantastic for you guys, great for the forum, & an all round professional approach.

If a post is reported, both forum mods will get a message about it, and all three Games Cmods of which I am one, will get the same alert too. So there's no risk of reports being buried under the sand, because a) there's no agenda here from cdeb or reunion, & b) I'm reading every single report too.

So, to summarize, no I can't be mod here because I know squat about Chess. The two mods you have have struck a balance between their love of Chess, & their position of moderators. Already they've helped this forum in front & behind the curtains.

So, back on topic now folks

Airbender

Ciaran wrote: »

I assume the LCU have the results of the games in these cups. Surely it's a small job to format them and send them to be rated? If they need help to get it done, just ask for it and I'm sure they'll find people willing to help. This doesn't reflect very well on the organisation.

I've played in the Killane in the past and I'd have been pretty annoyed if this had happened those years.

Well said Ciaran. I am sure that if help is needed to process the Cup results before submitting them to Mark Orr many people will volunteer to help, including members of our clubs. If only the ICU appealed for help, instead of keeping silent! Why do they distance themselves from the chess community? I'll never understand that.

mikhail

Airbender wrote: »

... I am a bit surprised that St. Benildus are keen to let it drop. Let's see what the other clubs think.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't conflate an individual with his club.

cdeb

Or even surmise that I'm keen to have it dropped.

Airbender

Good to know that you are not keen to have it dropped. How about writing to the LCU and asking if they need help from the individual players and the clubs to process the results the the League cups?

By the way, Pete Morriss got the results from this year's Galway Chess Congress rated today, i.e. on the next day after the competition ended. This shows that such things can be done quicker that many of us thought!

cdeb

Course I don't want to see it just dropped; I never said that. Tournaments should be rated; end of story.

But that doesn't mean that anything can necessarily be done to rescue the current position. The ICU have said that tournaments have to be submitted within a week of their finish to be rated (though I can't find that any more on the ICU site?) - that implies they're drawing a line under the matter. And they're fairly important, let's face it.

And realistically - do clubs still have the teamsheets from the cups? We might have our side from our website, but not our opponents' teams. Results were e-mailed rather than submitted on the website, which means they may be trapped in sent boxes somewhere.

But we do need to keep this in context. I think Elo ratings only include 100 games' worth of information. How you did 101 games ago has literally no effect on your rating. People's ratings will catch up. Clubs are free to use the results in the cup competitions to pick league teams this year. I'll repeat - it is absurd and insulting to deem this "much worse than Toiletgate".

Galway being rated today doesn't show that things can be done quicker than we thought; we know the ratings site works this quickly. That's what's so good about it.

Airbender

Airbender wrote: »

This has been the most serious LCU screw-up in years, and it still hasn't been rectified, no one has apologised to the players, etc. etc. How many clubs do you think will want to enter teams for the League Cups 2014? How many clubs will actually trust the LCU enough to do that?

As I said, it is not only about the ratings. Removing every mention about the Cups from the LCU website was a cowardly way to behave, especially after the clubs' entrance fees had been collected. It is more about the LCU attitude and trust in them that many of us have now lost.

cdeb

I agree it undermines the LCU cups, and I'd* be thinking twice about Benildus entering this season.

Still ridiculous to say it's "much worse than Toiletgate"

We just need to get a bit of perspective here.

There's no cup archive on the website; I think you're reading a bit too much into that. The cup results were always deleted at the start of a new season.

* - obvious disclaimer - it's not entirely my call as I'm not the club...

Airbender

I know there's no cup archive (pity, really, isn't it?) But no one has ever seen the results, as they never appeared on the LCU site. So the majority of players don't know the outcome of this year's cups, e.g. the finalists and the winners have never been officially announced.

I won\t stand by my claim that it is 'worse than toiletgate' but it is bad enough. You're saying, your club isn't sure about future participation, neither is mine. Do you think we can get assurances from the LCU officials about the future of the cups? Because no one is certain of anything at this stage. It would be best if they issued a statement...

cdeb

Airbender wrote: »

I won\t stand by my claim that it is 'worse than toiletgate' but it is bad enough.

That's grand. Now I'm more or less in agreement with you.

Airbender

And I with you!