Millfield 2013

Sparks

A writeup on the Millfield International is now up on the Benildus website:

Millfield International

St Benildus College sent its customary pair of teams to Millfield last weekend, and in spite of losing their board one at the last moment to the flu, the A team accomplished its highest finish in four years.

Shorn of Odhran, the top boards seemed swamped in the early rounds, scoring just 0.5/6 in the two qualifying rounds. At least in part due to this, we were well adrift of the cut-off for the top section: three points behind Gonzaga B. Let’s just take a moment, all rivalries aside, to say that Gonzaga getting two teams into the top half is an incredible achievement.

Some late nights on Friday seemed to catch up with the lads then, and rounds 1 and 2 of the competition proper yielded a disappointing 14/24, just joint second, and five points adrift of first. Sunday was a different story however...continues

eclipsechaser

I'm just back from my 16th Millfield International Chess Tournament.

It really is a brilliant tournament and I can't think of a better way to motivate students to play chess. The unusual format (12 player teams) means a lot of Irish schools don't think that they could enter. However Millfield will probably accept a hybrid team if two schools wanted to combine forces - without being ridiculously strong obviously. The standard of the bottoms boards is naturally not very high so most Irish schools would be competitive anyway without needing to join with another school.

It's definitely the best weekend in schools' chess. If you have a school team already and want to get it off the ground, this is the way to do it!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eclipsechaser/10289843016/

If anyone is interested in bringing a team or wants more information, please feel free to PM me.

Chessrookie

Eclipse chaser & Cdeb,

We done to both your squads on such strong showing this weekend. It is very positive for Irish chess to see both schools bring squads of 24 players to such a prestigious competition.

Credit to Gonzaga for both their teams qualifying for the top six playoff, and credit also to St Benildus to have a very good tournament despite the absence of the three players who all did so well in the Leinster leagues last year.

Many thanks for the write up on the Benildus site.

Can you both post details of your squads if possible. A lot of regular chess players will be very familiar with a lot of the names as so many of them are regulars at the big weekenders.

Is this the first time two Gonzaga teams made the top 6 cut off?

The future also looks bright as both teams have very strong players still in the junior cert. classes.

Benildus are developing plenty of talent and from the report it sounds like there were at least 2 first years on their A team. combining this with the fact that the Gonzaga B squad did so well is great. This years schools matches ( & Bodley matchups) should be great games.

Who were the 4 Benildus players to win board prizes and which of the Gonzaga players also won board prizes?

eclipsechaser

Hi Rookie,

Thanks for the kind words about both schools.

This was the first time the B team (or any B team) has made the Championship section. Our B's have won the Major section a few times so they've been close before. I was delighted to see them make it as it's a big achievement for them and great experience.

I was also pleased because I thought that the B's would likely take some points off the big schools and improve the chances of the A's. Of course to keep the integrity of the tournament I gave the B's very strict warnings to play as hard as they could against the A's. Well it turned out that they took this very much to heart and took 3.5 points off the A's (more than they took off any other team in the section!). Fair play to them!

Our team profile in terms of ratings was:

A Team: i) 2150. ii & iii) 1550. iv-xi) c.1350-1280. xii) 1200.
B Team: i) 1150 ii-v) 1000. vi) 850 vii) 770 viii-xii) 700.


What I take from that is our A's don't have huge fire power up the top but have serious depth. We actually drew head to head with Manchester Grammar (the winners), them generally beating us on the top half and us beating them on the bottom half. However, while both teams did well against the other schools, we dropped a few more points on the top half than them. That was essentially the difference between 1st and 2nd.


You can also see that the B's had a relatively strong top half which helped in qualifying. While in the Championship section, our Boards 1 & 2 (Conor Maher and Arran Bolger) beat Winchester 1.5-0.5 against opposition rated 1950 and 1900! You'd have got long odds on that.

I don't have precise results but I can tell you that our A Boards 9-12 (Peter Urwin, John Connolly, Padraig Sheehy, and Julien Carthy) all won Board Prizes. We didn't have any 6th Years on the trip - another first! - so we'll have another crack at it next year. At least we know our weaknesses as a team unit and what we need to do to maximize our chances.

For what it's worth, our Board 2 (who was starting to play extremely well) moved abroad over Summer and I think he would have made a big difference. Enough to win it? Probably not but it certainly would have made things more interesting!

mikhail

eclipsechaser wrote: »

Our team profile in terms of ratings was:

A Team: i) 2150. ii & iii) 1550. iv-xi) c.1350-1280. xii) 1200.
B Team: i) 1150 ii-v) 1000. vi) 850 vii) 770 viii-xii) 700.

Benildus, for comparison
A Team: i) 1335 ii & iii) 1170 iv) 1020 v-x) 960-724 xi & xii) unrated
The B team had a couple of 700s and the rest were unrated.
(I've counted provisional ratings as unrated throughout.)

We actually drew head to head with Manchester Grammar (the winners), them generally beating us on the top half and us beating them on the bottom half. However, while both teams did well against the other schools, we dropped a few more points on the top half than them. That was essentially the difference between 1st and 2nd.

On that note, Benildus beat every team in their section head-to-head.

eclipsechaser

mikhail wrote: »

On that note, Benildus beat every team in their section head-to-head.

Ah, that's always a tough one to take! I think this happened to my team in the 2002 schools' Senior All Ireland. On the other hand, we were on the fortunate side of it against an excellent Castleknock in last year's Senior All Ireland.

Sometimes it goes for you; sometimes it doesn't...

cdeb

eclipsechaser wrote: »

Sometimes it goes for you; sometimes it doesn't...

Reminds me of the 2008/09 Ennis, when Balbriggan won every match, but we won the league by seven points.