Worcester & District Chess League
Bennett Cup Results for 2009-10 Season
Updated 21 October

Malvern's Brian Turner Retains Bennett Cup

In an exciting game Brian successfully defended his guardianship of the Bennett Cup. Download and play through the game here.

Qualifying Stage Results (30 March)

See below Pool Reports for Next Stage

Pool A report. Based on grade, this was a triumph of the underdogs. In a very tight group, all games had been drawn with just the clash between John Varilone and Maurice Bissell to be played. Under the tie break rules, Maurice had to win in order to qualify. John's resistance proved too good in the end, and in pressing for the win, Maurice had to concede defeat. The second qualifying place goes to Rob Bricknell on the final tie break method, namely he is the lower graded of the tied players. Automatic Semi-Final place: John Varilone. Next stage qualifier: Rob Bricknell

Pool B report. This was a smaller group because John Clark unfortunately had to withdraw for personal reasons. Last year's champion, Brian Turner, maintained his winning ways. As in Group A, the final game was crucial. Needing to win with black against David Richardson, Andrew Farthing failed to make an impression and pushed for an advantage that wasn't there. In the end, Andrew's position was so bad that even the generous gift of a piece from David Richardson couldn't alter what was in the end a fair result. Automatic Semi-Final Brian Turner. Next stage qualifier: David Richardson.

Pool C report. Another closely contested group. The tie for first was broken using the Gelbfuss method, i.e. the adjusted sum of opponents' scores, taking 100% of the score for games won, 50% for draws and 0% for losses. Hence, the critical difference was that Robert Mitchell's win over the higher-scoring Andrew Moore counted for more in terms of the tie break than Glenn Cox's win over Giles Stanton. Automatic Semi-Final place: Robert Mitchell. Next stage qualifier: Glenn Cox

Next Stage Results (29 May)
The three runners-up played each other in an all-play-all triangular tournament . The game between Robert Bricknell and David Richardson was not played because Glenn Cox's first position was assured.

Semi-Finals

The winner of the triangular tournament who qualified for the last remaining semi-final place was Glenn Cox. Following a random draw for colours, the draw for the semi-finals was follows (player with White named first) : Robert Mitchell - John Varilone; Brian Turner - Glen Cox. Robert Mitchell beat John and Brian Turner beat Glen so the final was Robert Michell, who was also a finalist in the Ball Cup, against Brian Turner, the defending champion.

Finals

Robert Mitchell won the first of the semi-finals and is now a finalist and meets defending cup holder Brian Turner, the other successful semi-finalist. The game was played on 23 June with Robert having the white pieces.Both players and controller Andrew farthing have annotated the game and you can enjoy it here.

Structure of the Competition
The competition was been structured so that everyone had at least 3 games.
• Three all-play-all groups of 4 players each;
• The winner of each group qualified automatically for the first knockout phase (semi-final);
• The runner-up from each group took part in a further all-play-all phase, the winner of which will also qualify for the semi-finals;
• The winners of the semi-finals competed in the final to determine the Cup winner.

Qualifying Stages
The draw for the qualifying groups was carried out by ranking the players in grade order and then ‘slicing’ the list into four sets of three. A name was drawn at random from each of these four sets and placed in each qualifying group. In this way, the strength of the three groups should be roughly similar, but the spirit of a Cup competition (the “luck of the draw”) was retained. The tables were completed by drawing for colour for each game.

 Worcestershire Chess       Back to top         Ball Cup         Worcester & District Home