It’s time to start assembling your squads for the 2017 UK Clubs Championship! This unique one-day event pits teams of five players against each other in groups, similar to the World Cup, with the top teams in each group qualifying for the main knockout phase, and all other teams in a consolation knockout – guaranteeing at least five games for everyone. There are cash prizes for the winners and runners-up in both flights plus the Tutchings Trophy – named after Phil Tutchings, who was instrumental in creating and running the event in past years.
This is the sixth time the event has been held and having enjoyed the hospitality of Bristol and Manchester in previous years, our rotation around the country takes us to the Priory Centre in St Neots in Cambridgeshire, particularly convenient for the South East, Midlands and East Anglia. It’s also a larger venue than previous years and this time we can guarantee enough space for twenty teams to take part.
We are hoping to get teams from across the UK taking part – we will accept your club’s B and even C & D teams if space permits, but at the moment there is a strict limit of twenty teams and preference will be given to different clubs. Spaces within each category – A teams, B teams and so on – will be allocated in order of payment of registration fees, so don’t delay if you want to enter, start gathering your team(s) together now! Full details are available from the event page.
I, like Tim, want the maximum number of eligible players to have the opportunity to play in the Clubs Championships. Excluding organised leagues with a published membership policy doesn’t fit with that aim, in my opinion and I give that as my answer to Jon’s question. Like Tim I would not have been able to play last year had it not been for London League B, captained by Simon Hopper. If that is evidence of self interest that I accept the accusation.
I think a club or league has the right to accept anyone as a member, regardless of whether they live close to that club. If a club had a discriminatory membership policy the UKBGF might be expected to intervene but I’m sure geography does not fall into this category. I do, however, think Captains have a responsibility to select a team of active and paid up members of the club. Julia has addressed this issue below when she talks of “the spirit of the tournament” and I have confidence as TD that she will use her powers of discretion wisely.
Re-reading all of the posts Anna, I don’t see anyone advocating that clubs should only be able to accept players from their geographical location. I suggested that:
“If that club is their nearest one, then I believe that they should still be eligible to represent it, if attending proves difficult (due to travel issues, other commitments etc).”
That is being inclusive, not exclusive.
On the face of it perhaps, it does seem mainly an exercise in semantics as to whether an organised league of players, who might only ever meet up in pairs in privately arranged venues, including their own homes, should be regarded as a backgammon club. IMHO, and that of others, commonsense dictates that they should not. But, perhaps an additional issue that is felt with the particular inclusion of the LONDON Players League is that it allows the formation of an extremely strong team, who do not meet up regularly together as a bona fide club do (they would need a very large venue if they did) and where there are anyway various conventional clubs that these players could attend, and represent. Indeed, many of them DO also attend such venues, of course. In the case of the northern and other leagues however, opportunities to play locally may be far more limited. Of course, some might howl that you can’t exclude LPL teams from the clubs event whilst allowing other leagues. Maybe though, perhaps, it would be more in the true spirit of the tournament, if they did?
I hate to get involved with this thread as no doubt I will be shot down as usual but the London Players Backgammon League seems to be getting a hammering on here. Frankly I don’t give a hoot whether the London League is allowed to put out a team or not. I would always choose to play for my local club, BucksGammon but if a London Players League team allows players to play in a competition they would not normally be able to access, can that really be such a bad thing?
My solution for promoting the “true spirit of the tournament” and prevent players from creating “elite” teams as the London League has been accused of and St Albans could also be accused of by taking all the best players from around the Greater London area preventing them from playing for their actual “Local” Club is by dropping the ludicrously high £100 entry fee or making it optional. This would mean that Club pride comes before winning big prize funds. Surely that would be in the Corinthian Spirit that Colin so actively promotes and that I fully agree with?
Personally, I won’t be taking part as we do not play for money at my Local Club, BucksGammon, and we tend to focus on playing for fun. We measure the success at our club by the number of people smiling not the size of the prize fund. Forking out up to £190 per team is not attractive to ordinary recreational players. It is a shame that the UKBGF have never listened to my requests to make the entry fee optional over the years. Perhaps we would see fewer B & C teams and more A teams take part.
To avoid ambiguity, I am talking specifically about the entry fee of £100. I am not disputing the size of the £40 registration fee although I do balk at the £10 (punishment) premium per player for non-UKBGF members; more of a stick than a carrot.
Happy Rolling, everyone, don’t forget it’s just a game.
You will get shot down if you write such nonsense as equating the LPL with St Albans!
I do agree however that the entry fee should be very low to attract genuine clubs, especially the ones just starting out that have virtually no chance of winning.
I would love to see each slot in the event taken by a different genuine club (now 40+ in total according to Julia’s map on web site)
40 clubs: wow! Makes one imagine holding regional qualifiers for 16 places; surely the perfect number for the (final) tournament? (Hosts and/or holders might get an automatic place.)
As in the FIFA World Cup though, the geographical allocations could get contentious!
Having organised and paid in advance for 2 teams last year, I felt pleased that out of 10 players 9 were regulars at the Manchester club. Out of this came a really good team ethic and pride in our club. I feel this is the point of the competition. It’s not about PR and rankings etc it’s about clubs, teams and friendly rivalry. Watching the team dynamics of several teams was interesting.
It’s a club championship and I think it should be limited to players who are regulars at their clubs. No manufactured or hybrid teams. This regrettably means people not near or part of a club will miss out on this ONE tournament but I think that’s just tough. Not everyone can play in everything and many people miss out on tournaments for all sorts of reasons, including financial, geographic, work and family inconveniences.
There have been some new clubs starting recently and wouldn’t it be lovely to have a situation where all backgammon players have reasonable access to a local club – that would be great progress
I think Jon makes a very good point about the clubs tournament and that it should be limited to s club rather a league and/ or club qualification.
The Club Championship tournament is one of only two tournaments run by UKBGF during the year and members – now around 300 live members pay a membership fee. They should be given priority to play in UKBGF events and, as in this instance they play at a BG club, not like the London League or indeed Champions League tournament which are both run by a non UKBGF member or indeed non UKBGF affiliated private clubs which play backgammon.
The Club Championships has only just over 100 places available and only when those places are not taken up by UKBGF members should it be available to teams which include players that are not members of UKBGF and also should include leagues/cups that are run by members.
I was the captain in question. I vetoed Gaz’s idea because a) the rules had been circulated to everyone before the tournament and I didn’t think they should then have been changed, and b) there was a chance that we all won 1 game and would then have wasted maybe half an hour and be holding up the next round significantly. If we had 4 groups of 5 instead of 5 groups of 4 there may be less chance of needing playoffs (admittedly I haven’t done the maths on this) or we could have additional tiebreakers eg most wins on #1 board etc. But I really enjoyed the tournament (thanks Ian) and think it’s a great idea to move it around the country.
What a shame the UKBGF didn’t decide this year to make this event a tournament for clubs and only clubs. If someone can explain to me why London Players League can play in this event I would appreciate it (without using specious arguments like “past winners” or “tradition”).
The decision to continue to allow them would make more sense if the name of the event was changed to UK Team Championships as, clearly, the LPL is not a club. But a Club Championship is anyway surely better as, if correctly observed, it means that no club is ever likely to be able to draw upon such a huge pool of (very active) players as the LPL ‘club’ is able to do.
Of course, there will be those who say that – tournament for tournament, at least – backgammon is mostly dice anyway. May well be true, but it still ignores the basic aim of the event: to find the ‘champion club of the year’.
I realise that transparency, which surely includes behaving in a way where we can not reasonably be accused, or at least suspected of, having any vested interests is not something that many people take to easily. But it seems to me that, here, the Board are missing an opportunity to cast off any doubts about personal interests. Sorry if, once again, expressing my honest perspective causes any offence.
I have some agreement with Jon and Colin in that it is called the clubs championship. On the other hand I would like to see as many players as possible having a legitimate way to participate in the event, finding a reasonable balance between those two objectives is difficult. I played for the North West League team last year. I don’t attend Manchester club nights as the club is 40 miles away.So on an extremely strict definition of a club I (and many others) would find myself without a team.
I personally consider players in a local league to be a legitimate group of players . I play in monthly competitions at Bradford and Manchester and it has a ‘club’ night feel to it but should we be considered a club? Should there be the slightest doubt about elegibility of a team , or individual members of it, I feel that this should be discussed with the organiser who this year is Julia. This gives me the chance to thank Julia and anyone else involved in the organising for their work in what is my favourite UK tournament.
I would like to address Colin’s final comments about self interest and transparency. I have attended three board meetings now and all I have seen is a group of people trying their hardest on behalf of the UK backgammon playing community, I see a group able to put the wishes of the members on an equal footing to their own self interest . Regarding transparency, plans are being put in place for an AGM on the UK Open weekend and accounts will be completed well before then. I, and from what I can see all the other Board members, take our manifesto pledges seriously.
Tim,
I totally accept that you, and some others living away from the main London conurbation may have too far to travel to attend your local club, and that for such players a league is probably the best way to play. However, I don’t feel that a player should necessarily have to attend a particular club in order to be eligible to play for them. If that club is their nearest one, then I believe that they should still be eligible to represent it, if attending proves difficult (due to travel issues, other commitments etc).
Further, I would suggest that the monthly gatherings of players you describe (at Bradford and Manchester) definitely qualify them as clubs. (Monthly is, perhaps, the minimum though.)
I don’t disagree that players in a local league are “a legitimate group of players” but, in the absence of regular meetups of three or more of them, they hardly qualify as clubs. With the criteria that I’ve advocated here though, this would still leave them eligible for selection for the Clubs Championship.
With regard to the final point you address, I have no doubt that you are sincere in what you state you have seen at the three board meetings you have attended thus far. Further, that the great majority of the board do as you have stated they do, all or the great majority of the time – that is – that they have the UK bg community’s interests in mind. But that does not mean that current or past board members have always made decisions or acted in a way where they do not, or can not reasonably be suspected to have vested interests in mind, and might not in the future. And, though you are all voluntary workers, let us not forget that others – who wished to do your roles – were not able to because of the democratic process. And I can think of at least one manifesto pledge that could easily have been followed, but was not. With regard to the accounts btw, there is no one I would be happier to see in the role of treasurer than the current incumbent.
Colin
It is actually quite hard to come up with a robust definition of “club” that doesn’t exclude too many people, that doesn’t allow some degree of gaming the rules, and still fits the spirit of the tournament. For example, we want to make sure that people are genuinely members of the group they want to represent, but few of our clubs (particularly the more recently formed ones) have a formal membership scheme to define who is a member and who isn’t – so a degree of TD’s discretion is going to be necessary. We have removed scratch teams altogether this time, and obviously as the club scene evolves the Championship will change to reflect it.
‘where it is still necessary to decide an “important” position, a 1-point match between team captains. Three (or more) way ties will be decided by coin tosses.’
This happened in our group last year; 3 teams finished on same win difference and had won all their matches 3-2. Highly unlikely to happen again but could we change this to a DMP play off between captains rather than a coin toss? How are we even meant to decide a 3 way tie by coin toss anyhow? (Rhetorical)
Director actually ruled that if captains could agree then we’d play a DMP play off, much to the excitement of the crowd. One of the captain’s vetoed and we rolled to decide instead, zzz
Good idea – though it might depend on how time is going. Separating two with a DMP playoff should be quick, but separating three (when someone needs to win two in a row) could hold things up.
A pure lottery to ‘resolve’ a tie is surely a last resort, even in a dice game like ours. If it is impractical to create some time within the schedule (a later buffet?) to allow for a 1 point round robin, or if this still does not resolve the tie, is there another way?
Rick Janowski suggested to me a shorter version of the 3 way playoff adopted in last years London Open. Two of the tied players/team captains, decided by lot, play a 1 point match. The winner starts 1-0 up Crawford in a 2 pointer against the remaining side. According to the Rockwell Kazaross MET, 2a 1a C is 32.31% for the trailer. So, after the initial draw, the 3 sides are 33.845%, 33.845%, 32.31% to win the tie breaker – fairly close to parity – and it takes probably only 2 and, at most 3 games, in total.
Such playoffs should surely be clock mandatory; the St Albans Open for example uses a 12 sec delay with 4 min reserve time for their 1 point playoffs. For the 2a 1a C match which, on average will require about 1.37 games, a 5 min 30 sec reserve would be proportionate. If time is short, cut reserve allowances to 3 min and 4min respectively.