2022 B&DCL Team Handicap Knockout Cup – First Round Draw

The 2022 Team Handicap Knockout Cup is about to start, with teams vying to wrest the cup from Highcliffe. Martin Simons sends the following information and first round draw.

Format

I am pleased to announce we now have 12 teams and we welcome a new club, Yeovil, into the competition. Yeovil has a good local connection with the Dorchester Chess Club and there are often friendly (rated) matches played between the 2 clubs. The last eight board match was played on the 24th Februray 2022. There is also no competitive Somerset league this season, just friendly matches, and so, as this is a special season, and we want to encourage more chess (and an even number of teams) after Covid, we have invited them to play in our cup competition.

With 12 teams, there will be a full set of matches for the first 2 rounds but when we get to the semi-final stage there will only be 3 teams remaining. What I plan to do is to then award the best performing team of the 3 (based on the first 2 round match results) a straight route through to the final. How this will work is if a team has, say, won by one point more than its required score in the 1st round and half a point more in the 2nd round then it will be on 1.5 points and will come ahead of a team that has won by the required score in the first 2 rounds. If there are 2 teams on the same score then, as a tie-break, it is the team with the lower average rating strength over the 2 games that will progress straight to the final. The remaining 2 teams will play in a semi-final match.

This competition is scheduled to run from the Spring 2022 to the Autumn 2022 before our leagues start next season. This worked well for the start of this season when the delayed 2019/20 Cup competition was completed with a semi-final in September and the final in October 2021. Indeed, it became a welcome curtain raiser!

Consistent with previous years, the 1st round draw has been regionalised so there is less distance to travel.

1st Round Draw

Highcliffe Knights v New Milton

Wimborne v Ringwood

Southbourne v Highcliffe Rooks

Bournemouth v Highcliffe Castles

Weymouth v Yeovil

Poole v Dorchester

Timescales and Practicalities

Matches should be completed by Friday, 13th May 2022 which gives almost 9 weeks to arrange and play the matches.

The 1st named team has the choice of venue.

The Rules, including the rating handicap system, can be found here and via the main menu under B&DC League.

A blank Match Scoresheet can be found here

As stated in the rules, we will be using the latest live monthly ratings which will include games played up to the end of the previous month. So as an example, if a cup match was played now, it is the March 2022 rating that will count (and games played in March 2022 will not count).

Please remember to have a calculator ready at your matches to calculate both teams’ average ratings and the difference in ratings to work out the required score!

The team captains are as follows: