You all are the real Winners!
First of all, you are the real winners of this tournament. You all made this tournament a success. Thanks to your fairness and co-operation there were no real problems. You made it possible. Thank you for creating no conflicts. It was a pleasure to be your tournament controller. I hope you enjoyed our first MCA Online Tournament at least as well as I did.
Awards
We thank Atticus 1 for the great chess exhibition. For everyone it was a challenge to play against high rated players and I assume we all have learned something.
And the winner is...
Waterloo Old Boys
In a dramatic race in the last rounds the Waterloo Vintage Boys took their chances and won their last four matches. Congratulations!
On second place:
Atticus 3 and Southport
On third place:
Prescot 1
Congratulatiuons!
312 games were played.
The "Home Team" won against the "Away Team" 165.5 -v- 146.5
124 wins for White, 110 wins for Black and 67 draws.
For futher details please visit:
League statistics for MCA Online Tournament 2020/21
Unofficial grading analysis of the MCA Online Tournament 2020/21
A few thoughts about losing a game: comforting the loser of a game
Two chess players spending hours playing a chess, creating with their thoughts and ideas and interaction a unique piece of art. A threat here, a defense there, another attack followed by a counter-attack. Both are making their plans, communicating with each other by moving pieces and every move challenges the oppontent. It is up to him to prove the move to be a mistake. At the end the whole game is a unique piece of art created by both players. Is it important who won the game? Important is to have fun and enjoy playing chess.
Cheating
Everyone interested might calculate the theoretical possibillity for winning all or nearly all games and draw his own conclusions. I am not interested in this.
I am not aware of any cheating in this tournament. If someone cheated, then he has to live with this shame, his guilty conscience and his moral failures.
Highlights
Round 12, Atticus 4 -v- Prescot 1, Board 2, Sanjoy Banerjee -v- David Owens:
Can black get an advantage after playing 28. ... Bb2 instead of 28. ... fxe4?
(to be continued... Please send me your highlights. Thank you.)
Regards,
Martin
Acknowledgments
Peter Jenner: "A big thank you from Southport and myself for your time and trouble to organise this competition. Some very hard fought matches and close games."
Dave James: "I want to thank you for all your efforts in running the online tournaments. (...) The online chess was definitely a positive development for me in the lockdown days. Possibly I will return to it more as I get even older!"
Dave Barnes: "I just wanted to say many many thanks for organising this. It's been great being able to play some competitive chess during these strange times and I really appreciate the effort it must have taken to organise this. It seens to have gone really smoothly, which is obviously down to the effort you have put in to it. Many thanks again."
Alan Jackson: " Its been a great tournament. Thankyou very much for all your good work."
Steven Kee: "Martin, you have done a brilliant job in running the MCA tournament, and a concurrent Online Tournament may wellbe a possibility too (although perhaps an individual Swiss may well be of some interest, as it offers somethinga little different from OTB team play)."
Mike O'Mahony: "This is our last match and I would like to thank you Martin for a excellent run tournament and it looks like it is going to go to the last round of results to decide the winner."
Phil Ramsey: " Thank you very much for organising the MCA online tournament, it has been very enjoyable. (...) we all really enjoyed the games."