Best All-Rounder Trophy – a history
The Best All-Rounder Trophy represents the closest current equivalent to a club championship. Its point system structure aims to find the strongest player across the various club tournaments, each representing a different time control, and accordingly requiring a different approach from the players. Over the years the club has had many examples of players who have mastery of the slower time controls, but have had difficulty coming to grips with the tighter time controls of Allegro and Lightning. Similarly there have been ‘lightning specialists’ who devoted so much time to playing quick chess that their impatience would get the better of them over the slower traditional time controls.
Since 1985, the Best-All
Rounder trophy has been awarded at The Gap. However the earliest award for
general all-round play can be traced back to the first awarding of the Flood
Cup in 1978. The trophy was awarded in its initial year to Nev Cobbold
in recognition of the fact that he had been the best all-round player over
previous years. For the next few years the club champion was awarded on the
basis of a single tournament. Then, in 1983 it was decided to run the
Flood Cup based on the results of three tournaments – a ‘Round-Robin’, an
Allegro, and a Lightning. The round-robin attracted a large entry of 18 players,
requiring a marathon 17 rounds of chess at traditional time controls,
leading the wiser heads at the club to deem the Flood Cup to be a 7 round
Swiss in future. It is interesting to note that Garry de Jager’s legendary
run of four consecutive Flood Cup wins (1982-83-84-85) would not have occurred
if the Flood Cup had been run as normal in 1983 – John Guest won the
‘Round-Robin’ that year.
In 1984 the Flood Cup reverted to its traditional 7 round format and continued as such until a further round-robin experiment in 1996. In 1984 Garry de Jager retained the Flood Cup but failed to finish in the top two in either the Allegro or Lightning – should he therefore be entitled to be regarded as the club’s champion player? The President’s Report tabled at the AGM held on 15 February 1985 (written by the then president Doug Foster) stated that: “Three competitions were held for the club championship. Gary de Jager won the Flood Cup and tied with Ray Adams for the club championship…”. It was felt that the achievements of the player exhibiting the best ALL-ROUND skill should be acknowledged. This led to the introduction of the Best All-Rounder trophy in 1985.
From its inception until 1994, the Best All-Rounder (BAR) trophy comprised of four compulsory tournaments. These tournaments were the Flood Cup, the Handicap, the Allegro and the Lightning. The Handicap tournament, which also commenced in 1985, was initially run on the basis of handicapped material, but by 1989 was run on a point handicap basis. The scores including handicaps were used to calculate BAR totals, leading to what Doug Foster called the ‘wildcard effect’, an effect that some of the leading players were not too keen on! However, including the Handicap in the BAR trophy did give all players incentive to enter all four tournaments, as entry for all four was compulsory to be considered in the BAR final order of merit.
In the first 2 years of the Best All-Rounder (BAR) trophy, the winner did not actually win the Flood Cup, this despite the extra weighting given to this tournament. David Grice managed to win in both 1985 and 1986 thanks to his good showings in the Allegro and Lightning, as well as winning the Handicap. In fact he finished in the top 3 in all 4 tournaments in both years. The handicap was not held in 1987, which led to the BAR trophy not being awarded. In 1988 John Granger finally won the Flood Cup, but it appears he did not compete in the other tournaments leaving the way open for another club stalwart of the era George Smith to collect the BAR trophy, his wins in the Allegro and Lightning no doubt contributing to this.
In 1989, there were two players whose form shone above all others. Harvey Quaresmini and George Smith were neck and neck in most tournaments, and indeed could not be separated in the Flood Cup after a marathon play-off round. However, Harvey scooped the BAR trophy, assisted by his shared victory in the Handicap tournament.
There followed a lean period for the BAR trophy owing to difficulties with tournament completions and participation rates. Harvey often tells the story of how he would have won the BAR trophy in 1990, except that he was the only player to enter all four tournaments! In 1991 several tournaments were not completed and the DOP of the time even neglected to retain the results of tournaments played. 1992 saw things get back on track, with the commencement of the ‘era of Joe’ when Joe Tarnawski, coming out of chess tournament retirement, returned to blitz the rest of the field. He became the first player to win the BAR Trophy and the Flood Cup outright in the same year. No doubt he would likely have won also in 1993 following his joint victory in the Flood Cup. However this year saw none of the other mandatory tournaments were completed.
In 1994 Mark Winn upset Joe Tarnawski in the Flood Cup and did well enough in the other tournaments to win the BAR trophy. The realisation that Mark achieved zero points for the Handicap tournament component due to his large points handicap (awarded by the DOP before the start of competition), and in spite of a reasonable performance, was enough for the club to amend the BAR trophy regulations so that the ‘tournament score’ rather that the ‘handicapped score’ should be used from the Handicap tournament.
In 1995 Joe Tarnawski completed a clean sweep; winning the Flood Cup, Handicap (on tournament score), Allegro, Lightning, even the new Stuart Wilson Trophy (included in the BAR calculations from the following year), and thus of course, the BAR trophy. In 1996 he also won the Flood Cup, Lightning and Allegro, but non-participation in the Handicap meant that Mark Winn won, despite Joe collecting significantly more BAR points. This led to an amendment for the following year making only one of the Handicap or Stuart Wilson Trophy compulsory in BAR calculations.
In 1997 John Nothdurft won the Flood Cup and the Allegro (thus ending Joe’s amazing run in the ‘quick tournaments’), and despite not entering the Stuart Wilson Trophy obtained enough points to win the BAR trophy. In 1998 Andrew Robinson won the Flood Cup and Stuart Wilson Trophy to win the BAR trophy.
From 1999, the Handicap was no longer run as a separate tournament, being calculated on Flood Cup results. This meant the BAR trophy approached its current form with points awarded based on the final position in 4 tournaments (Flood, SW Trophy, Allegro, Lightning).
The 1999 Flood Cup saw a 3 way play-off for first, however none of the 3 players involved won the BAR trophy. Mark Winn, the Flood Cup champion, did not enter the other tournaments, while Nathan Davidson and Eddie Ottschoffski encountered their usual difficulties with the faster time control tournaments. Therefore Andrew Robinson achieving only 5th place in the Flood Cup retained the BAR trophy. This scenario was repeated in 2000, when many of the top players in the Flood Cup failed to complete all tournaments leaving the gate open for Andrew Robinson to retain the title after another 5th placing in the Flood Cup.
In 2001, 2002 and 2004 Andrew Robinson won the Flood Cup, then proceeded to win the BAR trophy. In 2003 the honours were shared with George Flitcroft-Smith failing to win any tournament but winning the BAR trophy thanks to a string of second placings. Phillip Kirkman won the two main tournaments in 2005 (the Flood Cup and the Stuart Wilson Trophy) and this was enough for him to claim the BAR trophy. Brian Thomas completed a clean sweep of all four tournaments to win in 2006.
With the weighting given to the Flood Cup it would be thought that it would be usual for the Flood Cup winner to proceed to win the BAR trophy, almost as a matter of course. However the table below shows that this has occurred on only 11 of the 20 occasions when the BAR trophy has been awarded.
And in answer to the question at the title of this page, "who is the club champion?", it is probably safest to say that the club champion is one who wins the Flood Cup and the Best All-Rounder in the same year. Otherwise we are left with a situation similar to that prevailing in boxing (or indeed chess from the early 1990s to the mid 2000s) with two claimants for the crown, these being: the winner of the oldest and most prestigious tournament, the Flood Cup; and the Best All-Rounder who has achieved the most over the whole year’s programme.
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Year |
Flood Cup |
Best All-Rounder |
|
1 |
1978 |
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2 |
1979 |
John Guest |
--- |
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3 |
1980 |
--- |
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4 |
1981 |
--- |
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5 |
--- |
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6 |
--- |
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7 |
--- |
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8 |
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9 |
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10 |
1987 |
--- |
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11 |
1988 |
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12 |
Harvey Quaresmini |
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13 |
--- |
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14 |
1991 |
--- |
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15 |
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|
16 |
Joe Tarnawski |
--- |
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17 |
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18 |
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19 |
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20 |
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21 |
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22 |
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23 |
Brian Thomas |
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24 |
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25 |
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26 |
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27 |
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28 |
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29 |
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30 |
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31 |
1. The
links in the year column refer you to the Flood Cup crosstable for that year
2. The links in the Flood Cup column refer you to the Flood Cup final standings
for that year
3. The links in the Best All-Rounder column refer you to the BAR Trophy final
standings for that year
4. Years in bold type indicate a player won the BAR Trophy and the Flood Cup
outright in the same year.
Further information:
Lists
of Tournament Champions
Best
All-Rounder Trophy ~ Final Tables
The Best All-Rounder Trophy order of merit is currently calculated upon the awarding of points, as shown in the table below. A player must compete in 3 or 4 of the tournaments to figure in the final BAR order of merit.
|
Position |
Flood Cup |
SW Trophy |
Allegro |
Lightning |
|
1st |
30 |
20 |
20 |
20 |
|
2nd |
24 |
18 |
18 |
18 |
|
3rd |
20 |
16 |
16 |
16 |
|
4th |
18 |
14 |
14 |
14 |
|
5th |
16 |
12 |
12 |
12 |
|
6th |
14 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
|
7th |
12 |
8 |
8 |
8 |
|
8th |
10 |
6 |
6 |
6 |
|
9th |
8 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
|
10th |
6 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
|
11th |
4 |
- |
- |
- |
|
12th |
2 |
- |
- |
- |