Canadian University championships - any report and/or games?

[Terry Song]

Zach's account of events is very accurate. As Mark's friend I would never wish to speak poorly of him, but Zach is also my friend. In this particular case, I can truthfully say that while i don't believe Mark had any ill intent, his laughter, which began right after the board 3 draw, was directed at Zach. Zach was visibly devastated upon discovering the board 3 result, and what Mark did added gasoline to the fire.

[Alex Ferreira]

Hi,

Assuming all that was said above is true, this all seems a bit strange to me. I've had many interactions with Mark over the years and he has always struck me as a young gentleman, with top level sportsmanship. Laughter, whether impulsive, voluntary or reactionary, doesn't strike me as the worst type of sportsmanship out there. It does look like UT's chances of winning the competition were rather unlikely, at the start of Round 5.
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Not sure why UT A was playing UT B in the last round. If it was a swiss, pairing should be avoided. If it was Round Robin, that was known at the start of the tournament and it's usually best to pair the two same-school teams at the beginning to avoid issues later. In any case, it doesn't sound like the result was dependent on UT A to win the competition in this particular scenario.
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It is a team competition and it is not unusual for the winner to be decided on some tie-breaker criteria, individual board points for instance.
Either way, it seems like the competition trophy was entirely in UO's hands. You were playing the leaders Western, who you guys out-rated on every board by a combined astronomical total of 1057 points across the 4 boards. At the half-way mark, after both UO players with the black pieces finished their games for a total of 0.5/2, UO as you mentioned needed 2/2. In a team competition when only 2 victories from the last 2 games would get you the result, the 3rd board opted not to take risks and make a perpetual. This left you in a sort of lose-lose situation where, the only board victory coming from UO would come from your board, and it would no longer matter. To win the trophy anyway.
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Okay... so UT A seems to have been the recipient of some luck in that they won the competition in part due to a very favorable result in a pairing where UT had no hand in (UO vs Western). Seems to me that UT still had a very decent result, scoring 4.0/5 team points, and edging the competition on tie-break points. Part of this result still came from scoring 4.0/5, which is their merit. I would guess that some other teams didn't merit this score.
So now Mark & the UT boys and girls are going around showing and sharing photos of their trophy win on social media. Kudos to them! Anyone else would have, and should have!

Alex Ferreira

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Not sure why UT A was playing UT B in the last round. If it was a swiss, pairing should be avoided. If it was Round Robin, that was known at the start of the tournament and it's usually best to pair the two same-school teams at the beginning to avoid issues later.

I found quite strange that in the RR two teams from non-home university are allowed.

[Victor Plotkin]

As far as I understand, top 6 teams by rating played a round-robin with swiss pairings (!). A very unusual decision by organizers.

[Frank Dixon]

Great to see the return of the Queen's Cup for Chess, at this year's event, as photographed in the chessbase.com report! Queen's University Chess Club, with Alex Lambruschini as President, and myself as CFC Governor at the time, arranged this originally for the 2004 event held at Queen's, with funding from the Queen's undergraduate student government and some private support, but this trophy has been missing for a few years! It would be wonderful to catch up, with all of the winners from intervening years engraved on this trophy! I believe the CFC website should have sufficient information to do this, along with past magazine articles, for some industrious soul! The 2019 event marks 17 consecutive years for the event.

I've had a significant relationship with this event since 2003 (and before then!), and was originally hired as arbiter for this year as well, after being approached by Mac Chess, with a contract finalized by emails between us. I made my plans to attend, but the Mac organizers cancelled this arrangement with a few weeks' notice. This situation is probably legally actionable on my part, but I've decided to let it go.

Also, there has been an enduring tradition of creating a games database for this event, using carbon scoresheets, for the top matches in the championship section. I see from the chessbase.com report that a few games have been published, but if the teams could arrange to put together the important games for Hugh Brodie's work with canbase, that would ensure that this lovely slice of Canadian chess history gets retained. With a very good turnout of strong players, there would be many interesting games played in 2019!

Cheers,
Frank Dixon
NTD, Kingston