Worcester Congress 2025

2025 congress made
Worcestershire chess history

Experimental format adopted

In the depths of winter, organisers of past Worcestershire congresses Scott Oxtoby, Aiden Griffiths, and Ray Collett set about planning. Players and organisers were not in favour of a three-day event and preferred two days only. The previous four-round format was designed to avoid a late Saturday night when many players preferred not to play and take a half point bye. That, however, creates the problem that two leading players can finish with equal points, but not play each other, as happened in 2023. To avoid that issue they suggested one quick play round followed by four standardplay rounds and choosing time controls on Saturday, the first day, to allow three rounds. Scott consulted county players and came up with a 20+10 quickplay in round 1, a fast standardplay 45+30 in round 2 and a more generous 75+30 for the remaining rounds which was adopted.

Making it happen

Scott Oxtoby (Worcester) took the role of main organiser for the congress and liaised with The King’s School Foundation to use their central Worcester site for the event. He enlisted David Smith (Redditch) as chief arbiter and asked Andrew Farthing (Worcester) to run his ever popular charity chess bookstall in aid of St Richard’s Hospice and Ray Collett (Worcester) to arrange refreshments. Paul Serafini (Worcester) took a leading role in promoting the congress to local players and was rewarded by a higher entry than last year including the the entry of an internationally titled player. Although Reg Bonham won the Worcestershire championship numerous times, and Keith Arkell once, those entries preceded Reg Bonham's GM Blind Correspondence Chess GM awarded in 1972 and Keith's GM award in 1995,

Fom top left: Chief organiser, the bookstall, chief promoter, president and controller inspect trophies before prize-giving, controller checks the pairings