NYP Open

Haven't blogged for a long time.


I actually like to blog, just that I don't know why I can't bring myself to do it sometimes.


Well...


Anyway, before I start...


Can anybody tell my why there are so much spam here!!?? ----------------------->


Seriously.

Went to NYP Mindsports Open to be their Chief Arbiter last weekend.

Yes, "Chief Arbiter".

It's not just an ordinary judge, it's "CHIEF Arbiter"! LOL

Well anyway, the job wasn't that much different from a normal judge.

House seemed to do it every year but this year he wasn't free so he asked me to do it.

And I accepted the job because it comes with money. :p

I've never been to this competition before, even though they seem to do it for many times already.

There weren't many teams joining the Weiqi section either. 3 teams from SP, 2 teams from NYP, 1 team from an ITE, and 2 teams from Junyuan Secondary school.

Quite surprising that Junyuan secondary school was the only secondary school that came. And none of the JCs came, including Hwachong and RI. Back in my Hwachong days I remember joining SP Chess Challenge but not this one. They say that they contacted every school and even called them personally. Well I don't really know the details and I'm not the organiser, so I can only guess that there must have been some kind of miscommunication somewhere... One most serious difficulty in organising an event...

It was nice to see Hwachong getting champion for both the Chinese Chess and International Chess team. Seriously, were our C-Chess and I-Chess teams so strong? A pity our Weiqi team wasn't here to clinch the champion as well. Not that they can definitely get champion though.

One thing I like about this competition is their venue. Like this picture above they have a very big space outside their competition area with the respective boards where the players can rest or review their games in between rounds. This is really a good idea to prevent the players who finished their games from crowding around the competition area and disturbing other players who are still in the middle of their games.

They didn't specifically say "please get out of the competition area once your games are done", but having such an area set-up will reduce the likelihood of players remaining in the competition hall. Usually most of the international competitions will have this area, but many local competitions I went didn't have this. I think this is one area to improve.

One thing I didn't like was the fact that they didn't announce the rules at the start of the event. I know there are 3 different games going on so it may be troublesome to announce the rules, but I still think it is necessary. Just because the rules are written very clearly in the invitations doesn't mean there's no need to announce them on the day of the competition itself. I think it is better to do so because it serves as a reminder to the participants. It is even more important in this kind of team events. In fact, many games had problems because they didn't follow the rules regarding the seating of the players. Well, just stating my opinions.

On the overall, it was really a nice event that was well organised. I can see that the people from the 3 different board games really cooperating with each other nicely and getting things done quickly. Jinkai(overall IC?) also did a great job in managing the teams.

If possible I would like to join them again. (Also for the money :p)

P.S. As for my personal updates, will post them on a later date.