Stockport and District Chess League AGM 2014

Minutes

The 2014 Annual General Meeting of Stockport and District Chess League was held at 7.30 pm on

Thursday May 15th 2014 at Cheadle Hulme Conservative Club, Mellor Road, Cheadle Hulme, SK8

5AT.

1 Attendance and apologies (2013-14 Offices in brackets)

Present (15) were:

Officers:

John M Turner (Chair, President)

Ian Vaughan (Minutes, Secretary)

Reg Clucas (Website Manager, Altrincham).

Phil Cattermole (Treasurer, Macclesfield)

Mike Tunstall (Grading Officer, Stockport)

Chorlton:

Alan Beresford, David Kierman.

East Cheshire:

Keith Hodgson, David Taylor.

Holmes Chapel:

Ian Bates, Andy Raeburn,.

Marple:

Neil Dainty, Glenn Trueman.

Stockport:

Peter King,

Wilmslow:

Tony Flynn

Apologies were received from

Terry Cowling, Jeff Barlow, Geoff Laurence (Fixtures Secretary), Andrew Walker (Handbook

Editor), Alex Longson (Auditor), Karl Lockett (Registrations Secretary) and David Holt.

2 Minutes of the 2013 AGM

These were accepted.

3 Matters arising

There were no matters arising.

4 Officers' reports

Officers' Reports were given, and are appended to these Minutes.

4.1 President (J Turner) - Appendix A

4.2 Secretary (I Vaughan) - Appendix B

It was noted that the League Secretary does not usually provide a report.

4.3 Fixtures Secretary (G Laurence, in absentia) - Appendix C

4.4 Registrations Secretary (K Lockett, in absentia) - Appendix D

The Meeting voted to thank Karl for his four years of work for the League, and to wish him well

for the future.

4.5 Website Manager (R Clucas) - Appendix E

4.6 Grading Officer (M Tunstall) - Appendix F

4.7 Treasurer (P Cattermole) - Appendix G

The following comment from Alex Longson (Auditor) was noted:

“The only point of any discussion is our current "credit" with the ECF. At the moment we

are collecting game fee subs for games played by non ECF members, but we are not

being billed by the ECF as we have a historical credit with them. It would be useful to

know what the credit is and when we are likely to have to start paying these fees. But

the amount is of course immaterial compared to the current bank balance.”

It was noted that expenses of £6.10 were for the League AGM.

4.8 Handbook Secretary (A Walker, in absentia) - Appendix H

Andy’s kind offer to edit the Handbook once again was gratefully accepted. The

Meeting elected to give Andy Walker a special thank -you, particularly as he does not play in

the League.

5. Team and player fees for 2014

The Team Fees for 2014 will be unchanged at £5.00 per Team,

6. Presentation of trophies

Trophies were presented to:

Division 1 Champions: Marple A

Division 2 Champions: East Cheshire A

Division 3 Champions: Macclesfield B

Charnley Cup Winners: Marple

Second Tier Cup: Altrincham

Vic Knox Trophy (Joint winners): Daniel Fernandez and Alex Longson. The Meeting proposed

drafting a Rule that would enable a decision on any future tiebreaks for the Vic Knox Trophy.

Limit League: A new trophy will be purchased and engraved for the Limit League, and will be

presented to East Cheshire at their AGM on 21 May 2014.

The Eric Harrison Cup will be awarded to Ioannis Lentzos of Marple C.C. A new trophy will be ready

for next week. A President’s Certificate will in due course be presented to Ben Scattergood, who was

a very worthy nominee.

7. Election of Officers

The following were elected for office unopposed:

President - John Turner

Secretary - Ian Vaughan

Fixtures Secretary - Geoff Laurence

Registrations Secretary - Reg Clucas,

Website Manager - Reg Clucas

Grading Officer - Mike Tunstall

Treasurer - Phil Cattermole

ECF Representative - Sean Hewitt

Handbook Secretary - Andrew Walker

8. Election of Disputes Committee.

The Disputes committee will comprise

Geoff Laurence (Macclesfield, Fixtures Secretary)

Robert Shaw (Macclesfield)

Mike Taylor (Stockport)

Ian Bates ((Holmes Chapel)

David Holt (Denton)

Tony Flynn (Wilmslow)

9. Eric Harrison Cup.

Ian Vaughan will obtain a new trophy on behalf of the League and will have the existing engraving

transferred or re-engraved.

10. Proposals to change League Rules (In this section all the changes adopted at the 2014

AGM are in bold type.)

10.1 (Reg Clucas) - Rule 26 A, and new Rule 26D

After discussion, Reg Clucas withdrew this proposal in order that a similar improved proposal

might be submitted to the 2014 Fixtures Meeting. The amended proposal discussed and then

withdrawn was as follows:

Rule Proposal 1:

(i)Amend rule 26A as follows:

26A Players restricted to play for certain teams.

If a club enters more than one team, a fixed number of players are restricted ‘first team

only’ players. The number of such players is equal to the number of boards in that team

less two. For the purposes of this rule, adjacent players who are 'bracketed' as per rule

26D will count as one player. The allocation procedure continues in this fashion until all

teams have been allocated restricted players who may not play for lower teams. Player

allocation follows the club’s registration order strictly. The players that have not been

allocated a specific team are free to play for any team.

(ii)Create new rule 26D as follows:

26D Bracketing of players

If, during a season, any player has not played in any of the League or Cup competitions

by 31st December, then that player must be 'bracketed' with the player immediately

below him / her in the club's Registration order. The bracketing shall remain in place for

the remainder of the season, even if the player involved subsequently plays.

10. 2 (Reg Clucas) - Rule 35 (Second sentence): Charnley Cup

Rule 35, Sentence 2, will now be as follows:

"Each club may enter one team made up of six players drawn from its registered list of

players, unless it has more than one team in the 1st Division, in which case it may enter as

many teams as it has in the 1st Division."

Note: the previous wording was,

“Each club may enter one team made up of six players drawn from its registered list of players,

unless it has more than one team in the 1^st Division, in which case it must enter as many

teams as it has in the 1^st Division.” (Italics this note only.)

10. 3 (Reg Clucas) - Rule 40: The Second Tier Cup

Reg had withdrawn this proposal.

10. 4. (Ian Vaughan - for the League): Rule 40: Renaming of ‘Second Tier Cup’

The cup previously named The Second Tier Cup shall now be named The President’s Cup.

(Amendment proposed by David Taylor)

10.5. (Sean Hewitt) Rule 17A: Rate of Play

An amendment to the proposal was passed, and Rule 17A becomes:

17 A Rate of Play

The rate of play shall be all moves in 90 minutes or, where digital clocks are available for

every board, and the home team so determines, a time control of all moves in 80 minutes plus

10 second increments from move 1 shall be used by the whole of both teams.

11. Proposals concerning written guidance

11.1 The Chairman, in general, agreed with the proposal that Officers compile guidance notes

on their respective roles. These will not be part of the Rules, nor will they appear in the

Handbook, but would be designed to assist Officers of the League, to iron out any possible

anomalies, and to help new incumbents. The Chairman agreed to request officers to submit

these notes.

11.2 Written Guidance Proposal: Notes for Match Players (Sean Hewitt)

Sean Hewitt’s offer to draft a revised ‘Notes for Match Players’ was accepted.

12. Any other business.

Peter King said the Stockport League Trophies for the Stockport Rapidplay had been well received,

and thanked the League and Ian Vaughan in particular.

Peter King provided details of the Stockport Blitz - a competition being held on 10 August 2014 at

The Guildhall. The details are on the League website.

A discussion took place about how best to respond to anti-social behaviour during League matches.

It was felt that an incident this season had been handled well. It would be impossible to have rules

for every eventuality. Anti-social behaviour would usually be addressed at a Club level, but the

Disputes Committee or the Executive Committee could be called upon if necessary. John Turner will

draft guidance on playing the game in a fair and reasonable manner, for consideration by Officers

prior to the AFM, and possible inclusion in the Handbook and Rules and on the web site.

Appendix A

President’s Report

My first duty is to thank all those committee members who served in the last 12 months. If the

committee members carry out their task diligently and harmoniously with each other, then the

president can melt into the background, and only has need to deal with exceptional issues. I am

pleased to advise that that is mostly what I have been able to do, which is a mark of how effective the

other committee guys have been. On a wider note, I would also like to thank all those, not formally

part of the committee, but who nevertheless have served the League in the year, such as the

auditors, disputes committee members, and club secretaries and captains etc. I am also pleased to

advise that there were a minimal amount of disputes, one only, which was resolved with harmony,

and also one further unfortunate incident.

Usually, I wouldn’t say anymore than that. However, at the risk of extending proceedings by a minute

or two, I thought I would examine how our League is today, compared to when I last had this role in

the 1990s.

Firstly we have seen the maturing of the digital and mass communications age. In place of the paper

bulletins, issued to all clubs approximately once a quarter, we now have the web site, with very rapid

up dates, a big improvement. We have also seen the advent of digital clocks, with their capability for

precision accuracy, and sophisticated time rates of moving. Secondly, the practice of adjourned

games has been phased out. I remember the initial opposition to allegro finishes, it took two years to

introduce, and even then only under restricted conditions. Thirdly, the ECF has exerted a growing

influence on the League, and taken an increasing share of our budget, although that is not without

financial compensation in other respects. And finally we have become formally non smoking. All of

these changes can be viewed as being for the better.

And on a last note, congratulations to Marple A on winning the League and the Cup.

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Appendix B

Secretary’s Report

Firstly, thanks to my predecessor Robin Warhurst for sending templates and

information. Given the recommendation that Officers serve for at most three years, I

expect that in one or two years’ time it will be my turn to hand over to a new Secretary.

The League Secretary’s job is mostly an administrative one. The work is concentrated

around the time of the two main meetings, and in February involves obtaining the three

League Trophies and delivering them to the Stockport Rapidplay. This year those

three trophies came from ‘Trophies and Engraving’ in Levenshulme, who did a fine job

of engraving them in just over an hour.

The League is truly a Team effort, and the Officers put in a lot of work; I hope members

will forgive the occasional mistakes. I wanted to stand for Secretary again so that I

would be able to use what I have learnt this last year.

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Appendix C

Fixtures Secretary’s Report by Geoff Laurence (by email 8-5-2014)

Despite a couple of incidents at either end of the season, it has been a good,

successful year for the league. Not a single match has been defaulted in league and

cup competitions, and there have not been too many defaulted individual games.

Clubs have observed board order rules impressively.

The Limit League seems to have been a tremendous success and played in

good spirit, and I commend the captains who have kept the results coming in very

promptly. East Cheshire were worthy winners at the season’s end.

Marple A, with their exceptionally strong squad, completed the double of

Charnley Cup and Division One Champions. Division Two proved to be a 3 way scrap

and East Cheshire emerged victorious with the narrowest of margins over Marple C

and Stockport B. Macclesfield B were comfortable winners of Division Three and

Altrincham & Hale took the Second Tier Cup denying East Cheshire a 3rd success for

the season!

Remarkably there have been 4 occasions that I am aware of where incorrect

results have been sent in. One was obvious (it didn’t add up), but the others came to

light because each team captain submitted a result. Generally that does not happen

and I would recommend that both captains e-mail the result in as that makes mistakes

less likely to go unnoticed. A couple of clubs could do to note results are supposed to

be sent within 72 hours of the match, but otherwise I thank all those who promptly

submitted the scores thus helping us to keep the website very much up-to-date - many

thanks to Reg for his part in this of course.

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Appendix D

Registration Secretary’s Report by Karl Lockett (by email 13-5-2014)

The main goal for the creation of the Registration Officer’s role was to reduce the busy

workload of the Fixtures Secretary who had previously carried out this role in

combination with their own. I believe this goal was achieved, particularly at the

start of the season when the contact details, registration list and fixtures lists are

compiled. Consequently all this information found its way to the website and

handbook earlier than preceding seasons.

I would like to thank the other league officers for their co-operation, particularly Reg

Clucas the website manager who kept the registration list updated in the latter part

of the season when I had other commitments. I thought the communication

between the various league officers was excellent and contributed to league

business running smoothly and efficiently.

I would also like to thank all the club secretaries and captains for keeping me informed

of updates in relation to their club’s registration list. As a result I do not believe

(unless the fixtures secretary was to say different) that any game was played by an

unregistered player. This is a big improvement on previous years.

I have been a league officer for the past four years, something I found both interesting

and enjoyable, however as I have now moved out of the area, I feel this is the right

time to step down.

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Appendix E

Website Manager’s Report by Reg Clucas

I took over from Andy Reeve as Website Manager at the end of October 2013.

I haven't made big changes to the way results data appears on the site, but I made

changes to the way in which the data was processed to prepare it for the site. This

avoided the necessity of spending the League's money on database software, and

also simplified the update process somewhat. Once this process was in place, it was a

very easy matter to apply results updates to the site - each update takes only a few

minutes.

As a by-product of this processing, I can now also convert the data into a format

suitable for the Grading Officer to assist in his ECF submission, which I believe has

saved him some work.

I've produced documentation for the site describing the update process. This has been

passed to the Committee, so that any subsequent Website Manager will be able to

take over fairly easily. However I have no plans to step down from the role in the

forseeable future and look forward to continuing next season. If anyone has any

suggestions for improvements or additions to the website then please let me know.

Reg Clucas 15^th May 2014

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Appendix F

Grading Officer’s Report by Mike Tunstall

The ECF grading submission this season has been very easy. This is because Reg

Clucas now provides the data in the ECF format and my processing time has

reduced from 2 days to under 2 hours.

There are still some problems with registering new players to the League. More

information is needed than for existing League players. For juniors, date of birth is

mandatory. For others, background information (eg old club, moved from a

different location, never played a graded game) is required for unique

identification.

Only 2 active players (who played one game each) have not joined ECF.

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Appendix G. Treasurer’s Report by Phil Cattermole

Stockport & District Chess League

Income and Expenditure Account for the year ended 15th May 2014

2012/2013

2013/2014

INCOME

151.00

Subscriptions

125.00

0.00

Unregistered players

16.00

0.09

Interest received

0.74

--------

141.74

EXPENDITURE

90.88

Handbook + Game Records

69.30

80.48

Trophies (Engraving and Rapidplay)

70.00

18.35

Expenses for ECF meeting

6.10

--------

(145.40)

-----------

Deficit for the year

(3.66)

======

Balance Sheet as at 15 ^th May 2014

Current Assets

Bank Balance at 15^th May 2014

872.18

Accummulated Fund

Opening Balance (16/05/2013)

875.84

Loss for the year

(3.66)

------------

872.18

=======

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Appendix H

Handbook Editor’s Report by Andrew Walker (by email 2-5-2014)

Apologies for not being able to make the meeting.

Production of the handbook for 2013/14 went smoothly. The new committee/officers

were very efficient in producing the player lists, associated rankings and fixture

dates. In addition, we had no comments regarding late changes or inaccuracies.

In this respect, the quality was improved over previous years.

In total, 100 books were produced and allocated to clubs as per the existing

agreement. The league funds paid for 1 book for each league officer, and club

officer (team captains and secretaries). An additional 46 books were ordered by

the clubs at a cost of £1 each.

For the future, I am happy to remain in the role and produce the handbook for the

coming season but would be willing to relinquish the task to another member if one

is forthcoming.

At the moment the book is not printed until mid-November. Any suggestions for

reducing the lead in time from the fixtures meeting to print would be welcomed.

Any suggestions for improved content or format are also welcomed.

Finally, several years ago the idea was raised that the book could be sponsored and so

reduce overheads for the club. If the committee still feels that this has merit,

anyone who would like to see their business promoted in the handbook should

contact me to discuss possibilities.

Kind regards, Andrew Walker, SDLC Handbook Editor, 02 May 2014