City of Belfast 2024 May 4th-6th Bank Holiday Weekend

Sat 4th May, Sun 5th May, Mon 6th May

6 round classic. Time control 90+30

Daily round times each day: *** IMPORTANT UPDATE*** Due to Belfast City Marathon, rounds on Sunday 5th May will be 11:30am and 4pm

Saturday 4th May

Registration 10:00am

Round 1 10:30am to 2:30pm

Round 2 3:30pm to 7:30pm

Sunday 5th May

Round 3 11:30am to 3:30pm

Round 4 4:30pm to 8:30pm

Monday 6th May

Round 5 10:30am to 2:30pm

Round 6 3:30pm to 7:30pm

Two sections,  FIDE-rated ( to be confirmed).

Nemtzov Cup (Over 1600)

Henderson Cup (Under 1600)

Deadline to register: 12 noon on Thursday 2nd May 2024.

To secure a place, please email Organiser Mark Newman at mark.chris.newman@googlemail.com

Entry fee is £25 before 12 noon on Saturday 27th April (extended). It costs £30 after that, if space is still available.

Discounted early bird rate of £20 for full-time students and under 18s (before 12 noon on Sat 27th April).

The venue has limited table capacity.

Chief Arbiter: Mark Newman, FIDE National Arbiter

FIDE Rules will apply.

By entering the competition, you agree to the following terms and conditions:

All players should be seated at their board 2 minutes before the start of each round (but 5 minutes before the start of round 1). All clocks will be started at the publicised start times for each round. A player not at the board will lose the game after 30 minutes has expired.

Phones must be switched off before the start of play. Any mobile phone that makes a noise will lead to an automatic loss for the player, including the loss of rating points. Switched off phones can be left at the arbiter’s table. The only exception to this rule is if a doctor is playing in the tournament, they are permitted to keep their phone on silent (vibrate mode) in the event of a medical emergency and they will leave the playing hall if needed to take a call.

Players must make at least 10 moves before agreeing a draw. The Arbiter will not accept games whereby players have pre-arranged a draw and the three-fold repetition has been executed during moves 1-3. If 10 moves have not been played, the Arbiter may record the result as 0-0, i.e. both players will be scored zero.

Format: Open Swiss

Tie-breaks will be determined by Swiss Master 5.7 Build 8 in the following order: Buchholz, Progressive Score, TPR Mixed.

3 member Player’s Committee TBC after entries received.

As per FIDE guidelines, players should be members of their national federation to compete in a FIDE-rated event. Therefore, with the exception of newcomers or players visiting from overseas, local players should already be paid-up members of the Irish Chess Union [ICU] or Ulster Chess Union [UCU]. The 2023/2024 season began on 1st September 2023, ending on 31st August 2024.

A full list of ICU membership rates are available here:

https://www.icu.ie/shop

UCU membership can be paid on the day at any tournament in Northern Ireland or the PayPal link can be sent in advance. The UCU Treasurer Adrian Dornford-Smith is present at almost all the events for anyone wishing to pay in cash. It costs £25 per season. Concessionary rate is £10 for Under 18s, full-time students, pensioners, unemployed.

Please note, any players without an over-the-board rating should send their ChessDotCom or LiChess username so we can create a provisional rating for the tournament seeding. Please note, online ratings can be 200-400 rating points higher than over-the-board ratings. A newcomer without any online activity will be given a standard provisional rating of 1000 and it will appear as 1000p in the seeding list at the beginning of the tournament.