Cambridgeshire Chess Championship

About the League

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Each team fields six players ranked from board 1 (the strongest player) to board 6. A match between two teams involves each child paired up in a game of chess against their counterpart (i.e. board 1 from one school plays board 1 from another etc.) From their second season onwards, schools have the option of fielding a B team in the league, in which case their six strongest players must comprise the A team with the 7th to 12th ranked players making up the B team. Each child scores one point for their team by winning their game and half a point for drawing. This gives the following seven possible match results: 6-0, 5.5-0.5, 5-1, 4.5-1.5, 4-2, 3.5-2.5, 3-3.

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Matches are played using chess clocks with both players having 20 minutes to make all of their moves.

 

Alumni are allowed to continue representing their school in Years 7-10 to balance the mix of primary and preparatory schools, provided they have not moved to another school in the league.

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The league is played using a Swiss system, where teams are paired by a computer so that they are matched against other teams on a similar number of points.

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COVID-19

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In the 2020-21 season, matches were played on the website lichess.org using Team Battle mode, where two teams have their players repeatedly paired. The final scores were mapped onto the standard CCC scoring system. The time controls were 10+0.

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A round robin system was also used and every team played 13 matches instead of the usual 15.