FORMAT

GENERAL overview

The format for the WA School Chess League involves a series of one-day events to be held throughout the year.

Each team receives a number of the league points for each tournament, based on the performance.

Upon accumulating enough points a team qualifies for the finals.

To view the number of SCL points a school has accumulated, visit the Leaderboard page.

Open and Reserves sections in Primary Division


This year we introduce Open and Reserves sections in the primary division of the School Chess League. The general idea is to let experienced teams play in the Open division and compete for the WA State Champions Titles. The Reserves division is created to accommodate beginners and those new to the School Chess League and chess in general.


Basic rules are:

  • Any player can participate in the Open section of the School Chess League.

  • Only players with an ACF rating below 400 or unrated can join the Reserves section.

  • If it becomes apparent to organisers that a player is performing much better than the 400 ACF rating, they can not participate in the Reserves section of forthcoming SCL tournaments.


We're trying to make these tournaments interesting for players of different levels. The two sections in the primary division will be tested for the first time, and we may adjust the system during the SLC season.


SCL events

There will be at least four SCL-run qualifying events. These matches will be run as a Swiss tournament with barred team pairings. This means that students will only verse other students from different schools and will not verse others from the same school (with some exceptions if the number of participants is low).

The rate of play will be 15 minutes plus a 3-second increment per move.

The method of scoring during tournaments is as follows:

* In individual games, if the game was decisive, the winner receives 1 point and the loser receives 0 points. If the game was drawn, both players receive 0.5 points each.

* Each win by a player will earn points for their school. At the conclusion of the tournament, overall placings will be determined by the top 4 scorers in each school. Based on the final placing each school receives a number of "league points"

League points

The SCL Zone events have the following school points allocation:

  1. 1st place: 12 points

  2. 2nd place: 10 points

  3. 3rd place: 8 points

  4. 4th place: 6 points

  5. 5th place: 4 points

  6. 6th place: 2 points

  7. Participation: 1 point

FINALS

Each team In Primary Open and Secondary divisions who accumulated 10 league points will be invited to play in the finals.

The team (or teams) in Primary Reserves who scored the most league points will be invited to play in the finals.