David Millener won the Middlesbrough AC Handicap
[<<] [>>] by Charles Waterfield
at Middlesbrough CC
2 May
2016 (AC - Handicap)
With 16 competitors (double that of last year's HC) our four lawns were fully occupied. Visitors from Ashby, Nottingham, Beverley and Keswick joined players from Tyneside, Belsay and Durham.
Five rounds were played as 18 point games, with strict 2 hour time limits; this was satisfactory, as only five of all those games went to time. Four rounds on the Saturday and one more the next day. We had a very brief diversion on Sunday morning when the entire Tour de Yorkshire cycle race caravan passed through the Park close by the lawns (a commentator was heard to mention that there was also croquet here!).
The tournament format involved two blocks of eight players, with pre-drawn rounds. Final positions in each block were checked using Geoff Taylor's comparative scoring program (cf Gaunt & Wheeler), each player's performance being compared pair wise with everyone else's (but in each case only counting games played against 'opponents in common').
The resulting 'rankings' in each block put the competitors in the following order by mid-Sunday:
Block A
David Millener (Belsay)
Dennis Scarr (Mbro)
Mick Haytack (Ashby)
Julian Gibson (Mbro)
Geoff Clemence (Belsay)
Terry Vernazza (Tyneside)
Patricia Duke-Cox (Nottingham)
John Fitzpatrick (Mbro)
Block B
Nigel Roberts (Mbro)
John-Paul Moberly (Durham)
Stephen Skelton (Keswick)
Barbara McDermott (Sat) & Peter (Sun) (Mbro)
Jim Gillespie (Beverley)
Ian Hall (Keswick)
Roger Staples (Mbro)
Derek Johnson (Belsay)
In the afternoon there were final play-off games (full 26-point, 3.25 hour) between corresponding block A and block B places, with the results:
David Millener beat Nigel Roberts +1
John-Paul Moberly beat Dennis Scarr +26
Stephen Skelton beat Mick Haytack +24
McDermott beat Julian Gibson +4
Jim Gillespie beat Geoff Clemence +11
Ian Hall beat Terry Vernazza +11
Roger Staples beat Patricia Duke-Cox +15
Derek Johnson beat John Fitzpatrick +11