The format of the City District Tournament, on October 31 in the Corry Tendeloohuis, has been adjusted to allow for broader participation. The organisers of the Amsterdam Chess Open opted for a flexible format in which the competitive element of a battle between the city districts is still guaranteed.
In the old format, participants from the various city districts would form a team and compete in groups for a place in the cross-finals. In the meantime, it has become clear from the registrations that some city districts will have considerably more participants than others, which makes it difficult to hold a balanced team tournament and would also mean that new registrations from some city districts would have to be turned down unnecessarily.
Instead, the organisers have opted for a tournament in which all participants compete individually and the results per city district are reviewed afterwards. In concrete terms, this means a tournament with a Swiss format in which players from the same city district never have to play against each other. There are six rounds with games of fifteen minutes plus a ten-second increment per move. (All details about the new format can be found here.)
At the end of the tournament, it will be calculated which ten chess players who are not members of a club have scored the best for their district. The points of these ten players will be added together for each district. This is the final score for each district. The district with the highest final score wins the main prize: a chess table to be placed in their district. In addition, there are prizes for the best scoring overall player (no distinction between club and home chess players) and prizes for age categories.
With the new format, each district can basically have as many participants as registration allows for and everyone can play all day long. The emphasis will be on a pleasant atmosphere with enough space for meeting each other and learning from the games.
The City District Tournament starts on Thursday 31 October at 11:00 hrs in the Corry Tendeloohuis in Amsterdam Zuidoost, near Bijlmer Arena station and is expected to end around 17:00 hrs. You can register here.