A case study based on the performance of the CSC/Kingston first team in the 4NCL in the 2024/25 season, by John Foley
Our first team, having been promoted in 2023/24 to the first division of the Four Nations Chess League (4NCL), managed to stay up and achieved a creditable mid-table seventh place in 2024/25. The season comprises 11 rounds over five weekends of exciting and exhausting chess. The start of the 2024/25 season was ominous as we lost our first three matches. In mid-season, with two wins from six matches, the team management even contemplated the unthinkable – making this our last campaign – but our players rallied and, in a final glorious weekend, we drew one match and won two matches against our rivals to secure our survival.
Ten years ago, I was team manager when (under a different team name) we were last promoted. I kept the players together as a reward for their efforts – allowing them to play the cream of the chess world. Whilst my intentions were noble and regarded as fair by the team members, this was not the mindset to achieve glory. There is no room for complacency at the top; one needs a ruthless attitude. During the course of the 2024/25 season, we strengthened the composition of the team as it became clear that obtaining promotion from division 2 is one thing, but staying up in division 1 is something else completely.
The team managers deserved tremendous credit for keeping the show on the road. Each weekend requires considerable planning in terms of team selection, logistics and accommodation. Complications are multiplied because we also have a second and third team, and not all the teams play on the same weekend nor at the same venue. The first team is eight boards and the lower teams are six boards. Nightmare! We did not default a single game out of the 220 played during the season. The person at the centre of the operation is Kate Cooke, who should receive a medal from the 4NCL organisers.
We have one of the youngest teams in the first division, with an average age of around 21. They liked playing for us and a good team spirit developed both over the dinner table and through watching and analysing the games. The matches were written up by Stephen Moss, who doubled as the shadow team captain and guardian angel, always solving problems in the background and ensuring that we had the right resources to deploy competitive teams.
Four measures
The team’s success depends upon the contribution by its members. We use four measures to analyse different aspects of individual performance:
- Commitment
- Competitiveness
- Combativity
- Decisiveness
1. Commitment
Commitment can be measured by the number of games played in the campaign. Playing a game implies that one was available and selected. Three players participated in all 11 matches: Vladyslav Larkin, David Maycock and Supratit Banerjee. Vladyslav, a young man from Ukraine, made a considerable effort to come to the Midlands hotels in which 4NCL matches are played. Supratit was only 10 years old, so his parents also had to make a significant commitment. David Maycock not only played in the 4NCL, but is a vital member of the Kingston first team which won eight trophies. Liwia Jarocka and Roland Bezuidenhout each played nine games, for which they also deserve recognition.
2. Competitiveness
The traditional measure used to recognise performance is the percentage score. To be eligible, a minimum number of games must be played to be fair to other players who may have turned up more often, even if they have not been so successful. Turning up on two weekends out of five seems a reasonable cut-off point – equivalent to four games out of 11. There were two players who played at least five games and obtained a positive percentage score: Supratit Banerjee had 6.5/11 (59.1%) and Liwia Jarocka 5/9 (55.6%). Zain Patel and Ulysse Bottazzi both scored 50% from six games.
3. Combativity
The Tour de France has a special prize for the most combative cyclist – the participant who animates the race by their aggression, attacking flair and will to win. The equivalent in chess is to find the players who perform well beyond their rating. This can be measured as the ratio between their actual performance and their expected performance. The expected performance is derived from the difference in the elo ratings of the players. A 100-point gap confers a two-thirds winning chance for the stronger player; a 200 points gap confers a three-quarters winning chance for the stronger player, and so on.
The most combative player was Supratit Banerjee, whose combativity score was 1.34. One way of looking at this is that the average return on a bet across all the games on Supratit would have returned 34%. This was a tremendous performance from a seriously talented junior. Supratit’s best result was in round 3 against the higher-rated Tomasz Sygnowski, in a match in which Kingston were trounced 6.5-1.5 by Wood Green Youth.
Ulysse was one of the team’s most combative players
Competitiveness and combativity are correlated and Supratit is the most competitive player, so, to share the honours, we can look to the next highest combative player, Ulysse Bottazzi (then rated 2320) achieved a combativity score of 1.18 from six games. Ulysse had a formidable run in rounds 6, 7 and 8, where he beat IM Stefan Macak (2305) and took draws from IM Rajat Makkar (2413), and GM Daniel Alsina Leal (2490).
If we want to recognise more players who contributed to the final team standing, or to recognise outstanding performance, we can widen the net to those who played just three games. On this criterion, the most combative player was Turkish IM Eray Kilic, who scored 2.5/3 (83%) on the final weekend to gain a combativity score of 1.42. This was largely on account of having beaten GM Keith Arkell in round 9 in the match which we drew against Cheddleton, one of the stronger teams in the competition (Cheddleton were fifth in the final table).
4. Decisiveness
The measure of decisiveness recognises that some games are more important than others. In a tight match, an individual result can make the crucial difference: converting a lost into a drawn match or a drawn match into a won match. Using an idea by the Nobel prize-winning game theorist Lloyd Shapley, we can identify the player who has made the greatest difference to the team result by winning or drawing in critical matches.
Think of the sort of person who holds their nerve when under a lot of pressure. They pay attention to the balance of games in each match and try to get the right outcome, eg taking a draw to win the match or trying to get a positive result from a hopeless position. With a minimum of four ranking games, we can rank the players who made the most decisive impact:
David Maycock 21.0%
Vladyslav Larkin 20.7%
Liwia Jarocka 20.6%
Supratit Banerjee 19.9%
Roland Bezuidenhout 17.9%
David Maycock made an impact when the team won or drew. He scored four points in these six matches, perhaps most valuably in round 10 when there was a small margin between the teams. Liwia was also in the running and might have pipped David, but she participated for one fewer weekend. In the game below, David converts a lost ending to a decisive victory.
To summarise, we have navigated through the team result numbers to identify the valuable contributions made by individual players. We identified the most committed player, the most competitive player, the most combative player and the most decisive player. Putting these together, the player who made the overall greatest impact on the team’s performance – the most valuable player – was Supratit Banerjee.
I am grateful for computational support from Dr Lawrence Liao in preparing this article.
