The 82nd Annual General Meeting of the West Wales Chess League took place as planned at the Morriston Chess Club on Monday 17th June 2019. There were 28 members present.

In many respects the night belonged to the White Knights Club with their secretary Jason Garcia collecting both the Dr Hanson Trophy on behalf of their A team, for finishing the season as League champions for the second time in succession, and the Stanley Fortt Memorial Cup for winning the Open KO Cup (for the fourth time in succession). Their B team won the Richard E Jones Trophy for winning the Under 1800 KO competition while Jason and club mate Guto Llywelyn won the player of the year awards for Divisions 1 and 2 respectively.

Their success was closely matched by the De la Beche club who finished top in both Division 2 (Stan Cole Cup) and Division 3 (Tom Hughes Cup). In addition Derek Bellamy of De la Beche took the Division 3 player of the year award.

On the individual front, awards went to Ian Jones of the Morriston club who won both the West Wales Closed Championship (E.J. Clarke Trophy) and the Rapidplay Championship (AO Jones Memorial Cup) while Peter Bevan, also of Morriston, won the Lightning Tournament held on the first day of the season.

Aside from reports on the season’s competitions and the presentation of trophies the main order of business centred around five resolutions that had been put forward for discussion and which the members were asked to vote on.

The first resolution concerned the composition of the Executive Committee. As it stood the committee consisted of the President, Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer plus officials elected at the AGM to carry out specific duties (e.g. organise tournaments). The resolution proposed that the officials elected to carry out specific duties be replaced by representatives from each club, the object being to stop any particular club from dominating the committee.

Although there was some discussion and some dissent this resolution was passed overwhelmingly, exceeding the two thirds majority required (it being a change to the constitution).

The effect of this change means that each club now needs to send a representative to committee meetings and in addition it now falls on the committee, rather than the AGM, to find volunteers to carry out the specific duties.

The second resolution was a proposal to replace all the Divisional Controllers with a League Controller. The main reason given was that it would ensure consistency and fairness in the decision making. This resolution was also carried and takes the form of an instruction to the committee. It is not technically a rule change but will require some rewording of the rule book.

The third resolution was a proposal that the current time control limit (all moves in 90 minutes) be replaced by the time control used in previous years (30 moves in 60 minutes plus 30 minutes to finish). The discussion around this was slightly more volatile although it was generally agreed that in the end it came down to personal preference. The proposal was defeated although not overwhelmingly .

The discussions, however, were more intense when the fourth proposal was discussed. At the present time rule changes are voted on by the members present at an AGM. It was proposed that this system be replaced by 1 vote per club. The main argument for the proposal was that currently a club with a large membership could “load” the AGM with members to vote for a change that would give that club an advantage. The smaller clubs could more or less be frozen out of the decision making process. It was argued that the proposal for 1 vote per club would give them a say equal to that of the larger clubs. The main argument against focussed on the democratic right of every member to have their say and vote how they wished rather than how the majority in their club wanted to vote. The resolution was defeated.

The fifth resolution concerned the quickplay finish and the minimum number of moves that must be played before a draw under the two minute rule could be claimed. Currently it is 60 for the normal league and 50 for the minor league. It was proposed that it should be 50 moves in both leagues and this was accepted by the meeting.

The first meeting of the committee with its new format takes place next Monday the 24th June when the structure of the League will be decided upon and volunteers sought to carry out the various functions needed to run the League smoothly.

19/06/2019