ECA Online Programme 2020-21

An exciting programme of online events is being planned for this Season, 2020-21, embracing Blitz, Rapid and Standard play competitions; individual and team. The organising team, Tournament Secretary, Ian Hunnable, with Mark Murrell and Tom Barton, are putting the finishing touches to this programme and will publish very soon.

The programme kicks off quite soon, with the first event, an individual Blitz at G7+2 on 9 November 2020 on lichess.org and will culminate in April/May/June with the ECA Online Championships, which were very popular last season. In between there are three more Blitz tournaments and three Rapids (G10+5), together with the Team Blitz. We have not yet committed to running an online Team Knockout next summer, but if the support for this programme is strong enough, the Online Team Rapid Knockout (which will be two rounds of G20+10, same as the OTB version) may well be added. On the other hand, if a Covid-19 vaccine appears in the Spring, we may be playing the KO OTB!

Requirements to participate: ECA Membership, ECF membership (at minimum Supporter), lichess.org account and join ECA Club on that platform.

For most players, membership of an ECA Affiliated Club is sufficient, e.g. those Clubs who regularly play(ed) in the Essex League (in non-Covid times). Just make sure your Club has renewed its affiliation with the Association this season – the Treasurer has circulated Clubs inviting renewal of Affiliation, so this just has to be acted upon, if not already done.

Clubs: for the payment of the Affiliation fee of £20 ALL your members will be ECA members. Some of the planned activities will be team activities, e.g. the Team Blitz on 7 December, so Affiliation is great value. And, for ECA members, participation in the ECA Online events is FREE!

The full programme will be published shortly. For now, put 9 Nov in your diary for Online Blitz 1 and watch this space for the online Entry Form. Better still, when our new Events calendar airs later this evening, you’ll be able to download these fixtures into your electronic calendar, so never miss a thing!

We are also planning a members’ Newsletter (at last) so that our members can keep abreast with all that’s going on; another good reason to affiliate!

Posted in Activities, Online.

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