What would have made a good tournament?

A few days ago I wrote about Divya Deshmukh, 19yo Indian woman chess player playing in the Open section of the Grand Swiss tournament. Divya said

Even if I lose all the rounds, I think I will be fine if I learn.

And I promised to let you know how she got on. So here goes.

Clearly, despite her words, she would have not been happy losing a succession of games, even though her opponents were generally rated 150 and so points above her. And I've mentioned before that for top players it's not too difficult to successfully play for a draw if that's what you want to do. I can't see there would be any point in entering this competition if that's the limit of your ambition, so some wins would be good, together with a smattering of draws. Or the other way round.

The results:

Game 1: loss

Game 2: draw

Game 3: draw

Game 4: win

Game 5: loss

Game 6: draw

Game 7: win

In game 8, Divya played the current World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, rated almost 300 higher than her. Possibly her biggest challenge so far in her career, and a battle of the 19yo Indians. And got a draw after a long drawn out battle. At this point she has 4 points, ahead of the World Champion, who has just 3.5. Remarkable.

Game 9: loss, after a late blunder (yes, even Grandmasters do that!)

Game 10: draw

Game 11: draw

Divya Deshmukh scores 5 points out of 11 and 81st place out of 116 players. If 5/11 doesn't sound great, the winner of the event scored 8 out 11. She ends with a rating of 2497.6, having been 2478.0 at the start of the tournament. And she got a draw against the World Champion.

Also, it's only fair that I mention Aleksandra Goryachkina, also playing in the Open section. She has also already qualified for the Women's Candidates, like Deshmukh, so she also chose to play against the best men. She's 26, slightly higher rated, Russian born competing under a FIDE flag. Her results:

Game 1: loss

Game 2: draw

Game 3: draw

Game 4: win

Game 5: loss

Game 6: loss

Game 7: draw

Game 8: win, she's on 3.5, alongside Gukesh, with three rounds to go.

Game 9: win

Game 10: draw

Game 11: loss, so also 5 out of 11, in 79th place alongside Divya. She ends with a rating of 2541.1, having been 2528.0 at the start of the tournament.

I was unable to find any interviews with Goryachkina, so I can't tell you about her motivation or reaction to her performance.

Overall, a successful tournament for both players; they both played consistently above their ratings and proved they can compete with higher rated Grandmasters. Perhaps they'll be joined by others playing in Open sections in the future.

Chucking it down

I don't like black pudding. There's an argument that it's the ugliest looking piece of food ever. UOAT. Ugliest Of All Time; a new category of OATs. Ramsbottom: now there's a contender, on name alone. Yesterday, The Official World Black Pudding Throwing Championships were held there. Apparently it's something to do with antipathy towards Yorkshire puddings (Ramsbottom is in Lancashire so a modern day War of the Roses) which are incidentally pretty tasty, especially if served on the right (dinner plate) size, with gravy. This:

Not these:

In an attempt at raw journalism, I asked ChatGPT who won yesterday's Championships.

The winner was Ged Flanagan from Salford. If you want, I can also tell you how many Yorkshire puddings he knocked down, or who came second?

They throw them at the Yorkshire puddings? Wow. I'm almost at my limit of interest in this bizarre manifestation of British culture, but I couldn't resist wondering how many he did knock down. Could it be 100? Or maybe Ged was the only contestant to score at all.

Nine.

In more news, there were allegations of cheating in the World Stone Skimming Championships which the Times, apparently without irony, describes as "prestigious". Perhaps in Easdale, "one of the slate islands off the west coast of Scotland" (I thought I'd just quote the newspaper on that, to save me the bother of some independent journalism) where the contest is held, it's prestigious. I mock not.

Organisers were alerted that some of the participants had been deploying stones that had had their rough edges filed off before being flung across the flooded quarry where the tournament is held.

Shocking. "They deeply apologised for bringing the sport into disrepute and accepted disqualification", said Kyle Mathews, a GP who acted as "toss master". Apparently there are seven categories by age and other attributes, including one for "old tossers" aged 60 and above. I'm thinking of entering next year, just so that my family can forever call me that - or maybe they already do, privately.

I know you want to know: the overall winner was Jonathan Jennings from .... Kentucky. What? You travelled halfway round the world just to skim some stones? Don't you have lakes in Kentucky?

In other throwing news, the UK is about to start chucking out some "small boat" migrants to France this week, as part of the new "one in, one out" agreement. Not surprisingly, the UK and French governments are not giving any details of who and how many, particularly on those we're letting in.

Final news on these matters: the rain in Cornwall was chucking it down so hard last night that my satellite connection was disrupted and I actually missed the added time handball and subsequent penalty which allowed lucky Liverpool to go back to the top of the Premier League table. Ugh.

It also affected the opportunity to see the final public performance of trumpeter Alison Balsom, of whose playing I am a massive fan, in the Last Night of the Proms. I am very averse to that event, which seems to me to be less about actual music and more about flag waving - of which we need rather less at the moment IMO. Maybe there will be a YouTube video.

Footy updates 2025/9

Check the outcomes of my forecasts:

Ipswich 3 bottom-of-the-table Sheffield United 0 Result: 5-0

West Ham Women 1 Arsenal Women 3 Result: 1-5

Arsenal 3 Nottingham Forest 1 Result: 3-0

Charlton 1 Millwall 1 Result: 1-1

West Ham 2 Tottenham 2 Result: 0-3

bottom-of-the-table Peterborough 0 Wycombe 1 Result: 2-1

Whitstable 1 Chichester 2 Result: 1-1

Correct results: 4 out of 7

Correct scores: 1 out of 7

NEXT:

• Whitstable have to go to Chichester for a replay on Tuesday
• Arsenal and Tottenham have the first of eight League Stage matches in the Champions League on Tuesday: Arsenal in Bilbao, Spurs at home to Villareal
• The others wait for a week for their next games

Overall a pretty satisfactory weekend's work, although disappointing for Wycombe

Span of control

Vytautas Andrius Graičiūnas was a Lithuanian American management theorist who published a classic study Relationship in Organization in 1933. He mathematically proved that a manager should not have more than four to five subordinates. He posited a formula which showed the number of relationships a manager can deal with, for a given number of reporting subordinates. Those relationships include (a) one-to-one, i.e. manager/subordinate (b) cross relationships subordinate/subordinate and (c) group relationships, e.g. manager/subordinate/subordinate. For 5 subordinates, it's 100; for 6, 222; for 7, 490. Don't worry about the numbers, just realise that the more people you have reporting to you, your ability to effectively manage them diminishes exponentially.

Management theory calls this the "span of control" and is used in the military for command and control functions and also in large commercial organisations.

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has a cabinet of 25 or 26 (I couldn't quite figure it out exactly). There are duplications in terms of departments, for instance Baroness Chapman is Minister of State (Development) in the Foreign Office, so presumably reports to the Foreign Secretary rather than direct to the Prime Minister. There are still around 20 departments of state.

So the Prime Minister of the day has a bumper number of people formally reporting to him/her.

There's maybe an argument that a more structured way would enable their job to their job better. It can be argued - as it was by ChatGPT in our...chat - that the PM, as primus inter pares, allows greater autonomy to secretaries of state, but this manifests itself as a problem which is that, once a week, the PM has to answer for everything in government publicly in Prime Minster's Questions in the House of Commons. And is expected to know...everything.

There's another problem, which is relevant to the recent months - in fact arguably ever since the current government came to power. In comparable countries, foreign affairs and world diplomacy are carried out by the Head of State, usually President, leaving the PM to focus on domestic affairs - see France (not a great exemplar of effective government at the moment, I accept). This has been a major problem for Keir Starmer, facing significant global instability and an erratic US President.

So it's no surprise that Starmer is floundering. You'd have thought an experienced manager like him, who had a staff of over 7,000 when he was Director of Public Prosecutions, would be able to use that experience, but I imagine that was a better structured organisation and his job had a single, highly focussed mission. Government is different: not just about continuing an existing functionality; it's often about juggling, and deciding between, a set of bad options. Different problems, maybe requiring leaders with different characteristics.

I'm not saying Starmer is doing as well as anyone could; he's clearly not on top of things and there are serious questions about his judgement, e.g. Sue Gray.

I just think there must be better ways of doing things; we ask too much of our politicians.

Footy updates 2025/8

It's back to normal for our teams in the coming weekend. No more of the dreary international scene for another month. Ipswich are on the telly tonight, competing with Arsenal Women for my viewing time, Arsenal tomorrow competing with Charlton, Tottenham later. A viewfest!

I thought I should do forecasts. Here we go.

Ipswich 3 bottom-of-the-table Sheffield United 0

West Ham Women 1 Arsenal Women 3

Arsenal 3 Nottingham Forest 1

Charlton 1 Millwall 1

West Ham 2 Tottenham 2

bottom-of-the-table Peterborough 0 Wycombe 1

Whitstable 1 Chichester 2

Are Whitstable fans soft?

I forgot Whitstable Town, shame on me. Last mentioned in this blog for winning the FA Vase in May. For some reason they don't appear in my Flashscore feed, which presumably doesn't cover the lower level non-professional (or semi-professional) leagues such as the Southern Counties East Football League in which Whitstable plays in the Premier Division. They are currently 7th after six games, outside the playoff places. On Tuesday they won 3-1 away to Hollands & Blair, which sounds like a firm of solicitors.

Shout out to Football Web Pages, where I discovered not only this information but their comprehensive coverage of the complete football "pyramids" in England and Scotland, men's and women's.

Every football club which is registered with the Football Association (FA) is allowed to enter the FA Cup and clubs in "Step 5" (that's our boys) and above are automatically accepted. Whitstable entered this season's competition in the First Qualifying Round and won 3-2 away to Dulwich Hamlet, who are currently in 2nd place in the Isthmian Premier League, which is a "step 3" league - Whitstable would have to get two promotions to play at that level. So a terrific result. In the Second Qualifying Round they play at home to Chichester City, who are also in the exalted company of Dulwich in the Isthmian, on Saturday. In case the Whitstable fans who went to Wembley in May are not of the "soft" variety, it's at 3pm.

And if you go, write a report please!