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The First National Team Championship (normally referred to as NTC-1) was a significant event in the history of correspondence chess in the USA. The domestic cc organization in the USA is divided among several cc clubs, each having its own tournaments, publications and rating systems. To complicate things, many cc competitors hold membership in multiple organizations. When it came time to contest a championship between these organizations many players had to decide which organization to play for. In some cases an individual played for the first team that contacted him ... which benefitted the team with the best (and fastest) recruiting. The final standings of this championship event were:
When NTC-1 started TCC (The Chess Connection) was a significant group with many strong players and high prizefund tournaments. The TCC magazine was outstanding. Unfortunately, TCC failed during the early stages of NTC-1 creating a difficult situation and leading to some controversy, partly because TCC failed to deliver the entry fees collected from team members for NTC-1 to the organizer ICCF-U.S. In the end it was decided that TCC would not be involved in the team competition. In fairness to the TCC team members they were allowed to continue competition as individuals. Therefore, the 50 board crosstables show all the original competitors, but the team standings do not count the TCC results. The official standings show losses in all TCC games, giving a false impression of the results of the other teams (who mostly scored over 50% as a result). Since the TCC results could not affect the team results, other standings are presented which simply ignore the TCC games, giving a better impression of the accomplishments of the other teams. The TCC failure understandingly led to some withdrawals and premature resignations by TCC team members. The official board crosstables do not reflect withdrawals or forfeits. I have added footnotes to some crosstables indicating my best understanding of where losses were a result of such withdrawals or forfeits. In some cases there were double-forfeits, explaining why the total scores don't always add up to the expected totals (both players were given losses in these games). I invite input from others who were involved in this spectacular event. If you have additional information or viewpoints send them to me and I'll add them to a page of NTC-1 commentary. I'm sure there are many details that aren't commonly known. If you have such information, please contribute to this public record of NTC-1! Special thanks to Maggie and Roy DeVault for providing material and analzing & correcting the faulty game records, a difficult task. Some of the information in this report came from the APCT Team Newsletter, a quarterly publication (ten issues) edited by me and containing many contributions by APCT team members, APCT Team Captain Jon Voth and the APCT Director Helen Warren, who did most of the recruiting for the team and supplied valuable support for the team throughout the competition. Note: This project is a continuing effort. I'll add to these pages as more information becomes available. A database of the games should be available for downloading soon. Corrections to any factual information would be appreciated. Following are links to transcripts of documents describing The National Team Championship of the United States, which started play on 1 March 1991 and had a planned closeout date of 1 March 1994. There are links to the complete crosstables for the 50 boards and several sets of statistics covering the team scores at regular intervals. The American Postal Chess Tournaments (APCT) organization displayed its superior organizational and chess-playing skills by dominating this event and is the current reigning national cc champion of the USA. The following tournament report is dedicated to all the people who made this great victory possible. Five teams started the contest, four finished. As editor of the APCT team newsletter I'll have additional "inside" information to spice up the official statistics. -- J. Franklin Campbell |
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