New Year's Honours List

Happy New Year ABSP members! The start of a new year means it's time for Wayne Kelly to reveal the updated titles and awards after 2024.

Firstly, many thanks to the Stewart Houten and Rachel Bingham for their parts in the maintenance of the database over the last year. This year we may very well a new ratings system and database but in the meanwhile here is how 2024 panned out regarding titles and awards.

Titles

There are no new titles to give out this year, unfortunately, so let's look ahead to this time next year.

Potential Experts for 2025:

• 4 years
  • Colin Northmore (4 170+ ratings)
• 3 years
  • Chris Cummins (3 170+ ratings)
  • Jack Moran (3 170+ ratings)
  • Brian Po (3 170+ ratings)
  • Wale Ilori (3 at 175 average)
• 2 years
  • John Ashmore (2 170+ ratings)
  • Stewart Houten (2 170+ ratings)
  • Chris Vicary (2 170+ ratings)
  • Ryan Wee (2 170+ ratings)
• 1 year
  • Toke Aka
  • Sam Crispin (1st 170+ rating)
  • Joel Davey (1st 170+ rating)
  • Becky Dyer (1st 170+ rating)
  • Lee Jones (1st 170+ rating)
  • Olaiya Kabir
  • Jeremy Khoo
  • Ross Mackenzie
  • Ebi Sosseh
  • James Squires

Potential GMs for 2025:

• 1 year
  • Marlon Prudencio
  • Tony Sim
  • (Also Ryan Wee recorded a 180+ rating)

There are some with potential to get back on the ladder but with a rating higher than their previous best so they have been excluded. Let me know if you think there is anything amiss.

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Highest Rated Player

The Highest Rated Player Award is given to the highest rated ABSP Member on January 1st of each year, provided that they have played at least 30 games in the previous year.

The winner is Brett Smitheram (199)

In Brett's first fully active year for a while, he managed 4 190+ ratings in the 4 tournaments he played with his best rating at Belfast in January.

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Most Improved Player

The Most Improved Player award is given to the ABSP member (as at 31st Dec) who has a full rating at the start of the calendar year, plays at least 30 games throughout that year and improves their rating the most. The player's rating at the end of the year must be higher than any previous end-of-year full rating.

The winner for 2024 with an improvement of 27 from 69 to 96 is Lisa Atkins. Lisa played 90 games in the year and was second in last year's list with a rise of 18. This makes a 45 point leap over two years!

Four other players met the criteria and improved by at least 10:

• +21 (172) Samuel Crispin
• +20 (137) Peter Hill
• +16 (114) Jake Haidar
• +10 (79) Mary-Ann Bennett

Also Ronan Dance increased by +18 to 137 but had not played 30 games before the start of the year.

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Some other stats:

• Most games played and most prolific Expert – Craig Solomons (519)
• Most prolific GM – Phil Robertshaw (189)

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Unweighted ratings for those with a rating over 150 plus details of highest games scores for 2024 can be found on the ABSP database. Well done to all winners - and those that missed out - keep trying!

Wayne Kelly