English Chess Forum

I think using the Grand Prix as a selection criteria is pretty awful. The Grand Prix rewards players who play more often, so all you're getting going to U16 Olympiads are the players who have the combination of the players who are best and attend the most tournaments. To play in all these tournaments, you have to have parents who can afford to travel around the country. Some might not be able to afford that. If the intention was to reward the people who were most committed (judged by their Grand Prix performance), you're in essence penalising the players for something that is totally out of their control.

The main Olympiad team isn't picked according to the top 5 in the Grand Prix, so I don't see why the junior team should be too.

Alex Holowczak wrote:I think using the Grand Prix as a selection criteria is pretty awful. The Grand Prix rewards players who play more often, so all you're getting going to U16 Olympiads are the players who have the combination of the players who are best and attend the most tournaments. To play in all these tournaments, you have to have parents who can afford to travel around the country. Some might not be able to afford that. If the intention was to reward the people who were most committed (judged by their Grand Prix performance), you're in essence penalising the players for something that is totally out of their control.

just a quick refutation - sam walker, board 4 and therefore the one whose place is most debateable, played 57 games (i think) this grading. This is considerably less than some of the higher graded players that weren't chosen. This means that they were still travelling to the same amount of events, if not more, but they chose to play in adult events rather than junior ones.

Rob Thompson wrote:

Alex Holowczak wrote:I think using the Grand Prix as a selection criteria is pretty awful. The Grand Prix rewards players who play more often, so all you're getting going to U16 Olympiads are the players who have the combination of the players who are best and attend the most tournaments. To play in all these tournaments, you have to have parents who can afford to travel around the country. Some might not be able to afford that. If the intention was to reward the people who were most committed (judged by their Grand Prix performance), you're in essence penalising the players for something that is totally out of their control.

just a quick refutation - sam walker, board 4 and therefore the one whose place is most debateable, played 57 games (i think) this grading. This is considerably less than some of the higher graded players that weren't chosen. This means that they were still travelling to the same amount of events, if not more, but they chose to play in adult events rather than junior ones.

Do those events have a specific junior section though? Does your place of residence play a part? I.e. it would be very easy to rack up a lot of rated games if you lived in London, compared to somewhere more remote. E.g. if you live in Herefordshire, your chances of playing for a club in a League are virtually nil.

I am a little sceptical about selecting a team (as opposed to an individual) from a grand prix or a selection tournament. I am not aware of any other federation that does this. I have just looked at the selection procedures on the ECF website and it is certainly not clear to me that the U16 Olympiad was due to be selected on the basis of the Grand Prix. If that is to be the case then so be it, but to fair to the players then this should be spelt out explicitly.

What is the point of the U16 Olympiad?

All the juniors concerned knew how they had to qualify. I think (though it is hard to remember after this time) that Peter Purland sent an email detailing this, but that may be wrong.

I think the only real point in the U-16 olympiad is the same point as the football world cup - we all know England isn't going to win it any time soon, but we want to go out there and represent our country anyway.

Rob Thompson wrote:
I think the only real point in the U-16 olympiad is the same point as the football world cup - we all know England isn't going to win it any time soon, but we want to go out there and represent our country anyway.

A somewhat bizarre comparison IMO, but there we are. One is a proper global competition, in which every footballing nations aspires to compete (and theoretically win), recognised as the most important competitions in World Sport, the other seems to be a Turkish national competition with a few other countries sending teams to make up the numbers. I suppose if you're doing football, a better comparison might be with the Olympic football competition, but even there every country only gets to enter one team!

Call it the same as the U-21 world cup then. Everyone knows that it's nowhere near as important, and the quality will be much lower. Same as everyone knows that the U-16 olympiad is nowhere near as important as the main olympiad, and correspondingly much less funding is spent on it

Leonard Barden wrote:There is also more than one valid philosophy.

Agreed. My philosophy is based around the fact I am a maths teacher who also runs the school chess teams.

Leonard Barden wrote: As I appear to be being lectured about school teams, I should add that I went to the same school as Yang-Fan. In my time Whitgift was generally recognised as having the best team in England and was awarded the BCF school shield (then only one per year). Our team won the London Schools League (beating Wilson's, then based in Camberwell, en route) and won the Briant-Poulter Shield for south London/Surrey schools with 100 per cent. The excellent master in charge of chess was LJ Russell, whose name lives on in Surrey's Russell event.

As far as I know Wilson's won no chess events in the 20th century, even when Harry Golombek was a pupil. However, we have progressed to coming second in the Briant-Poulter league last year and winning the Russell Trophy last month.

Can we back off singling out individual players. Sam Walker was awarded the Presidents Prize in his county for outstanding achievement in winning his British title last year. His perfomance is in spite of coming from a shire county with rudimentary junior development. There are experienced players but many like Roger contribute nothing to junior chess. There are plenty of top twenty FIDE rated players who drop rating points in events on a scale with Sam in Turkey. (Ivanchuk, Morezevich and Shirov) so erratic junior performance is to be expected. I read the Guardian column that Leonard writes and it is good copy but on this forum, he offers criticism without solutions. And Mathew Turner cannot decide whether the junior efforts are 'poor' or 'slightly disappointing' which are clearly different things. And I am not sure if he is the same Turner who whilst a junior title holder playing an August Bank holiday congress in Amersham was unable to convert a rook and 3 pawns against rook ending against me. Its tough being a junior away from home, and playing match chess with dubious increments. We should be slower to criticise.

I am afraid that your comments are completely bizarre. Perhaps you could try re-reading my postings, I don't think there is anything too controversial, or difficult to understand in what I have written.

Mathew

I have private messged you. For the benefit of the board I should apologise for suggesting that Mathew described the performance as 'poor' and 'slightly disappointing'. I now realise that he actually used the words ' disappointing' and 'slightly disappointing' in the same post. The rest of my comments may be a bit scattergun but are considered and do not need apology.

I have sent you an extensive private message in return.
I described the team's performance as disappointing, but I am quite happy to substitute poor, how else do you describe finishing behind 5 Turkish teams and South Africa B
I described the individuals' performances as slightly disappointing. There were pluses and minuses, but I thought there were slightly more minuses than pluses.

Rob Thompson wrote
"All the juniors concerned knew how they had to qualify"

I am not sure that this is accurate. Your earlier posts say that Felix could not play because of finance. How did he, or how could he have qualified when he wasn't part of the (U16) Grand Prix on which you say the selection was based?

Alex Holowczak wrote:I think using the Grand Prix as a selection criteria is pretty awful. The Grand Prix rewards players who play more often, so all you're getting going to U16 Olympiads are the players who have the combination of the players who are best and attend the most tournaments. To play in all these tournaments, you have to have parents who can afford to travel around the country. Some might not be able to afford that. If the intention was to reward the people who were most committed (judged by their Grand Prix performance), you're in essence penalising the players for something that is totally out of their control.

The main Olympiad team isn't picked according to the top 5 in the Grand Prix, so I don't see why the junior team should be too.

I completely agree with this, and frankly I find it bizarre that anyone could not accept the point that is being made.

If selection is based partly on appearance, and appearance is based partly on finance, then it simply goes without saying that selection is NOT based entirely on talent. To argue against this - is to argue against logic itself.