Foreign events

[Bob Kane]

This is a cynical money grabbing exercise hitting the poorer families, maybe you don't want to sign up with the compulsory x academy but get your own private coach , so now you have to pay twice to play internationals.
removing choice impedes player development.

[David Sedgwick]

That didn't work for me. Can you provide a more specific link?

Try https://en-gb.facebook.com/groups/britishchess/
although as a generic link it would not always link to the discussion.

Here's the first few lines of Tim's opening comment

I would like to open this subject to public discussion. The ECF Director of Junior Chess, Alex Holowczak, by this announcement, is hereby levying a tax on parents of promising juniors who want to play in international junior tournaments if they do not join the ECF Academy, which is run by a private for-profit company, UK Schools' Chess Challenge, for which he is one of the principal arbiters.

Thank you Roger, I have found the discussion now.

One of the posters there said that Alex H had responded "swiftly and in detail". Can anyone tell me where I can find this detailed response?

[Andrew Martin]

A chap called Allan Hodgkinson posted the below in that BCN thread:




Alex Holowczak responded
This principle in the Selection Policy was approved by the Board in 2021, and applied to a number of tournaments already at the end of 2021. The other change of principle was allowing any children to go to these tournaments. Previously there was a yes/no set of criteria that people had to meet. If they didn't meet them, they couldn't go at all. We have now removed this barrier.
The surcharge is:
- Not payable by members of the Accelerator because they have been selected by our Selectors as being our most promising juniors.
- Not payable by members of the Academy because its organisers provide money to the ECF which goes into the Junior Bursary Fund.
- Payable by non-members of the Academy; the money will go to the Junior Bursary Fund.
The Junior Bursary Fund helps to subsidise trips like these for low-income families, but can also be used in other discretionary ways: e.g. coaching support. Previously there were limited ways in which we could facilitate this, and there were children who met our requirements who were unable to afford to play for financial reasons. We hope that the new system will go some way to solving that problem.
We intend to send a consultation document to Junior Clubs. This will be a free way for some Junior Clubs that meet certain criteria to have their members attend these tournaments without their members having to pay a surcharge, as well as providing them with other benefits. This was approved in principle by the Board at a meeting yesterday, subject to one or two details being resolved this weekend. I expect this will be sent to them early next week.
England already has a reputation amongst the ECU and FIDE of having large numbers of players attend these tournaments compared with other Federations. We think this will help to enable more people to go to these tournaments than before.


Alex further responded
There are three categories of selection for individual events (team events like the Glorney Cup are handled differently):
1: "Invited player". They get free accommodation provided by the Organiser. These players are selected by the Selectors. This only applies to the World Cadets and World Youth Championship. They pay all of the other costs: Entry fees, accommodation, transfer to/from the hotel and so on.
2: Accelerator/Academy. They pay all the costs of the Invited Player + their accommodation.
3: Everyone else. They pay all of the costs of the Accelerator/Academy + the surcharge.
To join these things in the first place, there are no costs for children to be on the Accelerator, but it is invite only. It is funded by The Chess Trust. The Academy is open to children who meet a certain minimum standard, but the parents pay an annual fee.

[NickFaulks]

Alex Holowczak responded

A speedy and detailed response from Alex, as we have come to expect. If only he had been in charge of getting people out of Kabul.

If it were any of my business, which it isn't, I might ask about

"The Academy is open to children who meet a certain minimum standard"

[IM Jack Rudd]

I have a feeling that if you aren't a member of the accelerator or the academy, the value-over-replacement-event of these tournaments is probably pretty low for you, and you'd be better off playing in something else anyway, surcharge or no surcharge.

[Ian Thompson]

I have a feeling that if you aren't a member of the accelerator or the academy, the value-over-replacement-event of these tournaments is probably pretty low for you, and you'd be better off playing in something else anyway, surcharge or no surcharge.

From a chess development perspective, you're probably right. From the perspective of being able to say you've played for England at chess, I'm not so sure. What's the value of that on your CV?

[J T Melsom]

The comprehensive response from Alex referred to above demonstrates that the ECF is happy to discuss policy with members, but like many other organisations chooses the place (s) of engagement with care. I can't join in the debate on Facebook so that isn't really a better place for these discussions at all. Moreover although there can be criticisms of the way the ECF engages with members I can honestly say that in my time as county rep, no junior issues were raised with me, nor motions put to the County AGM to debate with a view to challenging ECF policy. So whilst the system is not perfect, people are not exactly lobbying to any great extent within the system either.

[Wadih Khoury]

"The Academy is open to children who meet a certain minimum standard"

There used to be a formula between your age and the old ECF grade (e.g if you are 10, you must be 120+, if you are 11, 130+, etc..). I do not know what are the current rules.
It was a very strong motivator initially for my son to improve and to get the required grade to join the Academy, then later to get the required grade to play for England.

Overall, I believe a good chess ecosystem needs to have clubs (for the local community and support network aspects), coaching (for the tailoring of requirements) and also a formal statutory body sanctioned progression path. The fact that the ECF is formalising a "England Development Pathway" is a very positive thing in my view and will hopefully reduce the confusion that parents face initially when exposed to dubious marketing and positioning.

The fact that the Academy is currently privately run can only be blamed to the lack of fund that our sport (yes, it is a sport in my eyes and in the view of many countries) faces. I am sure everyone would be much happier if the ECF itself had the funds and the personnel to manage the Academy, bringing in the best children at little to no costs. But we are not there. So if we have the choice between no pathway or a privately managed one (with an open tender if I recall), I think the latter option is not the worse choice. It is unfair, but then this is the choice electors make when they decide that services are better provided privately rather than through the state or governing bodies.

Now I do agree that it is weird to expect non pathway participants to fund the bursary fund to that extent and some good arguments have been made for those who do not need the services of the Academy and are part of the top of their age groups.

[Roger de Coverly]

There used to be a formula between your age and the old ECF grade (e.g if you are 10, you must be 120+, if you are 11, 130+, etc..). I do not know what are the current rules.

There was an old Leonrad Barden rule of thumb which looked for the BCF grade to be age * 10, the idea being that if you can improve 10 BCF points a season, you can be challenging for the British Championship in your early to mid twenties. Evidently over time, it's been accelerated by a couple of years.

[Joseph Conlon]

I have a feeling that if you aren't a member of the accelerator or the academy, the value-over-replacement-event of these tournaments is probably pretty low for you, and you'd be better off playing in something else anyway, surcharge or no surcharge.

A perfect example has been given in the Facebook group - why should Richard Pert be charged hundreds of pounds surplus for his kids to participate in these events, if he chooses to coach them himself rather than pay for them to be coached in the ECF Academy?

[Kevin Thurlow]

"why should Richard Pert be charged hundreds of pounds surplus for his kids to participate in these events, if he chooses to coach them himself rather than pay for them to be coached in the ECF Academy?"

I doubt they would dare do it him, but there have been cases where parents of promising juniors have been approached aggressively by people demanding to be the junior's coach, even when the parents have recruited someone rather stronger already.

I see Alex has given a detailed reply but it'a rather hidden isn't it? Rather like the alleged cheating at online chess, the last ECF report mentions online cheating several times, but nowhere does it say what it is doing about it (if anything).

We have already been made aware of conflicts of interest within the ECF Academy, which perhaps are inevitable, but ignoring them is not the answer.

[Matt Bridgeman]

The number of places on the Accelerator Program is quite limited. Just a handful really over all age groups. I would think there are quite a few juniors of similar strength who didn’t get selected for that program. There’s also quite a few mid-teen teenagers who have already completed a full 3 year cycle of the ECF Academy (£1200 or more), who might still want to do a couple of international junior events. So I don’t know if there is some sort of exemption for these former Academy members not to have to pay an extra £300?

[Joseph Conlon]

That's outrageous surely its enough to be registered with the national federation and be talented at the game, its not an opportunity for a third party training organisation to extort money from parents ...AND telling parents that only one of them can accompany the child is another unbelievable outrage!

I'm reserving judgment as I understand that part/all of these surcharges go towards the ECF's junior bursary funds, one purpose of which is to provide financial assistance to poorer parents of talented juniors which - although not everyone is going to agree with it, and I'm not sure that I do - isn't obviously "outrageous". Does Bob have more information, eg what proportion goes to the bursary funds, that he can share with us?

The quoted logic is that ECF Academy members don't pay the surcharge because this contributes to the bursary fund, and the surcharge is for the bursary fund. But, given that the surcharge is more than 50% of the ECF Academy fee, this doesn't seem at all proportionate.

And it's not like *not* spending money on the ECF Academy makes anyone automatically rich enough that they can send £300 off to a bursary fund without noticing it at all.

The one parent bit seems not an issue to me; that sort of thing is not uncommon with Covid, and even if one thinks its overcautious there's lots who don't.

[David Sedgwick]

The Facebook thread includes a number of highly defamatory allegations by former ECF Director Gary Kenworthy about alleged events over 20 years ago. They are probably best ignored, unless any of the people maligned wish to take legal action against Kenworthy.

Incidentally, I'm sure that Carl Hibbard wouldn't allow such comments to be made on here.

More worryingly perhaps, a Scotland based arbiter who has officiated at the British Online Championships has claimed that he was not paid the fee which he was expecting for work he did for the ECF last September. The amount involved is only £20, but it's an example of how small grievances can fester.

[Andrew Martin]

I’m trying to find details of the ‘ECF Junior Development Pathway’, which has been mentioned here:

https://www.delanceyukschoolschesschall ... -page-ecf/

I know there is a coaching pathway, because I helped to set it up.

https://www.englishchess.org.uk/new-ecf ... es-scheme/

Typing the precise request into Google usually solves the problem, but not here. Can anyone help?