Player of the Year

[Jonathan Rogers]

No further reaction over the last two days then, to the news of what must easily be the most surprising recipient of this award in its history? (Of course, we would all wish to acknowledge young Anum's execllent result in that event, and to wish her further success in the future. But normally that further success would be required, no?)

[Richard Bates]

No further reaction over the last two days then, to the news of what must easily be the most surprising recipient of this award in its history? (Of course, we would all wish to acknowledge young Anum's execllent result in that event, and to wish her further success in the future. But normally that further success would be required, no?)

Not sure anyone knows what the purpose of/criteria for winning is any more. The "nominations" list was full of people included on the basis of single performances, so the apparent outcome of somebody winning on the back of a single nomination is not particularly surprising. Especially when combined with a FPTP voting system.

I would expect that most people if they were really that bothered would agree that a "player of the year" award should be different to a "performance of the year" award, but in the light of 1) the decision to create a restricted "nominees" list (which was probably mainly done to facilitate the farcical "internet voting" experiment of a few years ago) and 2) the criticism last year that the production of such a list failed to reflect a diverse enough group of candidates it is not surprising IMO that this is where it's ended up.

The whole thing is clearly crying out for some proper criteria to be established for nominations (if a nominee list is to be continued with) or at the very least some sort of agreed statement about what the award is for, but I doubt it will happen.

[Jonathan Bryant]

First of all, congratulations to the winner.


Also congratulations to the ECF. After the embarrassing shambles last year - and despite spirited insistence at the time that there was no problem whatsoever - it’s entirely appropriate that the system things changed this year and the nominations list was much more diverse. My guess is that Mike T consulted on this matter


Following on from previous chatter about what kind of person it was appropriate to vote for in a Chesser of the Year poll, it seems that most voters didn’t particularly value playing strength per se in their criteria for selecting a candidate. Only 12 votes went to our current top 5. Another 70 went to the next 5 on the elo list (the vast majority of which went to Pert and Hawkins). Another 26 went to other GMs (25 to Arkell, 1 to Gormally).

That’s 108 (about 45%) of the total votes cast to GMs. Most voters chose to back somebody who wasn’t a household name. At least they're not in my household.



With regard to the other Jonathan’s observation that young Anum is ...

the most surprising recipient of this award in its history?

... well I’m not sure I find it particularly surprising. Different to previous years maybe. I certainly don’t find it problematic, though.


I suspect the 'cause' if you want one, is half a change in the system that decided who gets POTY and half something that didn’t change.


Anu would never have won last year, of course. Not least because she’d never have been nominated.

So this year the nominations system was much more open this year which gave her a chance. But the voting system didn’t change. One person one vote like last year. I think it was up to two years ago that you got multiple votes. In that situation i suspect the winner of junior title might well have got several votes from people who would have given their other votes to better known players. Those add up in the end and help the better/more widely known to win POTY.

This year with just one vote you have to make a choice. Evidently Anum had a number of ardent supporters.

Those two factors - and a relatively small turn out amongst the electorate (like most members, I didn’t vote) - are the key factors I think.


Bravo to Anum.

[Leonard Barden]

In 2013-14, the last year in which the long-standing tradition was honoured that electors had five order of preference votes and anyone could be nominated, Keith Arkell won with 283 with David Howell second on 117. There were promising talents lower down the vote who secured 15-40 votes, which sufficed for a place in the top 10-15 and gave them encouragement. Unknowns who were admired by their friends also got a few votes and could see their names in lights, as the full list was published.

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/ecf-play ... ards-2014/#

I think that was a far superior system than what we have now. A little more work for the office in tallying the votes, but a much better stimulus to English chess.

[Ian Thompson]

I would expect that most people if they were really that bothered

The voting figures suggest that 97.6% of voters weren't bothered, or didn't think that any of the candidates deserved their vote.

[Jonathan Bryant]

The whole thing is clearly crying out for some proper criteria to be established for nominations (if a nominee list is to be continued with) or at the very least some sort of agreed statement about what the award is for, but I doubt it will happen.

As I understand it - possibly incorrectly - anybody who got nominated got put on the list. Certainly the list was rather broad. Which does rather beg the question o why have nominations at all? I don’t find the answer "Because if we don’t they’ll vote for the wrong kind of person" to be particularly convincing myself.

[NickFaulks]

Anum appears to have been given the award on the basis of her performance in the European Schools. For me ( please forgive the football speak ) her performance in the European U-10s was even better. She faced five of the top Russian girls, four of them from the next age cohort up ( which makes a difference when you're nine ) and beat two of them. Her opponents are all earmarked as future professionals.

Is this better than Mickey's 2800 performance in Baden-Baden? Who cares, I'm sure Mickey doesn't.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Still, useful extra information (thanks Nick), and it should probably go on the ECF website. Whether or not one might think the award to be premature, and indeed whatever one might think of the voting system in general, one would still expect the website to come closer to explaining/celebrating the unprecedented vicory by a nine year old than passing it over in near silence.

[Mike Truran]

Jonathan, that's not really fair. I wouldn't describe Anum's photo and a big "congratulations!" right at the top of the home page as "near silence". The ECF (rightly or wrongly) doesn't decide the merits or otherwise of nominees, and scrabbling around after the event to justify why the winner won hasn't so far been part of the ECF's brief either (again, rightly or wrongly).

Why not email the Office direct with the information? Expecting middlemen like me to pick up things like this on ecforum and pass them on surely isn't the most efficient way of going about things.

[Jonathan Rogers]

I think you do need explanation as well; but point taken about mailing the Office directly. I could do it, if no one else volunteers, but perhaps Nick or Lawrence, who probably know her or are at least more familiar with the details of her results, can be persuaded to do so instead?

[Jonathan Rogers]

Or, of course, someone else could do this - presumably some of those who actually voted for Anum could supply more details (here, or directly to the Office)?

[Ian Thompson]

Or, of course, someone else could do this - presumably some of those who actually voted for Anum could supply more details (here, or directly to the Office)?

Too late for this year, but in future years the voting form could have a text box on it to give people the opportunity to say why they voted for who they did. That way, you might have some ready-made congratulatory comments to go with the announcement of the winner.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Jonathan, that's not really fair. I wouldn't describe Anum's photo and a big "congratulations!" right at the top of the home page as "near silence".

You’re right Mike.

It’s also true that the old ECF twitter feed would have been all over the POTY result. Not "near silence" from the current version but absolute silence. No tweets on anything at all for a fortnight, in fact.

[Mike Truran]

You're right, and we hope to be doing something about that soon.

[Jonathan Bryant]

... we hope to be doing something about that soon.

Bravo. You could do much much worse than go back to how it was, I feel.