PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Debate directly related to English Chess Federation matters.
David Robertson

Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by David Robertson » Wed Jun 21, 2017 12:51 pm

Brendan O'Gorman wrote:Would it be fair to say that the only candidate that cared about the award was judged to have campaigned too hard and too effectively?
If by 'candidate', you mean 'campaign team'

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John Upham
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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by John Upham » Wed Jun 21, 2017 1:22 pm

Brendan O'Gorman wrote:Would it be fair to say that the only candidate that cared about the award was judged to have campaigned too hard and too effectively?

I would agree with that.

Take note Teresa May !
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David Sedgwick
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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by David Sedgwick » Thu Jun 22, 2017 6:42 pm

Post deleted in the light of new information.

Nick Grey
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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by Nick Grey » Thu Jun 22, 2017 8:06 pm

One of the perks of membership is to vote. I'm quite happy for ECF to refund all the voters £5 or deduct from next year.

Sorry but a junior won the previous year so if you are going to put a junior on a list with 5 others what would the awards committee think would happen?

There was me praising the committee for considering and awarding an award for outstanding services to chess last year.

Hopefully Council will give them a rough ride at the next meeting.

Perhaps the awards committee should resign before then.

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John Upham
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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by John Upham » Wed Jul 05, 2017 11:21 am

I note with considerable disappointment that :

Publicity Manager – Vacancy Email

I am sure that this is a coincidence but the word Vacancy appeared following the cancellation of the Player of the Year Award 2017.

Mark Jordan was doing a great job for the ECF and it is a shame that he has been replaced by a vacancy.
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Jul 05, 2017 11:31 am

John Upham wrote: Publicity Manager – Vacancy Email
One of his responsibilities was the Newsletter.

This is what the June issue says
I am Mark Rivlin, secretary of Hackney Chess Club and I am temporarily taking over editorial duties to ensure members receive the newsletter on a monthly basis over the next few months.

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Michael Farthing
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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by Michael Farthing » Wed Jul 05, 2017 12:36 pm

As I understand it Mark has personal circumstances for retiring (detail, quite properly, unknown to me) so no conspiracy! I hope we can all resepct that.

Stewart Reuben
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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by Stewart Reuben » Mon Jul 24, 2017 8:05 pm

It would possibly solve the problem if, instead of POTY, we had Adult (18 or higher) POTY and Junior (U18) POTY.
But that is a pity. Chess is better than any other activity in uniting players of all type.
The problem has come about because we have OMOV now. Prior to that, we had a small group of voters.

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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by Ian Thompson » Mon Jul 24, 2017 8:23 pm

Stewart Reuben wrote:It would possibly solve the problem if, instead of POTY, we had Adult (18 or higher) POTY and Junior (U18) POTY.
Could you enlighten us to what the problem is? I'm not aware of any previous explanation by the ECF, or why splitting the award in two would make any difference to that problem.
Stewart Reuben wrote:The problem has come about because we have OMOV now. Prior to that, we had a small group of voters.
Stewart Reuben, on 16 June, wrote:We now have far more people being entitled to vote due to there being far more members. But the number of people actually voting has not increased.
So the previous small group knew how they should cast their votes. We now have a similarly sized new group who don't know how best to cast their votes?

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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by Stewart Reuben » Tue Jul 25, 2017 2:14 am

I think the problem is that it is now much easier to form a pressure special interest group. These seem to tend to form to favour a child and the votes come from a very specific location. If 1000 people voted, it would be much more difficult to create such a group. That would approximate to 10% of the voters. But the percentage of people voting is very low. Before OMOV, the percentage was quite high. Perhaps 100 people voted.
Thus it was more represntative then than now.
This is only surmising. I am no longer a member of the Awards Committee, so I don't have the facts at my fingertips.

Chris Rice
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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by Chris Rice » Tue Jul 25, 2017 8:58 am

Earlier post deleted.
Last edited by Chris Rice on Tue Jul 25, 2017 10:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

Jonathan Rogers
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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by Jonathan Rogers » Tue Jul 25, 2017 9:46 am

Chris Rice wrote: Perhaps it was felt by some that he would not have been a deserving winner, perhaps he was too young, perhaps he hadn't done enough but on what set of criteria would that have been based? The irony being the ECFs write up for him on their voting page had him billed as ‘The Childrens choice’. ..
A good point. I think the bigger problem was that this was not an isolated case and a relatively unheard of junior had won the previous year - and whilst everyone was very polite about it last year, rightly not wishing to spoil the moment for a junior who herself surely had nothing to do with any campaigining, it must have been through gritted teeth in many cases. Had last year not happened, perhaps the success of the more high profile Shreyas this year would have been allowed to continue?

Or perhaps not, because I think that something else explains the dissatisfaction, and it is probably what Stewart has in mind too. Even though the exact criteria of merit are left to individual interpretation, there is still an assumption that voters should attempt a bona fide judgement of merit on all eligible candidates, and not simply plump for the one whom they personally know. Chris may reply that we cannot possibly know how those voting for Shreyas made up their minds - maybe these juniors and parents did look at all the achievements of the competing candidates and still genuinely thought him the most meritorious, and were simply more motivated to vote for him because they knew him personally. Still, some suspicion seems inevitable to me.

(So, I have not changed my mind: see other thread. If we are going to have these arguments every single year, maybe we should just scrap the award altogether).

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JustinHorton
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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by JustinHorton » Tue Jul 25, 2017 10:13 am

We have the same arguments about everything every year: if we go by that logic we might as well scrap everything.

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Jonathan Rogers
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Re: PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2017

Post by Jonathan Rogers » Tue Jul 25, 2017 12:00 pm

JustinHorton wrote:We have the same arguments about everything every year: if we go by that logic we might as well scrap everything.

<comedy lightbulb>
said in jest, I know, but nonetheless - we would keep things which are productive notwithstanding their propensity to cause arguments. But it is not obvious what very good purpose this award really serves in the first place (see other thread).

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