Scottish and Commonwealth Championships 2014

[Roger de Coverly]

While £250-500 for a GM sounds reasonable to me (the amounts mentioned to me today) sums 10 times that would make me baulk, no matter what they bring to the event! Does anyone have any views on what the budget should be focused on primarily?

Last year, there were four English based GMs, so the budget was there for whatever would tempt them to play. But then last year, they were top seeds and therefore had an expectation of taking some prize money. Assuming the tournament wasn't paying for travel and accommodation, the amounts mentioned might be reasonable if there was a decent chance of supplementing that with prize money. But that was last year, without a strong squad of Indian GMs.

This year's top ten seeds

Code: Select all

nr 	Name 	nat 	T 	rat. 	Fide-ID 	Birthday 	MF
1 	Gupta, Abhijeet 	IND 	GM 	2634 	5010608 	1989 	M
2 	Lalith, Babu M.R. 	IND 	GM 	2561 	5024595 	1993 	M
3 	Sengupta, Deep 	IND 	GM 	2536 	5008352 	1988 	M
4 	Barnaure, Vlad-Victor 	ROU 	IM 	2518 	1210610 	1986 	M
5 	Ankit, R. Rajpara 	IND 	IM 	2511 	5023335 	1994 	M
6 	Debashis, Das 	IND 	IM 	2484 	5024854 	1993 	M
7 	Grover, Sahaj 	IND 	GM 	2483 	5021103 	1995 	M
8 	Barua, Dibyendu 	IND 	GM 	2452 	5000025 	1966 	M
9 	Wang, Puchen 	NZL 	IM 	2450 	4300904 	1990 	M
10 	Aravindh,Chithambaram VR. 	IND 	IM 	2444 	5072786 	1999 	M

and last year's

Code: Select all

GM Gawain CB Jones	England	-	2643		-
GM Imre Hera Jr	Hungary	-	2558		-
GM Mark L Hebden	England	-	2555		2509
GM Matthew Turner	Millfield School	-	2518		2531
IM Hjorvar S Gretarsson	Iceland	-	2511		2503
GM Aleksa Strikovic	Serbia	-	2504		-
IM Vlad-Victor Barnaure	Romania	-	2503		2483
GM Daniel Gormally	England	-	2496		2504
GM Colin A McNab	Dundee/Victoria	-	2461		2498
GM Alejandro Hoffman	Argentina	-	2452		-

[Nigel Short]

To add to the information I gave previously (I was with Surya Ganguly and Pentala Harikrishna yesterday) : there are substantial Indian national and state government incentives for medal-winners in the Commonwealth Championship.

[Paolo Casaschi]

To add to the information I gave previously (I was with Surya Ganguly and Pentala Harikrishna yesterday) : there are substantial Indian national and state government incentives for medal-winners in the Commonwealth Championship.

Is chess recognized as sport in India?

[Nigel Short]

Yes, chess is recognised as a sport in most countries.
Incidentally, I intend to post as little as possible, if it all, on this forum in future. I have migrated to the English Chess Federation Forum where hopefully I won't be subjected to withering abuse from non-ECF members.

[Jonathan Rogers]

And so the Great Forum War begins.

It looks a quiet place, but I guess that's why they call it the "official" forum, it reflects the organisation quite well. About 60% of the content seems to be written by two players called Bill Porter and Kay Joslin. Nigel Short is joined by Andrew Martin but the main interest of the latter seems to be to further plug his youtube collection.

I did notice that Loz is resigning as Junior Director, which (so far as I can see) has not been mentioned on this forum. Since this was Loz's dream job in the ECF, it does tend to make one suspect that internal board politics are still a major problem. Perhaps that is why it was mentioned on the official site - no danger of anyone mentioning that angle on that forum.

[Roger de Coverly]

And so the Great Forum War begins.

Posting on the "official" forum isn't restricted to ECF members, so any ECF Official could be subjected to withering abuse from both ECF and non-ECF members. The difference is that such posts are, one presumes, liable to be deleted. I don't know what will happen if there are contested elections, particularly if one of the candidates has a vision and a platform diametrically opposed to the incumbent or the ECF itself.

[JustinHorton]

so any ECF Official could be subjected to withering abuse from both ECF and non-ECF members

And indeed vice versa.

I wasn't aware that Nigel had often been subjected to abuse from non-ECF members. Are any examples extant?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

so any ECF Official could be subjected to withering abuse from both ECF and non-ECF members

And indeed vice versa.

I wasn't aware that Nigel had often been subjected to abuse from non-ECF members. Are any examples extant?

I was under the impression that he and the FIDE representative for Bermuda (and not an ECF member) don't get on. Though that could be said of a number of others as well, and I may be confusing things with the FIDE representative for Papua New Guinea (who is actually a Silver member).

http://www.ecfgrading.org.uk/new/player ... 65631A#top
http://www.ecfgrading.org.uk/new/player ... 80278B#top

I did spot a picture on Chessbase of Nigel accessing a forum, but which one??

http://en.chessbase.com/Portals/4/files ... hort01.jpg

(The Chessbase articles that photo is from are well worth reading: 1, 2.

http://chess.sport.org.cn/

Can anyone work out whether the event has finished yet?)

[Roger de Coverly]

Can anyone work out whether the event has finished yet?)

Readers of the English Chess Federation forum !

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/Forum/vi ... &t=69#p411

[Roger de Coverly]

and I may be confusing things with the FIDE representative for Papua New Guinea

As far as I aware, PNG is no bigger than a chess club or possibly a small county association. On the face of it, there's some internal feud as contact details and Delegate in Norway have been blanked out or are shown as TBA.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Can anyone work out whether the event has finished yet?)

Readers of the English Chess Federation forum !

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/Forum/vi ... &t=69#p411

Thanks, Roger. You should become their publicity person!

[Christopher Kreuzer]

and I may be confusing things with the FIDE representative for Papua New Guinea

As far as I aware, PNG is no bigger than a chess club or possibly a small county association. On the face of it, there's some internal feud as contact details and Delegate in Norway have been blanked out or are shown as TBA.

Oh, that old trick again. The thought had crossed my mind that the reason some delegates are having problems getting visas is that they only 'became' delegates very late on after some switch and bait tactics, and hence are applying rather late in the day. I'll post that thought over in the other thread as well.

[JustinHorton]

so any ECF Official could be subjected to withering abuse from both ECF and non-ECF members

And indeed vice versa.

I wasn't aware that Nigel had often been subjected to abuse from non-ECF members. Are any examples extant?

I was under the impression that he and the FIDE representative for Bermuda (and not an ECF member) don't get on.

So was I, but that was not really the question...

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I thought it was Nigel speaking in code. Maybe he did have other non-ECF members in mind? You may have to go to the new forum to ask him.

[JustinHorton]

I thought it was Nigel speaking in code.

Which would be unusual, for someone with a well-deserved reputation for plain speaking.