Tentative conclusions at the end of the Olympiad

[Jonathan Rogers]

Newspapers often like to list “Five Things we learnt” after big sporting events, perhaps because listing things uses up more column space and most journalists are writing in a hurry. I am not in a hurry and I have expressed some of my conclusions before. But who can object to a list? Here are my “Four Things we should learn after the Olympiad”.

1 Having players off-form hurts more than having players on form helps

This is true of most team events but especially the Olympiad. Simply, the further up you go, the harder it is to win the points but the easier it is to give them away. Even a 2650 player on form cannot win very many games against comparable opposition in the Olympiad but it is possible to have a bad run where one just carries on losing. The last round defeat against Cuba captured the problem perfectly: the three in form players were nonetheless held by capable Cuban opposition – capable opposition is everywhere these days – and the one player out of form fell. And so, despite having three players in contention for medals for the first time this century, England finished at its lowest position this century with two players markedly off form (albeit that the finishing position partly owes to the disproportionate effect of losing the last round).

This really has to be borne in mind by those who pick board orders. I said before the Olympiad that having Sadler so low down the order, in the transparent hope that he would produce an avalanche of wins as in the 1990s, was risky; the sort of decision made, perhaps, with an exaggerated hope of how well England might perform. If he was expected to be our second best player – and many people, myself included, did expect this – the team would have done better overall with him playing on board two. As it was, Sadler duly made one of the best scores for England in recent years on board four, but it is likely that our overall performance on board two was the very worst in modern history.


2 Youth still counts

We saw it everywhere. Runaway winners China had a team of players so young that the Western chess media has not actually had time to track some of them very well before the event. The secret of France, by far the best performing Western Europe country, must lies somewhere in the relative youth of its team as well as their Elo strength. Hungary too show signs of rejuvenation and looks able to cope without Judit Polgar in future, and a relatively youthful Indian team did just that without Anand. For England, the news is sombre (just imagine them coming in the top 5 without Adams!). In all probability our best players likely to be available for Olympiad chess are all over forty; and it may be that this time, even with the best board order and without the last round defeat England would probably have finished no higher than just in the top 20. Realism must be the watchword in future events, with a top 20 finish being seen as entirely respectable in Olympiad and European events, even if we do continue to be ranked ninth at the outset. This should be understood not just by selection committees and the International Director of the ECF but more broadly by ECF members. The way to support our players will be to congratulate them on a good top 20 finish, which will be easier done if we don’t constantly talk up their medal chances before each and every event.

3 England lose too often with White for a team of their ranking

It nonetheless remains an oddity that England should have fallen quite so far down the ranks with most of their players doing well. But one problem recurred which was a familiar and symptomatic one; that we are all too prone to losing games with White in big matches. In this last event, White losses prevented us from beating Vietnam and Germany and from holding Armenia and Cuba. Admittedly these were from the out of form players but when looks at past team events, too often White defeats have prevented us from beating strong opposition or from capitalising on a high position in the event. In the 2008 Olympiad a defeat for White (Howell v Gashimov) preventing us from beating Azerbaijan and it was still possible to have a top ten finish with a win against a Yugoslav team in the last round – but a loss from Short with White to Kozul (I think?) put paid to it. Yet both players were generally in good shape in that event as was Short again in 2012 when he lost to Torre, at a stage when England were unbeaten after eight rounds and looked as though it had a kind pairing against the Philippines. In fact England have not beaten a top ten opponent for many years, with the opportunity to beat Russia last year forfeited mainly by McShane’s tame loss with White to Svidler.

Only in one of these games did we get such a good position from the opening (Howell v Gashimov) that the colour seems quite irrelevant. In the other games we did not get an advantage from the opening and did not always have equality. Such a spate of White reversals would be unthinkable for many of our competitors. It may simply be that English players (except Adams and perhaps Sadler), due to an attachment to irregular openings or other reasons, have an insufficiently powerful White repertoire at this level. Some other teams seem to have regular training sessions before major events and this is perhaps something we should explore too.

4 The ECF still needs to revise its level of expenditure on the Olympiad and European Open and women’s teams

The point has been made before. We are a good team but so are many – far too many – others and we are more likely to decline before we improve. This should mean that the entirety of our international budget should not be put into the national teams (and as argued before, of the amount that is available for the national teams, we should not pore (say) 95% of it into the open team at the expense of the women). As Leonard Barden has noted we have much better chances of making medals at senior level and of course our only European champion in recent memory received zero funding from the ECF. If the national teams can be supported privately, then that would be wonderful; but both the International Director and Council must remember their broader responsibilities when dividing up their own budget.

NB I was unable to follow this last Olympiad as closely as I would have liked and would welcome any factual corrections.

[Nick Burrows]

Thanks Jonathan, that was a great read. Have you ever considered some chess journalism?

[Lewis Martin]

A good report by Jonathan. I would like to add something that Jonathan mentions with regards to training sessions beforehand. Interestingly, Hungary and Poland had a training match before the Olympiad. I do not know whether that is a good idea in itself or not, but it did mean that players spent more time together and helping each other out in preparation.

I also wonder if part of that is due to competition for places. Quite simply, there aren't many 2600 players, so you could say that at the current level, we only have 6 players over 2600 with 5 slots to fill them in. There isn't a qualifying tournament (I don't think this is necessary, but maybe we need something different, so perhaps a qualifier to have a spot guaranteed to be in the Olympiad?) for this, unlike, I think some countries like China(?) I could be wrong, but that was my impression.

Interesting comment about winning as White. I don't know what to say with regards to this, but do wonder how this can be improved. Encouragement from the captain to win? A bonus of some sort? Unfortunately, the ECF don't have a bottomless pit of money. I'm probably opening a can of worms and more relevant to a different thread/discussion on this forum, but maybe the money model needs to be improved for chess in England.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

An interesting analysis from Jonathan, but I can't get past the fact that if England had won that last round match against Cuba, they would have performed to seeding (though re-calculating the tie-breaks is difficult) and they would have only been a single match point off bronze. I don't think we need to be unduly pessimistic. The critical point was probably not the last match against Cuba, but the loss to Serbia (after a lucky escape vs Canada). To get in the medals, you probably need to only lose one match, no more than that. Recovering from a second loss is almost impossible.

[MartinCarpenter]

As Jonathan noted, it wasn't winning with white which was such a problem, it was surviving

Losses with the white pieces in this sort of team event should ideally be rather rare and require real effort from the opposition. This time round, Sadler/Adams excepted, we often seemed to get really quite bad positions. Some of those we survived, but even that won't have been at all good for peoples nerves during the matches!

Hard to fix of course, as it probably is mostly simply how our available players are.

I'm not sure if the board order was so bad as such. Isn't board 2 just a problem? You'd ideally want a super solid player to block it up and we don't seem to have one. With Sadler not being full time it'd be a lot to ask.

[Jonathan Rogers]

An interesting analysis from Jonathan, but I can't get past the fact that if England had won that last round match against Cuba, they would have performed to seeding (though re-calculating the tie-breaks is difficult) and they would have only been a single match point off bronze. I don't think we need to be unduly pessimistic. The critical point was probably not the last match against Cuba, but the loss to Serbia (after a lucky escape vs Canada). To get in the medals, you probably need to only lose one match, no more than that. Recovering from a second loss is almost impossible.

Then again if we had beaten Cuba - not that this "if" should be conceded lightly, since it would have been our best result of the whole event - we would have "performed to seeding" only by winning our last three matches and without having played more than one other team which finished in the top ten (and hardly any others in the top 20). So it would have been a flattering result (would we really have claimed to have outperformed France?) which would, if anything, have probably given us false hopes for the future.

I am pleased to learn that various people found the above analysis interesting; some of the comments I have made on the forum before.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Then again if we had beaten Cuba - not that this "if" should be conceded lightly, since it would have been our best result of the whole event - we would have "performed to seeding" only by winning our last three matches and without having played more than one other team which finished in the top ten (and hardly any others in the top 20). So it would have been a flattering result (would we really have claimed to have outperformed France?) which would, if anything, have probably given us false hopes for the future.

It might help to look at other teams that did relatively well/badly and see how many teams they played that finished in the top ten. Come to that, how many of the teams in the top ten played other teams that finished in the top ten? (Ditto for teams in the top 20 playing other teams in the top 20). I'm guessing that India in particular may have achieved a result that flatters them (though even if my guess is right, this shouldn't take anything away from their achievement). The same applies to some of the other comments you made. I get the impression that there was a fair amount of bunching behind the deserved winners of China, so drawing conclusions from where teams finished might be affected by that. Spare a thought for Poland, who had to win in the final round to tie for the lead, but lost and ended way down the final rankings.

BTW, has anyone calculated where England would have finished if they had beaten Cuba? Ditto for where Adams, Howell and Sadler would have finished in the board prizes if they had won rather than drawn in the last round.

(And if Jonathan wants to do more analysis, what about Scotland, Ireland and Wales?)

EDIT: So I looked up how India did, and they lost in round 4 (to Cuba) after opening with two wins and a draw (with Italy). They then won three times, drew twice (Argentina and Armenia) and finished with two wins. Of the teams that finished in the top ten, they played Armenia and Cuba. What is also noticeable is the teams that did badly compared to seeding (similar to England): Germany, seeded 12th finished 30th; Italy, seeded 20th finished 52nd; Norway, seeded 14th finished 29th. And going back to the top three, China played four teams (Hungary, Russia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine) from the top 10 finishers. Hungary played five teams (Spain, Ukraine, Israel, Armenia and China) from the top ten finishers, which is actually quite impressive.

[Lewis Martin]

I take the view that the Olympiad result for England is not that shocking, in terms of it being close margins, and not brilliant where we had 3 players that played very well, 1 had an off tournament, and the other an off tournament as well as other commitments.

What it does is highlight the fact that not much has changed in recent years, except for perhaps that Jones and Howell are slightly stronger.

I suppose my point is this: where do you see the next 2600/2700 Grandmaster coming from?

Hawkins is due a Grandmaster title soon, and Yang-Fan can't be too far off the title, though they currently are nearer the 2500 level, and not the 2600 level.

[Roger de Coverly]

I suppose my point is this: where do you see the next 2600/2700 Grandmaster coming from?

Inflation or rising standards mean you cannot use ratings as the absolute test, but being subjective, how about the concept of "world class"?

So from the 1960s onwards, perhaps the list runs Penrose, Miles, Stean, Nunn, Speelman, Mestel, Chandler, Short, Hodgson, Adams, Sadler, McShane, Jones, Howell

At a pinch you could include Keene and Hartston between Penrose and Miles.

But I don't know who is the next world class player either.

[Graham Borrowdale]

What is interesting about that list is that the 1984 England team (Miles, Nunn, Speelman, Chandler Mestel, Short), which finished second to the Soviet Union, are all on the list; the 2014 team are all on the list too, but finished well down the field. The only other players on Roger's list are Penrose, Stean, Hodgson, McShane. So the team of 2014, while possibly being as strong as the previous team, have a lot more competition, partly from former Soviet states, but also from countries such as France, who seem to have more strong players than 30 years ago.

[MartinCarpenter]

Think to be as strong you'd need Sadler/McShane to have stayed full time professional. Then Short could happily play board 4 and Jones/Howell fight for board 5. (Perhaps with Hodgson too while we're unretiring people ). Very good reasons this didn't happen of course.

[Roger de Coverly]

So the team of 2014, while possibly being as strong as the previous team, have a lot more competition, partly from former Soviet states

That's true, but there's also a much wider age spread. The 1984 team had Tony Miles as the oldest and Nigel Short as the youngest, but there wouldn't have been much more than a 10 year spread in ages between Tony, born in 1955 and Nigel, born in 1965. This time round, the spread is 25 years between Nigel and David Howell, born in 1990.

[Chris Rice]

Here's a not so tentative conclusion on the Olympiad from Irina Bulmaga who won a bronze on Board 4 for Rumania. Hope Gawain reads it as he seems to be getting a lot of stick for being brave enough to go on Board 2. http://irinabulmaga.blogspot.com.tr/201 ... medal.html

[LawrenceCooper]

Here are Gawain's recent results for England:

2010 Board 5 6/8 2647 performance http://chess-results.com/tnr36795.aspx? ... 821&snr=12
2011 Board 4 6/9 2706 performance http://euro2011.chessdom.com/etcc-2011- ... n-section/
2012 Board 2 4/10 2523 performance http://chess-results.com/tnr77681.aspx? ... =30&wi=821
2013 Board 4 5/8 2707 performance http://etcc2013.com/tournament-information/

[MartinCarpenter]

Just checked and the lack of a properly solid board 2 does seem to be something of a problem - I don't think we got a plus score on board 2 in any of those tournaments and we've tried plenty of players.