The ECF Academy

National developments, strategies and ideas.
Post Reply
Andrew Martin
Posts: 997
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2012 4:37 pm

The ECF Academy

Post by Andrew Martin » Tue Dec 29, 2015 10:22 am

The new ECF Academy opens up in Runcorn this coming weekend. It has taken a lot of work to get here.

Many of our best coaches have committed to the project and we have 40 of our best kids signed up.

Let's see if we can make a difference.

I'll give you an exercise, which I might set this weekend in a session about attacking the King.

Consider the following game, to which I have appended brief notes.:

[Event "GBR-ch 95th"]
[Site "Liverpool"]
[Date "2008.08.01"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Barrett, Steve"]
[Black "Dilleigh, Stephen P"]
[Result "1-0"]

1. d4 e6 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. e3 d5 4. Bd3 c5 5. b3
{The Colle and Colle-Zukertort systems work best when Black has played an
early ...d7-d5 and castled short, mainly because it's easier for White to
establish a knight on e5. Once the knight has been launched, the f-pawn is
free to go, enabling the major pieces to funnel over towards the black king.
The relative simplicity of these ideas attracts a lot of players and as we
will see here, can be employed to devastating effect.} Nc6 6. O-O Bd6 7. Bb2
O-O 8. Ne5 Qc7 9. Nxc6 (After 9. f4 I suppose White was worried about 9...Nb4)
9... bxc6 10. dxc5 Bxh2+ (10... Bxc5 11. Bxf6 gxf6 12. Qh5 f5 13. Nd2
or 13. Qg5+ Kh8 14. Qf6+ Kg8 unclear in both cases) 11. Kh1 Be5 12. Nc3 Qa5 13. Qe1 Qxc5 14. f4 Bc7 15. Qh4 {The attackers are in the penalty box and it is a question of
finding the net} h6 16. Rf3 Qe7 17. g4 e5 18. g5 Ng4 19. Bh7+ {The opening
salvo.} Kh8 (19... Kxh7 20. g6+) 20. Rg1 Bd6 21. Bd3 e4 {His sense of danger should have told him that opening the
long diagonal wasn't such a good idea. White needs no further encouragement.}
22. Nxd5 cxd5 23. Rxg4 Kg8 (23... Bxg4 24. Qxh6+ Kg8 25. Qxg7#) 24. Bf6
( When most of your pieces are en prise, why not put all of them en prise?) 24... hxg5
(24... Bxg4 25. Qxg4 exd3 (25... h5 26. Qxh5) 26. Bxe7 dxc2 27. Rf1 Bxe7 28. gxh6 g6 29. Rc1 Rac8 30. f5 Kh7 31. Qd4 Rg8 32. Qxa7 +-)

25. Rh3 gxh4 26. Rxg7+ {Very rough treatment for Black} 1-0

A spectacular attack, but was it completely sound ? Find improvements for Mr Dilleigh.

Michael Flatt
Posts: 1235
Joined: Tue Jul 02, 2013 7:36 am
Location: Hertfordshire

Re: The ECF Academy

Post by Michael Flatt » Tue Dec 29, 2015 10:32 am

Andrew,

That's good news regarding the progress of the newly created ECF Academy.

If you enclose the game in pgn tags, it will display the game on a board:
To play through a variation, just click on the first move inside the bracketted comment.


Andrew Martin
Posts: 997
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2012 4:37 pm

Re: The ECF Academy

Post by Andrew Martin » Tue Dec 29, 2015 10:45 am

Thanks very much for that Michael. Appreciated.

Gareth T Ellis
Posts: 237
Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2013 6:07 pm

Re: The ECF Academy

Post by Gareth T Ellis » Fri Jan 01, 2016 9:26 pm

The venue looked great with 4 separate coaching rooms, there's even an ECF pop up banner in the main reception.

Well done to the coaches and parents for travelling this time of year to further the juniors chess.

Mike Truran
Posts: 2393
Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2007 3:44 pm
Contact:

Re: The ECF Academy

Post by Mike Truran » Fri Jan 01, 2016 10:53 pm

Well done to the coaches and parents
...... and to Traci for setting the whole thing up and to the 4NCL for arranging the venue on behalf of the ECF Academy. :D

Gareth T Ellis
Posts: 237
Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2013 6:07 pm

Re: The ECF Academy

Post by Gareth T Ellis » Sat Jan 02, 2016 11:30 am

Mike Truran » Fri Jan 01, 2016 10:53 pm

Well done to the coaches and parents

...... and to Traci for setting the whole thing up and to the 4NCL for arranging the venue on behalf of the ECF Academy. :D
Thank you Mike,

A major chess event in a UK hotel, I should have realized the 4NCL had arranged the venue :oops:

Michael Flatt
Posts: 1235
Joined: Tue Jul 02, 2013 7:36 am
Location: Hertfordshire

Re: The ECF Academy

Post by Michael Flatt » Sun Sep 11, 2016 1:19 pm

The discussion on the UKCC seems to have moved on to the subject of developing juniors into elite players.

Wasn't the ECF Academy set up for this very purpose?

What other initiatives might be considered?

Leonard Barden
Posts: 1857
Joined: Wed Dec 24, 2008 11:21 am

Re: The ECF Academy

Post by Leonard Barden » Sun Sep 11, 2016 5:47 pm

Just before the official ECF forum was zapped, I happened to find there a policy statement from ex-CEO Phil Ehr where he claimed that the ECF declined a sponsor's offer to fund the Academy subject to its being modelled on the Young Stars Team USA programme backed by the Kasparov Foundation and Rex Sinquefield.
The Young Stars has been running since 2012 and has been outstandingly successful, with Jeffrey Xiong, Samuel Sevian and Awonder Liang all discovered very young, developed with substantial GM backing and now all heading towards at least 2650+ GMs, as well as other top players like GM Kayden Troff and Carissa Yip (master at 11). Kasparov himself helps select the players and GM Chernin is the principal coach.
The ECF's own elite programme for the Academy has only just got under way. As far as I can see, its main feature is an annual £1000 grant for any junior seriously aiming at IM/WIM titles or higher.
The money can be used for coaching or tournament entry fees but not normally for travel and hotel costs.
One difficulty with this is that it is in practice aiming at older age groups and will cement the problem we have where the best juniors only reach IM in their mid-teens and GM approaching 20. The academic and job pressures then to stop or slow down at 2450-2500 are strong, look at Zhou, Fernandez, Adair, Merry.
As I wrote in my Guardian article quoted in another thread the key European and world age group events now, which used to be the U12 and U10 (where 15 years ago Carlsen, MVL, Nepo, Andreikin, Karjakin and Howell competed) have now changed to U10/U8 due to the speedier learning techniques induced by powerful computers. Liang's first success was the world U8 and there were some strong players in the recent Euro U8 where England's Nishchal Thatte reached 5/5 before falling to the top seeds at the end.
By U12 and U14 now the best players are not bothering with the world/Euro youth but competing in strong opens, like Germany's 11-year-old Vincent Keymer who was second in the Vienna Open, beating Keith Arkell and drawing with Simon Williams en route.
We don't have any children of Keymer's quality, but the point is that the Academy should aim to talent spot the very best U10s and then raise their standards. At present our best U10s are some 150 rating points behind world level U10s, which is a big gap and ought to be capable of being reduced. I don't see that the ECF is conscious at all of this problem or tackling it seriously.
This is the chess nation that has produced world class U10s Hodgson, Short, Conquest, Adams, McShane, Kumaran, Howell. So it can be done. Start with the best U7s/U8s we have and then try to find still better talents to surpass them.
As regards older juniors, I have this comment. One of our earliest successes in 1972 came when an U18 team tournament was organised in Munich following the Olympic Games. With help from Jim Slater, we sent the strongest possible team including Miles, Stean and Nunn, and they won ahead of Hungary and Yugoslavia who were then reckoned the best in Europe after the USSR.
This proved a boost in bonding our players and stimulating their individual achievements. A few years later we again sent our very best team with Short, Hodgson, King and Ian Wells to an unofficial European U16 championship, and that too was a success.
This year there have been two excellent junior team events, the European U18 teams and the U16 Olympiad. England did ok in the U18 and thanks to Jim Wadsworth for organising tne team, but it should, like in Munich 1972, have been the strongest possible squad with Sanders, Haria, Abbas, and Tarhon all eligible.
We didn't send a team at all to the U16 Olympiad. Ok, I know it clashed with Bournemouth, but that's where the ECF should be persuading players and parents that the big international opportunity is what counts.
And the high importance of the U16 Olympiad can be shown by a very topical statistic. It was won by Iran ahead of Russia, Armenia and India. Three of that winning Iran team were playing this afternoon in the Olympiad match where we have scrambled a 2-2 draw.....
And finally, given that the inspirational involvement of Kasparov has clearly benefited the Young Stars, the Academy ought to arrange some kind of interaction of the top prospects with Adams and Short. I would recommend an annual clock simul. The clock simuls that England juniors had in the 1970s and 1980s with Smyslov, Karpov, Kasparov, Hort and Botvinnik were of great value.

Michael Flatt
Posts: 1235
Joined: Tue Jul 02, 2013 7:36 am
Location: Hertfordshire

Re: The ECF Academy

Post by Michael Flatt » Mon Sep 12, 2016 12:25 pm

Leonard Barden wrote: We didn't send a team at all to the U16 Olympiad. Ok, I know it clashed with Bournemouth, but that's where the ECF should be persuading players and parents that the big international opportunity is what counts.
And the high importance of the U16 Olympiad can be shown by a very topical statistic. It was won by Iran ahead of Russia, Armenia and India. Three of that winning Iran team were playing this afternoon in the Olympiad match where we have scrambled a 2-2 draw.....
And finally, given that the inspirational involvement of Kasparov has clearly benefited the Young Stars, the Academy ought to arrange some kind of interaction of the top prospects with Adams and Short. I would recommend an annual clock simul. The clock simuls that England juniors had in the 1970s and 1980s with Smyslov, Karpov, Kasparov, Hort and Botvinnik were of great value.
Some really useful points to note by the ECF and England's increasing number of registered FIDE Academies.

Expanding the number of high level trainers and mentors must be the way to go.

Post Reply