Prizes Then And Now

[Roger de Coverly]

The top UK player is critical of the UK governing body and the lack of development for younger players.

It's tennis of course.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/n ... cup-tennis



It all sounds familiar except that the tennis team won a major competition in their case for the first time since the 1930s. England won the Euro team chess as "recently" as 1997. Two of the team were still present in 2015.

[Joshua Gibbs]

my personal opinon on the lack of young players -

Hello, I am a idiot in his twenties with access to a computer. I think it is fair to say I am a lot younger than the majority of the people who have written on this thread.

I have witnessed a lot of young players coming to the chess club with university degrees and thinking because they have degrees they can play chess. They leave the clubs I have attended after a few months. The degrees they have been given install them with a false view of what hard work really is. Whereas I followed michael de la masa's advice and studied endgames and openings and won a grading trophy , others turned up, thought their university degree made them a grandmaster and left.

My personal opinion is that the education system is wrecking Britain and chess and everything that goes with it. In the seventies universities actually taught people stuff as opposed to the garbage I had to endure today.

In my opinion it isn't prize money or anything else that is the problem, just the stupid education system turning kids brains to jelly with stuff like media studies. Most graduates can't read a book, let alone learn the Bishop and Knight checkmate.

[Nigel_Davies]

my personal opinon on the lack of young players -

Hello, I am a idiot in his twenties with access to a computer. I think it is fair to say I am a lot younger than the majority of the people who have written on this thread.

I have witnessed a lot of young players coming to the chess club with university degrees and thinking because they have degrees they can play chess. They leave the clubs I have attended after a few months. The degrees they have been given install them with a false view of what hard work really is. Whereas I followed michael de la masa's advice and studied endgames and openings and won a grading trophy , others turned up, thought their university degree made them a grandmaster and left.

My personal opinion is that the education system is wrecking Britain and chess and everything that goes with it. In the seventies universities actually taught people stuff as opposed to the garbage I had to endure today.

In my opinion it isn't prize money or anything else that is the problem, just the stupid education system turning kids brains to jelly with stuff like media studies. Most graduates can't read a book, let alone learn the Bishop and Knight checkmate.

I agree with you. Of course the question still remains as to why someone would want to work on their chess (maybe 5,000 hours for IM, 10,000 for GM !?) without any financial support or hope of much income in the future, when they could do something else where the rewards are much greater.

[JustinHorton]

In my opinion it isn't prize money or anything else that is the problem, just the stupid education system turning kids brains to jelly with stuff like media studies. Most graduates can't read a book,

Funny how people never see the irony in talking stupidly about education.

[PeterFarr]

m

In my opinion it isn't prize money or anything else that is the problem, just the stupid education system turning kids brains to jelly with stuff like media studies. Most graduates can't read a book,

Funny how people never see the irony in talking stupidly about education.

Media studies graduates are the 2nd most employable after medicine graduates, according to the ONS; although they don't get paid that well.

Of course the quality of education is always worse in the present than it was in the past. Plato was always bitching about how things were so much better in Socrates' day.

[MartinCarpenter]

Strange how York University keeps turning out a few awfully useful chess players then
(Oh, and ones who notably improve during their time there too. And no, no real coaching involved.).

[Nigel_Davies]

What they don't teach, of course, is how to stay on topic. "I really must study some endgames today, but just a second, there are some new posts on the English Chess Forum. Whoopeeee!!"

[Joshua Gibbs]

I agree with you. Of course the question still remains as to why someone would want to work on their chess (maybe 5,000 hours for IM, 10,000 for GM !?) without any financial support or hope of much income in the future, when they could do something else where the rewards are much greater.

It is my honest opinion that technology that will decrease the time it takes to memorise chess patterns.

Obviously if there was more money in the game more people would go to competitions, but the main reasons as to why Britain isn't producing quality chess players is that the education system is absurd. Even if you upped the prize money massively most graduates wouldn't be able to learn chess



PeterFarr - Media Studies graduates are on £21,000 per year. I wouldnt call getting a job like this a worthwhile usage of three years.

You use the argument I look back with rose tinted spectacles, but cmon, everyone knows university degrees are being dumbed down.

Justin Horton - what do you mean?

[IM Jack Rudd]

You use the argument I look back with rose tinted spectacles, but cmon, everyone knows university degrees are being dumbed down.

"Everyone knows" all kinds of things. This does not, in and of itself, mean those things are true.

[PeterFarr]

PeterFarr - Media Studies graduates are on £21,000 per year. I wouldnt call getting a job like this a worthwhile usage of three years.

You use the argument I look back with rose tinted spectacles, but cmon, everyone knows university degrees are being dumbed down.

(a) Graduate starting salaries average around £25k across all subjects, so media studies is less but not by that much. Average salary for a 22-year old, whether a graduate or not, is £15k (these figures may be a llittle out of date). Over a lifetime, graduates of any subject will on average earn significantly more than non-graduates; of course starting salaries are not that reliable an indicator of future wealth. Of course it''s also possible that media studies students do itmore because they enjoy it than because they are counting future earnings. Is that so wrong?

(b) No everyone doesn't know that, it's an assertion lacking any evidence. As a counter-argument, UK universities score quite well in international surveys; also UK universities attract a lot of foreign students, in spite of being relatively expensive.

To try and wrench the subject back roughly towards`the topic, responding to Nigel Davies's chiding, it is difficult to see how almost anybody could make a better living as a professional chess player than they could doing another profession; I think you can only do it if you really love it. Has that ever not been the case, in the UK at least? The UK chess scene just isn't big enough to reliably support professional players, no matter how you cut the cake.

[Roger de Coverly]

Has that ever not been the case, in the UK at least? The UK chess scene just isn't big enough to reliably support professional players, no matter how you cut the cake.

Tony Miles dropped out of university to pursue a professional career in the 1970s, followed by others who turned professional when they graduated or never went to university at all. It helped that most of them were good enough to be able to earn money internationally rather than purely in the UK.

[PeterFarr]

Has that ever not been the case, in the UK at least? The UK chess scene just isn't big enough to reliably support professional players, no matter how you cut the cake.

Tony Miles dropped out of university to pursue a professional career in the 1970s, followed by others who turned professional when they graduated or never went to university at all. It helped that most of them were good enough to be able to earn money internationally rather than purely in the UK.

Yes agree with that - but also it was never more than a few?

[John McKenna]

In my opinion it isn't prize money or anything else that is the problem, just the stupid education system turning kids brains to jelly with stuff like media studies. Most graduates can't read a book,

Funny how people never see the irony in talking stupidly about education.

SNIP
Justin Horton - what do you mean?

I can certainly see the irony of Justin telling Joshua that his criticism of the education system, above, is one that might be expected from an uneducated person! The fact that Joshua is a fairly recent graduate, yet Justin castigates his criticism in that way, goes some way to proving Joshua's initial point - about the education system failing to educate him properly.

Joshua has been through a degree course at an English university and subsequently says, here, it was not worth the effort. So he did not get what he and taxpayers paid for. Whose fault is that and what percentage of recent graduates think the same as Joshua?

I'd venture to say - probably foolishly here - in answer to my own question, above, that is the fault of successive British governments (of all persuasions) and their half-baked education and other social policies, which have led to a malaise among young English white males, the worst performing group it is said, in English education in general.

It goes without saying, of course, that parents must also share a significant proportion of the blame for the way they now indulge their male offspring, mainly, in all things whenever poss. The percentage of dissatisfied graduates must have increased since the system of admission to secondary and tertiary education changed from one that was designed to keep most young people down on merit (11-plus, O & A-level exams were meant to be failed by the majority) to one which was designed to bring more young people in with less merit (Comprehensives, GCSEs & the new A-levels are meant to be universally passable).

Most females in England, foreign students and great many English students with immigrant parents, do much better in English education because they approach the education system in a different way to the wayward male 'yoofs' who, led astray by the misguiding governments and parents of England, don't know where they're coming from or going to.

Before you shout me down - THIS IS NOT OFF TOPIC HERE, because the (ultimate) prize is not how much you win in competitions, chess or other ones, but, er... Can anyone tell me - what is the ultimate prize? (I've lost sight of it.)

[stevencarr]

See how much the 1000th rated tennis player in the year earns. It is not much. And there is more money in tennis than chess.

There are , I believe, over 1400 Grandmasters. Below 1000, they won't earn much.

[John McKenna]

After that, this needs repeating -

The 1000th best player in the world (yes, one thousand) is rated 2500. Who is the 1000th ranked tennis player in the world?

I think the idea that prize money is the source of the problem misses the point.

The 1000th rated male tennis player is a 17 year old Italian who has won $2,377 prize money this year, boosting his career earnings to $3,801 - net of costs, he'll be paying to play, presumably in the hope that he'll get better and make it to big money, or at least a living

The 999th is a 27 year old Swede who has won $1,000 this year, and $83,295 in his career - I can't believe he will ever making a living playing tennis

So yes, chess not different in that respect

Go back and you'll see more discussion ensued.