English Chess Forum

Has it really been a year since we voted on this? Well, perhaps so. Presumably it's McShane again followed by either Jones or Adams. Or Short. Any of the Olympiad team except Howell, in fact.

Who else? Hawkins again, I suppose, but I've only noticed him playing 4NCL since the British .... I suppose some of Yang-Fan's successes were made since the poll of last year, but they were still a good while ago too.

How about Ameet Ghasi as an outsider's bet? After years of relative inactivity, he got his second IM norm at Sunningdale last August, and has since become Warwickshire Co-Champion and British Blitz Champion.

At Chess Scotland we have a somewhat wider definition of 'player of year', hence Geoff Chandler won in 2010 and Alex MacFarlane was one of the nominations in 2011. Perhaps the ECF should take a leaf out of Chess Scotland's book, who then would you like to see nominated?

Lara Barnes vs CJ vs Steve Giddins vs Raymond Keene would certainly add some spice to the contest, all the ECF members could then vote. Adam raoof could declare that something had gone wrong and pick whoever he wanted to win. Then 6 months later Andrew Farthing could issue an apology, saying he had meant to apologise earlier, but it had slipped his mind.

I do think it is very nice that Chess Scotland recognises the person who has made the biggest contribution and not just who has the biggest grade. Perhaps Carl Hibbard or Lawrence Cooper would be appropriate ECF players of the year in 2012.

I would suggest me as well

Let me start by declaring an interest.

Regardless, I think Matthew has had a brilliant idea so I am starting a campaign "Lara Barnes for player of the Year"

Lara has suffered accusations of homophobia in the national press and on the Internet. She has been denied an apology from the person directly responsible for these accusations being made. Despite this she offered her services as the Manager of the British Championships.

Here again she has been hampered by the ECFs failure to produce accounts so her hands have been tied as to how much money she can carry forward. Despite this she continues to try to do her best for this year's event.

As a player she has a positive score for her club, Tynemouth in the Northumberland League.

VOTE FOR LARA!!!

I was thinking of that (after Matthew's post but before Alex's).

I also see merit in the Chess Scotland tradition. So, unless persuaded otherwise, I will go for

1 Lara
2 Carl
3 Loz
4 Luke
5 Gawain

My 1st vote has gone to Lawrence, it would be very nice if, for a change, someone who has put more into chess than they have taken out were to win the vote.

Matthew Turner wrote:At Chess Scotland we have a somewhat wider definition of 'player of year', ... Perhaps the ECF should take a leaf out of Chess Scotland's book, who then would you like to see nominated?

To be fair, having briefly perused the preamble to the voting form, the ECF seem to have allowed voters to make their definition as wide as they see fit. The only absolute requirement would appear to be that the person concerned is a chess player in some sense.

I was wondering who to nominate when the email arrived yesterday morning. My thoughts were, perhaps its time for a woman to win this again, and so I put down Jovanka Houska simply because I know who she is, and year in year out she plugs away in quite a few strong tournaments.

I quite like the idea of Lara being nominated, perhaps for different reasons than Alex McFarlane advances, as she fits into the reason behind Peter's nomination for Lawrence. I also go along with Alex Holowczak's suggestion, who after six/seven year's absence has come back stronger than he was previously.

So my choices are:
- Jovanka
- Lara
- Ameet
- Lawrence
and I shall sleep on it as to which order I finally decide upon.

Just sent off the Word doc to the office with the following voting:

1st Lara Barnes 5
2nd Alex McFarlane 4
3rd Matthew Sadler 3
4th Ameet Ghasi 2
5th Peter Lalic 1


Will the President be presenting the award?

John Upham wrote:Just sent off the Word doc to the office with the following voting:

.... 5th Peter Lalic 1

Actually, that's not at all a bad thought. It wasn't that long ago that I managed to beat Peter. Now I'd be lucky to get into the same match as him.

Aside from his playing achievements, he also seems to be making strides as a coach and has along standing YouTube channel of course.

No-one seems to have voted for Carl yet!

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:No-one seems to have voted for Carl yet!

We are using general ECF accounting practices to count each and every vote

Results will either by published or forgotten

Carl was one of my 5.

(Though only in third place I'm afraid.)

I voted for Carl and Lara but not in first place. Lawrence won the 'Turner Prize'.!!