English Chess Forum

As a protest at the interesting nature of the official ECF Player of the Year nominations, I'm setting up my own competition. You may nominate anyone you like; nominations close at the end of May. After that, I shall set up voting.

Nominees so far:

James Adair
Michael Adams
Keith Arkell
Daniel Bisby
Sabrina Chevannes
Daniel Fernandez
John Gallagher
Meri Grigoryan
Arul Gupta
Ravi Haria
Jonathan Hawkins
Amy Hoare
David Howell
Akshaya Kalaiyalahan
Koby Kalavannan
Chris Kreuzer
Don L'Epine
Mark Lyell
Alan Merry
John Nunn
Brendan O'Gorman
Robert Parsons
Stewart Reuben
David Robertson
Chris Ross
Isaac Sanders
Nigel Short
Lawrence Trent
Matthew Webb
David C. Wood

Don’t want to get into factional infighting already (although you lot ARE all splitters) but ...


do we need nominations? Can’t we just vote for anybody under the old ECF system?

I was wanting to save myself some work, and this way allows me to use the forum's "poll" function.

I would have to go Howell to be honest.

I also watched Daniel Fernandez play some nice stuff so two with shocking time issues.

IM Jack Rudd wrote:I was wanting to save myself some work, and this way allows me to use the forum's "poll" function.

A limit of 15 on there at the moment might need increasing.

I was delighted that Yorkshire players Matthew Webb and James Adair made the original list; both have played some excellent chess this season and deserved their recognition (Matty if I can only nominate one).

You may nominate as many as you wish.

Andrew Zigmond wrote:I was delighted that Yorkshire players Matthew Webb and James Adair made the original list; both have played some excellent chess this season and deserved their recognition (Matty if I can only nominate one).

Agreed, they are both very worthy nominations.

I think the problem with nominations though is if you don't know the right people then you can miss out. There may be many players out there who could get lots of votes but if they don't know the right people who have sufficient influence or can get their name on the list then it's tough. There are probably about a hundred players that you could make a case for so I think it's better to give members the freedom to vote as they wish, it's still possible to highlight those that have had high profile successes without excluding everyone else.

IM Jack Rudd wrote:You may nominate as many as you wish.

Keith Arkell

Although Keith has gone far, and David will go further, I nominate John Nunn for coming back.

Hawkins must get a nomination forclinching the GM title and winning the British? I reslise the only diversity box he ticks is 'Northern' but that's not really an excuse to omit him.

Paul

I’m not so bothered about the vote. More interesting to me are the suggestions and why people make them. As Lawrence says above there are hundreds you could argue for. Here are a few of mine (just off the top of my head).

Jonathan Hawkins
British Champion and grandmaster. A superb achievement.

David Howell
Not for being co-British Champion - that seems run of the mill for him now. More from transforming himself from an 'ordinary 2600 GM' (what an oxymoron that is) to touching 2700.

Matthew Webb
I know this guy only by name, but goodness me his achievement is unprecedented. People become British Champions, GM norms and titles are secured. That’s what happens. I can’t think of any rating rise even remotely comparable to Matthew Webb’s in almost 30 years of playing chess.

Deserves a vote even if he has rather proved that we all could be an awful lot better than we are if we’d just stop being lazy and put our backs into it.
(although I don’t think I could have got anywhere near his rating rise however hard I worked. Inspirational though. It’s just that I’m putting that inspiration into piano practice rather than chess).


Brendon O’Gorman
For the sheer number of games that he plays.

And a couple of more personal ones.


Arul Gupta
I played this young fellow at Golders Green last August. He was rated 166 then. I had to fight hard to draw. He was clearly under-rated even then but I didn’t expect that a few weeks later he would qualify for the British Championship. Admittedly that’s not the same kind of achievement that it used to be (there\s an under 2000 grading prize in the main even this year for goodness sake) but at Coulsdon he played and beat Robin Haldane, Chino Atako and Gavin Lock one after the other.

Not too shabby for a 13-year-old. Or anybody for that matter.

Akshaya kalaiyalahan
I played a league game on the board next to this young lady not long before Christmas. Touching 200 ECF at aged 13. That’s incredible.

Great selection Jon. My nominations are:

Lawrence Trent - close to getting his GM norm and is thought of as one of the best commentators in the world. Unfortunately a couple of days ago he stated his intention to stop playing competitive chess. Hope he changes his mind.

Amy Hoare - for the same reasons as Jack gave on the ECF Forum. Odd then that Jack hasn't nominated Amy here!

Sabrina Chevannes has been playing a fair amount lately over the world and has been in the media.

Dan Bisby - totally great effort in Reykjavik

Mark Lyell who plays more rated games of chess than anyone I know apart from Nigel Short.

Nigel Short - tournament victories already noted plus his articles in New In Chess are legend and his match against Kasparov obtained global attention.

None of the above will win I guess. Don't care. At least I get to nominate them!

Hawkins' rise was surely something like Webb?

Webb has always been very dangerous - I can remember being warned about him by White Rose folk before a Bradford match several years back now. Previously really quite erratic and prone to playing not great openings. Those openings very much fixed nowadays of course along with other upgrades from massive hard work.

The most impressive thing for me is the way he's almost stopped losing games. Not at all easy, especially with the way he's been playing!

Not that I'd take him for player of the year this time - this year he mostly confirmed that last year wasn't a one off. Even lost the odd game