Paul Cooksey wrote: ↑Sun Oct 04, 2020 4:14 pm
Aren't rules 2, 3 and 4 redundant if the budget is £0?
Yes.
Roger de Coverly wrote: ↑Sun Oct 04, 2020 4:36 pm
Nick Ivell wrote: ↑Sun Oct 04, 2020 4:29 pm
I ask myself who the 0.5 pro was in 1970. Raymond Keene, perhaps? Was he only half a player?
I imagine he means Bob Wade, who was undoubtedly a chess professional, but as coach and writer as much as player.
Yes.
John Reyes wrote: ↑Sun Oct 04, 2020 4:25 pm
1) Really ............................................ you talk about keen Amateurs, but if you look at other Federations, you need to adapted. people think so much in the past and look at what malcolm has done in his time. we need a national team, however you talk about keen amateurs, but how many top keen amateurs (let say players over 220 plus) do we have in the uk and how many would be good enough to be select and who is the next adams????
2) you see on the last budget that he did under spend and has brought in sponsorship.
3) do you know how much each player get paid and also what go behind the scenes
4) have you read this
https://www.englishchess.org.uk/international
5) Players need coaches (you see that at darts, and tennis)
many years ago, i would have agreed with you, however when you look at what Malcolm has done, do you wanted English chess to envolve?
look at henman, then Murray, but who is after murray? sometimes you need to look towards the future and you need funding to get the right system in place.
i know you have a view, but speak to malcolm pein and your option will maybe change.
look at darts and what happen with the BDO/PDC spilt and where is the bdo and where is the PDC??
Addressing a few of your points in no particular order:
Evolving and looking towards the future - no-one can argue with that. Why, if we're looking towards the future, did we go into the last Olympiad with Michael Adams on board 1? That's like Southgate calling up Wayne Rooney because he's England's record goalscorer.
In the long term, results are predicted by ratings. Give a million pounds to a 2700, and he won't play like a 2800. But if you're giving money to GMs in the expectation that they'll perform roughly in line with their ratings, then England are going to finish 10th-20th. (Higher if some of the top players in the world don't bother with the tournament. A bronze medal in a tournament where Russia can win gold with Andreikin on board 1, is a participation trophy.)
You can spend an awful lot of money proving that, yes, the FIDE rating system is fairly accurate. What would be nice, and what I think you're talking about when you're saying "get the funding in place", is turning money into improvements in our players' ratings. But the reality of elite chess now, is that you aren't going to move the needle unless you create
salaried players, who can afford to devote all of their chess time to studying. Not coaching, not writing, not blitzing on lichess and not annihilating weekenders to pay the bills. You can wait for a Carlsen or a Vachier-Lagrave (IM by 13, GM by 15) to be born in your country through sheer luck, but you can't buy one.
Who is after Murray? Or in chess terms, who is going to be the next English player to make the Candidates? The only one of the top 10 whose 5-year rating is sloping upwards is Sadler, and he has better things to do. Is Adams is going to find another 50 rating points from somewhere at age 49? Hence, 8-year rule.
How many English players would be good enough for the Olympiad - far more than you think. Blackthorne Russia were a below-average team in 4NCL Division 1b; they would be an above-average team at the Olympiad.
Yes, players need coaches, the problem is if those coaches are adding value not by the greatness of their coaching but by how much of an obstacle they can insert between the parents and the England teams. They say to the parents, hire me, I can get your kid into the England team. And they say to the England selectors, hire me, I can get you the good kids. We should be clearer where the line between coach and agent is. Otherwise kids get stuck with the coaches who are best at getting them into the England setup, rather than the coaches who are best at coaching.
I'm a bit uneasy at the suggestion, from several people, that once you've had the Malcolm Pein treatment you see everything clearly. That sounds more televangelist than International Director. If Malcolm Pein has a fundamentally good argument, someone other than Malcolm Pein ought to be able to summarise it and have it still sound like a good argument.
Andrew Zigmond wrote: ↑Sun Oct 04, 2020 8:28 pm
It seems to be a peculiarly English attitude that we don't mind grandmasters making money from chess but we're damned if we'll pay. Only in England do we treat our top players with such contempt that we effectively tell them they are not worth our money and if they don't like it they can find another job. Ironically, if a Grandmaster washes up in our local area we then expect them to turn out for our club and/ or support with junior coaching and do it for the love because we think they owe us something.
An even worse irony is that some nations would happily meet the going rate of our top players and switching national allegiance is easy enough. If we ended up with a situation where we turned up at the Olympiad with a team of flush IMs while our top players represented other countries we would look pretty silly.
I disagree with all of that. I
do mind grandmasters making money from chess - or more accurately, I mind grandmasters taking more money out of chess in fees than they put in in audience revenue, and expecting the grassroots to cover the shortfall. The average audience for a York City FC home match is 2,500, all of whom have paid for tickets, and that isn't enough to hire a professional squad of players. The average audience for a Nicholas Pert Olympiad game is 10, none of whom have paid for tickets.
If your club's top player decides he's going to charge an appearance fee of £50 per game, do you feel obliged to pay up lest he move to the club down the road, or do you treat your top player with such contempt that you effectively tell him he's not worth your money?