How much more incompetence can we afford from ECF?

[Ben Purton]

Everyone knows the cricket stuff . Didnt Svid's get like a cartoon of him playing cricket at some tourn , where they got "charactertures?"(Spelling is not my good point) as extra prizes. End of the day, why is 10 years ago Slough being brought in to this? I dont think again it matters. Unless your trying to call Adams fundermentally selfish and offering proof? I guess when 30 rating points can cost you 50k a year(invites to Corus et al). Your going to be touchy when you look like your going on a "Duckegg streak"(lots of zeros). So in that respect I can understand from a "realism" view why he would decide to take a two day break and take a nice set of blanc bits against Radjabov.

Ben

[Matthew Turner]

Jon,
I don't see how subsequent events PROVED Tony K to be correct. Mickey was paid to play and Nigel Johnson and Tony Miles considered his request to play on board three unreasonable. I consider Nigel Johnson and Tony Miles to be perfectly justified in their decision. If Mickey didn't like it, then it is free country and he could choose not to play for Slough again. Why should a team pander to one player's whim at the expense of other team members?

[John Saunders]

Please don't misinterpret what I am saying. I have simply filled in a few relevant facts as a contemporary eye (ear?) witness. I can see nothing wrong with Adams making his appearance for a team conditional on playing on a board other than the top one. Even at the amateur level people cut deals with match captains along these lines where circumstances dictate. It seems to me that team management had a straight choice between accepting that deal and not playing him at all but they opted for a 'third way'. If they considered Mickey's conditions for playing unreasonable, then the time to have said so was when they were inviting him to play, not when Mickey was en route to the venue. I don't think Nigel thought the board order arrangement unreasonable - my memory suggests it was Tony M (who presumably was not party to the original invitation) who persuaded him when he himself turned up at the venue. At that stage it was too late to unpick the deal - at least that is my understanding of Tony K's attitude to the decision.

Subsequent events proved Tony K to be correct in that he judged that Mickey would be upset at having his conditions for playing overruled. Mickey did the honourable thing - turned up, played the game - and never played for Slough again.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Ben, I did not raise the Slough events in order to suggest Adams was selfish - read back and you will see that I described him as a consummate professional. I raised it in order to explain to those who were saying "play Adams against Russia whether he wants to play or not" exactly the risks of such a course of action - i.e, there is a real risk that if he feels he is being unfairly treated, then we might not see him in future Olympiads. Slough could (and did) take that risk but I don`t see that England can.

Of course, as Matthew and others say, there are limits. Even the board one cannot get his own way all the time; he is part of a team. What we disagree about is whether this case was within the limits, and in this case I think that we cannot blame Adams for making a stand. Losing two consecutive games must be quite a trauma for Adams, who is struggling as it is to keep his rating high enough to get invitations to the top tournaments - and that is where his real income is coming from, and not, I imagine, from playing for England. (Also, whether we like it or not, we were not exactly about to win the olympiad v Russia in round six. Thus my earlier point about the importance of timing - if we were playing for gold in the penultimate round, as we were in 1994, that might have been different).

[Ben Purton]

I Do realise the money thing( I stated my "50k" stuff in above post), I appreciate what your saying, Thing is , if we now do really well and come 5th/6th or something. Then Adams might have cost the medal. Hindsight would again be a useful tool. I really have to ask, if Adams beat King, do you honestly think he would have quit? I dont think he would have.

I dont know, I think the lack of care amongst England "fans" of the chess team, allows for some things that if we did have a larger caring audience really wouldnt go down well. Im really proud of the England mens team, especially the guys my age. However I cant ever get inspired to care about the Italian Rugby team, sorry , got confused, the womens olympiad team. I also think Adams thinks he can do what he wants, which yes he probaly can. But its not nice as a "fan" to be like "o we have a medal chance in 2010, will Adams want to play with black"


Ben

[Matthew Turner]

There are two strong arguments that are being made here for Adams resting

1. It was a rational choice, we had very little chance against Russia so he was more important in other matches. This is probably absolutely true, but humans are not rational, pyschology and emotion play a big part in sport. Once you admit you are not up to facing the best, you are on a slippery slope.

2. Adams earnt a rest, you could not make him play, after all his major source of income comes from tournaments rather than playing for his country. Again this is probably absolutely true, the same argument is continually debated in football (club vs country). However, I think things are slightly different in this case. England were playing board one in the Olympiad and with Adams playing there was a chance that we could beat Russia. Had this happened the story would have been picked up by the chess journalists and in my opinion almost certainly seaped through into the mainstream press. This would have been a tremendous boost for chess in England, LV would have gained significant publicity and who knows perhaps more sponsorship would be forthcoming, with Mickey being a beneficiary, making it a rather shortsighted decision for him not to play.

Well that is how I see it anyway.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Ok, I agree with much of that, though I would not go so far as to say that Adams thinks he can do what he likes. I doubt that very much - certainly the Slough and the Kramnik examples, if that is all that we have in mind, fall far short of that.

But I agree that there might be a feeling of dissociation from the team and the average English chessplayer; they are not sponsored by us (never have been) and they don't see that they owe us anything just because we are all English. John corroborates this by pointing out the package draw with Russia in Istanbul which seemed to have very little merit from our own perspective (and that shows how longstanding the problem has been).

The lack of any media interest is critical to this. If there were no media interest in tennis, I daresay that Henman and Murray might have been equally wary of playing Davis Cup matches if it seemed incompatible with their wider professional interests (actually, does anyone on this forum have a better knowledge of Henman/Rusedski/Murray enthusiasm for the Davis Cup, since that seems to be much the closest analogy to our chess team?)

Since writing this, I just saw Matthew's post. It is true that there is something of a chicken and egg situation - personal sacrifices/risks may have to be made if we are to have any chance of attracting wider media attention. But the media is an uncontrollable beast, and did not give us any attention when we won the European Championships in 1997, so one would be asking a lot of Adams to risk a loss with Black on the rather speculative possibility of media coverage in the (already unlikely) event of victory in one particular match.

If anyone can find a way to get and to keep the media interested in chess, well they get the freedom of the city ..

[Mick Norris]

The lack of any media interest is critical to this. If there were no media interest in tennis, I daresay that Henman and Murray might have been equally wary of playing Davis Cup matches if it seemed incompatible with their wider professional interests (actually, does anyone on this forum have a better knowledge of Henman/Rusedski/Murray enthusiasm for the Davis Cup, since that seems to be much the closest analogy to our chess team?)..

Henman showed a great deal of interest, until he got brassed off with the poor performance of his colleagues, and his body began to dictate that too much tennis/travel was bad

Rusedski was very enthusiastic, which I guess was an attempt to prove he was British not Canadian

Murray seems to follow the Henman route, but had injury problems at the start rather than end of his career

Given how much money there is in tennis, I'm not sure it is a good analogy though

[Ben Purton]

I Agree with Matt, us beating Russia at chess would, or at least is the best chance of English papers and media taking notice of "us".

[Ben Purton]

That or David Howell Beating Anand !!!!!!!

[Richard Bates]

The point, as raised previously, is that Adams shouldn't have played against Malta. And possibly not against Italy. I wonder if the only reason he did in both was because he had white. Although with hindsight given Nigel's performances with Black one could argue that this was not so stupid on one level.

To not play against Russia was probably perfectly justifiable in the circumstances. It's just the circumstances shouldn't have arisen in the first place.

I don't actually think the argument that "we were never going to beat/always going to lose to(?) Russia" is a good one at all. In a four board match there is no team that England wouldn't have a reasonable chance against. More relevant is looking at the tournament as a whole. Had Adams played and England got a result against Russia then logically he would have had to play in the next match, and the next one,... until England lost. At which point England would probably have been in no better position anyway and their top board would have been knackered. And of course they could have lost against Russia anyway.

ps. shouldn't all these posts be in the Olympiad section? People are doing a sterling job referencing LV every so often as per the original post, but still...