Hastings International Chess Congress 2010-11

[Paul Sanders]

I think that putting together "world comparisons" at such a young age is not particularly useful - there are too many variables (you will get players who have been playing for 6 years and others for 2, players who have played dozens of international tournaments and others with a handful, players who have been intensively coached (not always to their long run benefit) and others who are largely self-taught) and anyway 100pts at that age is a mere drop in the ocean when it is normal for ratings to go up by that amount in a few months.

This is quite at odds with my experience trying to help Isaac achieve to his potential. Ratings extremely rarely move by 100pts in a few months, and the children who might have some chance to excel are those who have been playing strong tournaments for many years by the age of 12.

The world comparisons are done for us by FIDE ratings, which seem to be reasonably accurate, again in my experience, allowing for a bit of a lag (less these days) due to the delay in adding new results to the database. Rates of improvement seem to be fairly predictable too - with a few degrees difference in the incline here or there, and the odd set back. Perhaps inexperience causes children to under-perform in big international tournaments but that is easily fixed

The most critical years I would suggest are ages 10 - 12 for the simple fact that if you don't get over the first big hurdle by the age of 14 GCSEs start looming. And indeed if you impose ENG registered improvement graphs on the best of their age groups you find that the ENGs are between 1 and 3 years behind their peers in the top 200 for each birth year.

By way of illustration, Isaac (age 12 and FIDE U14) is roughly 80th in the world for his birth year, 240th at U14, but 1st at U14 in England. We have had to bow out of ECF junior selection in order to give him as much chance as possible of catching up.

[John Wright]

An Indian winter then?

Still, a relatively drab event, as last year, for the English spectator because again none of the Englsh players shone throughout (though Howell started well and Richard Bates and Tom Rendle had their moments). Can any one name a single good game/result by any of our leading juniors? Me neither.

Zhou's win against Spence (Rd 8.) wasn't too shabby.

[Richard Bates]

I think that putting together "world comparisons" at such a young age is not particularly useful - there are too many variables (you will get players who have been playing for 6 years and others for 2, players who have played dozens of international tournaments and others with a handful, players who have been intensively coached (not always to their long run benefit) and others who are largely self-taught) and anyway 100pts at that age is a mere drop in the ocean when it is normal for ratings to go up by that amount in a few months.

This is quite at odds with my experience trying to help Isaac achieve to his potential. Ratings extremely rarely move by 100pts in a few months, and the children who might have some chance to excel are those who have been playing strong tournaments for many years by the age of 12.

The world comparisons are done for us by FIDE ratings, which seem to be reasonably accurate, again in my experience, allowing for a bit of a lag (less these days) due to the delay in adding new results to the database. Rates of improvement seem to be fairly predictable too - with a few degrees difference in the incline here or there, and the odd set back. Perhaps inexperience causes children to under-perform in big international tournaments but that is easily fixed

The most critical years I would suggest are ages 10 - 12 for the simple fact that if you don't get over the first big hurdle by the age of 14 GCSEs start looming. And indeed if you impose ENG registered improvement graphs on the best of their age groups you find that the ENGs are between 1 and 3 years behind their peers in the top 200 for each birth year.

By way of illustration, Isaac (age 12 and FIDE U14) is roughly 80th in the world for his birth year, 240th at U14, but 1st at U14 in England. We have had to bow out of ECF junior selection in order to give him as much chance as possible of catching up.

Well good luck, but it will be interesting to see if you hold the same opinions in a few years time. I guess it depends partly on what one means by "achieve potential", and also whether speed of achievement is seen as a fundamental part of that. Historically i think many of the best English juniors have developed in "jumps" (perhaps not unrelated to the lack of flexibility in the schooling process), and it didn't necessarily hold all of them back. Of course as Jonathan intimated earlier, everyone tends to see the situation through the prism of their own junior experiences, and different eras don't always compare easily. I would however argue that there is a difference between taking a relative approach (how good am i compared to everyone else?), and an absolute approach (how good am i?). I prefer the latter.

Paul, you have said before that the whole process has been a learning experience. It would be interesting to know how much your view of likely improvement in the future ("if you haven't done it by 14 you won't do it" - apologies for the simplistic paraphrasing - what is "the first big hurdle?") is based on actual observation of what happens in later age groups.

[Alex Holowczak]

I would however argue that there is a difference between taking a relative approach (how good am i compared to everyone else?), and an absolute approach (how good am i?). I prefer the latter.

The latter must be drummed in as the most important.

Schools chess suffers from a desire for all of the non-1st team players to not play on anything higher than board 6. Often, they'd even rather be on board 6 of a 2nd team, than board 1 of a 3rd team! They have a fear of losing, caused by thinking about how good they are relative to their potential opponents, rather than their actual ability to play the game. They're playing chess to win, rather than for the enjoyment, and it can't be any surprise that they soon give up the game. If they only ever play to be better than the people who they're playing against, then they'll never enjoy chess, because they'll always come up against people who they'll lose to, whether they're 2300 standard or 1300 standard.

If you look at junior chess, this problem is rife (at least, around here), and while not a problem for the top juniors, it's a major hurdle for the majority of people, who are tomorrow's league players. Given there needs to be league chess to fund an ECF which will fund things like the World Youth and Olympiad teams for tomorrow's GMs to play in, this is a problem that shouldn't be ignored.

[Paul Sanders]

Well good luck, but it will be interesting to see if you hold the same opinions in a few years time. I guess it depends partly on what one means by "achieve potential", and also whether speed of achievement is seen as a fundamental part of that. Historically i think many of the best English juniors have developed in "jumps" (perhaps not unrelated to the lack of flexibility in the schooling process), and it didn't necessarily hold all of them back. Of course as Jonathan intimated earlier, everyone tends to see the situation through the prism of their own junior experiences, and different eras don't always compare easily. I would however argue that there is a difference between taking a relative approach (how good am i compared to everyone else?), and an absolute approach (how good am i?). I prefer the latter.

Paul, you have said before that the whole process has been a learning experience. It would be interesting to know how much your view of likely improvement in the future ("if you haven't done it by 14 you won't do it" - apologies for the simplistic paraphrasing - what is "the first big hurdle?") is based on actual observation of what happens in later age groups.

I would agree wholeheartedly that 'achieving your potential' means whatever you think it should mean at the time. Matchplay is all about beating people though, so is by nature relative, and ratings are all about a statistical prediction of your likelihood of beating another rated player, so also relative. Puzzle solving might lend itself to some kind of absolute measurement perhaps.

For Isaac the first big hurdle is getting in contention with his age group international peers. It would be wonderful to have a bit of time and expertise available to find out what the FIDE database is actually telling us, but my observation is that something about the way chess works in England acts to delay development by a year or more, and that the critical years seem to be 10 to 12. Perhaps the English junior circuit is too attractive! But by U14 ENG players seem to be out of contention at international level (number 1 in England, number 241 in the world) and already dropping out of tournament chess.

What his ambition might later become we have yet to be told.