European Championship - Team ENGLAND

[Jonathan Rogers]

Most chess players (pro ones who do just chess) are POOR. It's only fairly recently that some of them admitted how poor they are. Like, try adding Bogdan Lalic on facebook. I did for a while. Every day... "I hate chess! The players are too good!" I tried to help him a little, but honestly it was too depressing after a while so had to delete.

keeps a straight face

... don't know of hardly any female 'chess coaches'.

Why not start with the 20 odd years career of Claire Summerscale? And Sabrina. I believe that Harriet, Jovanka, and Sarah Hegarty coach/have coached too. Hey, perhaps it's most of the best known female chess players in this country!

[Mark Howitt]

Ok... they might coach a little but not much! I guess with Claire it helps that she has a GM husband. Even so, she found time to do a lot of free ECF work so doubt she was too busy! Anyway enough time spent on this for now.

[John Upham]

Ok... they might coach a little but not much! I guess with Claire it helps that she has a GM husband. Even so, she found time to do a lot of free ECF work so doubt she was too busy! Anyway enough time spent on this for now.

Mark,

I find it incredible that you appear to be able to provide authoritative data on other peoples careers and they time they allocate to various activities.

I teach in a number of schools and have private students: tell me how "much" or little I do?

Your final sentence was the most useful one.

[Mark Howitt]

Less than Hodgson.

[Paul Dargan]

Rather like IT work that can be off-shored the market for chess coaches has a rather Global dynamic these days. As long as you can cope with Skype and/or Chess.com/Playchess interfaces etc... you can get an hour of a GM's time for about $25. You need to pick carefully obviously for English language skills, style, etc... but there's plenty of Eastern European or other less-well-off than UK locations where people don't expect the level of reward people in the UK expect.

I was astounded when I found-out how much chess clubs in the Middle-East paid for full-time (6 days a week) live-in coaches from Eastern Europe (and not in a good way). I know severall call centre companies who pay more...

So the market is really school classes where face-face presence obviulsy matters and students who feel the need for face-fae coaching or perhaps aren't yet strong enough/independent studiers to work with an onlien coach.

Paul

[Mark Howitt]

Yep I know people who've got GM training even cheaper than $25 per hour by quite a bit. You only have to look at what the real average hourly rate is in places like Bulgaria to see what a reasonable market rate is. Remember that people are moaning here about 'not enough funding'... in Scotland, a place only slightly less economically developed than England, members of the Open team will be paying at least half their costs and not getting paid to play at all!

[Roger de Coverly]

in Scotland, a place only slightly less economically developed than England, members of the Open team will be paying at least half their costs and not getting paid to play at all!

They are likely to be fighting Wales and a handful of others for last place. There's an incentive for non-titled players that Norm chances can be available. I expect England could field a team of 5*2350 if it really had to.

[Mark Howitt]

Well yeah it could. But it seems (rightly in my view) that Scottish GMs are not willing to 'pay to play'.

[Mark Howitt]

It'll only be the first 2 boards that are around 2350 I think

[Andrew Wainwright]

Mark - why you continue to pop up on this forum with your strange take on the world is beyond me. You do not play chess, you seem to know very little about chess and you do not even appear to like chess! Why are you bothering to comment on chess?

[Mark Howitt]

I know quite a lot about chess and do like chess to an extent. I just comment when I feel like it.

[Coral Bennett]

I was refering to the World Youth. The parents have always paid for coaching.

Is this definitely true? Not saying it isn't, i don't know exactly what my parents used to have to pay for, but whilst it seems pretty obvious that there is no alternative under current Junior selection policy i thought it might of been different in the days of limited selection (and/or external funding - eg. the Norwood money). Certainly there was a point at which the pay for coaches became more attractive and there was actually a significant uptake in coaches wanting to do the job, which logically might have represented a correlation with a point at which a cash strapped BCF no longer picked up the bill. Of course in times past the often sole coach was also the Head of Delegation and would have had much of their expense covered by the organisers.

BTW does everyone pay the same, regardless of who they get, and do the parents have direct influence on coach selection?

Perhaps always is the wrong word as I can only vouch for recent years and I've only had direct involvement in organising our participation to the World Junior whilst International Director. My understanding is that parents are asked for their preference in terms of a coach and where possible a match is made and that all pay the same.

Things are different in Wales! The parents acting as the heads of the Welsh delegation at the World Youth Championships last year introduced a one tournament “rule” just days before the tournament started. This “rule” stated that no-one should be allocated to their home coach thus ensuring their daughter was reallocated to the only titled Welsh coach. By introducing this new “rule”, theirs was the only family allowed to choose which coach their child was allocated to. The benefit of being a Management Board member!

[LawrenceCooper]

Things are different in Wales! The parents acting as the heads of the Welsh delegation at the World Youth Championships last year introduced a one tournament “rule” just days before the tournament started. This “rule” stated that no-one should be allocated to their home coach thus ensuring their daughter was reallocated to the only titled Welsh coach. By introducing this new “rule”, theirs was the only family allowed to choose which coach their child was allocated to. The benefit of being a Management Board member!

At the (unofficial) EU Youth in Mureck this August the five Welsh juniors had a choice between me or no coaching

[Peter D Williams]

BTW does everyone pay the same, regardless of who they get, and do the parents have direct influence on coach selection?

Some may not pay the same as other junior chess parents if you get a grant or help from John Robinson Youth Chess Trust/ ECF. I think the junior director can ask for help for a player if funding is a problem for the parents For the record we paid the full amount and received no grant from the Trust/ECF

[Peter Turner]

From Peter Turner, some time ago Director of Junior Chess.
Earlier on in this thread Richard Bates made the comment below. Since it has been quoted again I thought it may be of interest for me to make some comments.

Is this definitely true? Not saying it isn't, i don't know exactly what my parents used to have to pay for, but whilst it seems pretty obvious that there is no alternative under current Junior selection policy i thought it might of been different in the days of limited selection (and/or external funding - eg. the Norwood money). Certainly there was a point at which the pay for coaches became more attractive and there was actually a significant uptake in coaches wanting to do the job, which logically might have represented a correlation with a point at which a cash strapped BCF no longer picked up the bill. Of course in times past the often sole coach was also the Head of Delegation and would have had much of their expense covered by the organisers.

BTW does everyone pay the same, regardless of who they get, and do the parents have direct influence on coach selection?

Currently the JD seems to practically have a nil budget compared with, during my tenure, around £15,000 support from the BCF/ECF annual budget. The largest I can remember was £17,500!! I also had the benefit of the Norwood money, BCF Youth Chess Trust, several generous bequests, sponsors such as Saitek, Winton Capital Management, Board of Actuaries and Certificate of Excellence. Richard is quite correct in that teams were quite small because Federations were only allowed to send one representative in each age group (open & girls). Also additional players by personal right if they had finished top 3 the previous year. These factors enabled me to fund the cost of coaching for all the groups I organised.