Proposals for future D1/2 formats

[Ben Purton]

Our Female player(from Memory) Gareth , has faced:

Bjorn Tiller IM
160 player
180 wfm
175 wfm
180
180 wfm

In her 6 games......... Your logic is a bit flawed

[Christopher Kreuzer]

there are plenty of female players interested in playing in the 4NCL who don't get asked or end up as second or third choice for some of the bigger teams.

Doesn't the requirement work against increasing female participation to some extent if the bigger teams (or any team, really) needs to keep several female players "on their books" to ensure at least one is available for each weekend? Surely there must be times when the second or third choice female players are available but not selected.

[Alex Holowczak]

a) People of a certain job?
b) must have a player whos not ENG , one from any other fed
c) why don't we chuck in religion for good measure.

I guess this is part of the principled problem, for me.

We have now: You must have players of both sexes in your team - which in reality means you must have a female player. In Division 2 this is relaxed. Both are done with the aim of getting more juniors/women involved. I'm not convinced that the exiled women (if the rules were changed) would drop out of the competition. We have individuals running junior-only teams. I'm sure someone could follow the lead and run a team full of women. I wouldn't necessarily see any harm in that.

But anyway, we're involving two apparent minorities with the aim of supporting them. OK, so now we extend that. Seniors aren't really a minority chess-wise in the same way as juniors and females are, so I understand your argument. But we might decide that:
(a) We don't have many tradesman involved. We could promote chess by saying you must have at least one "handy-man" in your team, in order to promote chess within that demographic. Chess has a stigma of being posh and nerdy; this might help to break it.
(b) I guess this makes the league more marketable; having non-English players certainly gives more of a worldwide flavour, so could be better for people who read about it on (say) ChessBase.
(c) You could argue we have very few Islamic players (for example), so we'll say you need at least 1 of those just to popularise the game within that demographic.

So now you get all these different classes of people, each encouraged to be a part of teams because they help the image of the league, and perhaps even chess itself.

On a philosophical note if nothing else, I'm not sure I like a system where everyone gets categorised as junior, female and other (with overlaps where appropriate). Certainly the categorisation causes needless arguments about whether we should have it or not. For that reason alone, I wouldn't have put the rule in in the first place.

It seems to me that there aren't enough women/juniors to go around - if you're short of a female player, what hope do the other teams have! - so there needs to be some sort of solution. If we're deciding to restructure anyway to 24 teams needing this, rather than 32, then the problem might disappear anyway.

[Alex Holowczak]

there are plenty of female players interested in playing in the 4NCL who don't get asked or end up as second or third choice for some of the bigger teams.

Doesn't the requirement work against increasing female participation to some extent if the bigger teams (or any team, really) needs to keep several female players "on their books" to ensure at least one is available for each weekend? Surely there must be times when the second or third choice female players are available but not selected.

Wood Green have: Cramling, Arakhamia-Grant, Houska, Hagesaether and Hegarty on their books. (They also have Richard Pert twice for some reason...) I don't know how often they all play - not all are British so they'd have to travel - but they only need 2 to go around their 2 teams. Certainly it'd be a good tactical ploy to sign up as many British female players as you could for your team if you're in Division One.

[LozCooper]

there are plenty of female players interested in playing in the 4NCL who don't get asked or end up as second or third choice for some of the bigger teams.

Doesn't the requirement work against increasing female participation to some extent if the bigger teams (or any team, really) needs to keep several female players "on their books" to ensure at least one is available for each weekend? Surely there must be times when the second or third choice female players are available but not selected.

That was exactly my point. There's a surplus of women players both registered and those who aren't registered because they can't find a team.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

there are plenty of female players interested in playing in the 4NCL who don't get asked or end up as second or third choice for some of the bigger teams.

Doesn't the requirement work against increasing female participation to some extent if the bigger teams (or any team, really) needs to keep several female players "on their books" to ensure at least one is available for each weekend? Surely there must be times when the second or third choice female players are available but not selected.

Wood Green have: Cramling, Arakhamia-Grant, Houska, Hagesaether and Hegarty on their books. (They also have Richard Pert twice for some reason...) I don't know how often they all play - not all are British so they'd have to travel - but they only need 2 to go around their 2 teams. Certainly it'd be a good tactical ploy to sign up as many British female players as you could for your team if you're in Division One.

Arne Hagesaether is male (check his FIDE rating card for confirmation). Cramling looks like a last-round booster. Other than that, I agree with your points.

EDIT: And double-checking, I see you mean Ellen Hagesaether. Sorry about that! When scanning the list, I automatically found my eyes drawn to the bright green new registration, not the other one. Are all the chess Hagesaethers related?

[Alex Holowczak]

Cramling looks like a last-round booster.

Cramling has definitely played for them before; I remember inputting her game at one point...

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Cramling looks like a last-round booster.

Cramling has definitely played for them before; I remember inputting her game at one point...

Yeah, she has. But I thought it was last year in the final rounds. Has she played for them this season?

[Alex Holowczak]

Has she played for them this season?

Doesn't look like it from the results.

[Jonathan Rogers]

I remember her beating Karl Mah in round 4 in 2007/8; she also played in rounds 3-4 in 2004/5; and in rounds 7-8 last season. That's just from memory.

I understand the assumption that she would only be required in the last weekend, but Wood Green pay* by their own rules ...

* I mean "play"

[LozCooper]

there are plenty of female players interested in playing in the 4NCL who don't get asked or end up as second or third choice for some of the bigger teams.

Doesn't the requirement work against increasing female participation to some extent if the bigger teams (or any team, really) needs to keep several female players "on their books" to ensure at least one is available for each weekend? Surely there must be times when the second or third choice female players are available but not selected.

Wood Green have: Cramling, Arakhamia-Grant, Houska, Hagesaether and Hegarty on their books. (They also have Richard Pert twice for some reason...) I don't know how often they all play - not all are British so they'd have to travel - but they only need 2 to go around their 2 teams. Certainly it'd be a good tactical ploy to sign up as many British female players as you could for your team if you're in Division One.

I think in WGHK's case they have three regulars, Ketevan, Jovanka and Sarah. At least two of those three player each weekend when available and any others are either back up or brought in for big matches.
There are several players who appear on multiple lists, Yang-Fan is another example, bizarrely the software doesn't allow them to delete names (or at least that was the reason I was given when I pointed this out!)

[Brian Valentine]

Looking at the current rules, I think a team of 8 under 16 girls or of 8 under 16 boys would meet these requirements. I'm not clear whether the 4NCL would deem such a situation as a good thing or a bad thing. The new wording would appear to allow 8 senior men and I guess this would be more likely to be a bad thing.