England teams for 2011 European Team Championship

[John Moore]

Alex - not really. I suspect we will make a big score against Finland - Mickey has white against Nyback and the rest of their guys are talented but not as strong as our guys. Then we get Ukraine in the last round! Mickey draws with Chucky and we lose the other three. My prediction - but Nigel will expect to murder Ponomariev with White and who knows.

[Jonathan Rogers]

It would be unfortunate if a last round win would get Adams the board prize and he is paired Black v Ivanchuk! But one step at a time, maybe Ukraine will lose again... (and Adams has I believe said that his one of favourite personal games was a Black win v Ivanchuk, er, twenty years ago).

Chris - even two big wins only provide limited solace, since matchpoints count first, and we are back to -1. We are talking about the difference between 12th and 16th, or whatever. Adams' board prize probably is the priority but there is not much one can do to help one's board one - you cannot give him extra Whites in the same way that you could for your boards two, three and four!

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Sure, but since it is rating performance (and he has played all the games already), you can rest your board one for one of the games (though likely not two of them). It depends who Aronian and Topalov are playing in round 8 (and what their ratings are). If the top boards all play, it will be Aronian against Giri; Topalov against Caruana; and Adams against Nyback. Not looked at the colours. Of course, calculations at this stage are pretty pointless. It is when the last round pairings are out that things will become clearer.

[Mick Norris]

Aronian and Topalov both have white - I don't think you can be confident given Aronian's form, but Topalov you would expect to win, so Mickey would have to play and win too (even then Topalov would overtake him)

Radjabov has white against presumably Naiditsch, and his only win is against Svidler, although he has drawn with Topalov, Aronian, Bacrot and Vallejo, so he might narrow the gap too

EDIT Topalov playing Godena instead of Caruana, so definitely a win, although as Godena is rated lower than Nyback, this is actually a chance for Mickey to widen the gap with a win

[LozCooper]

remembering that we do have two teams England's women made probably their best result today in drawing with Greece, which involved wins against two WGMs on boards two and three.

Sarah Hegarty though lost again (and so has lost all her games except against Norway). Is it a student thing perhaps (David Howell being the other player who has come mid-term)? I think that she should have to be dropped for the next round now that the team is starting to gain some momentum and might still be able to achieve its pre-tournament goals, even though this was probably not the original game plan (since she missed the first few rounds already). The mens' team might be different; there isn't much momentum to maintain.

To be fair, she has lost three games with black against players 200 points higher rated than her, hardly a disaster, especially as she has had chances in several of the games. I think Glenn is capable of captaining the team and has done a good job given the strength of the opposition.

[David Sedgwick]

I got many things wrong when I was working it out:
(1) Sweden didn't downfloat, Georgia did for some reason
(2) We end up v Finland. I can only think that this was due to a colour problem; I don't see what the problem was because Norway would have had a 3-5 split, which is fine within the rules. Finland and Lithuania would have both been 4-4 if you had England v Norway and Finland v Lithuania. Now Finland have gone 3-5 instead.

While working this out, I saw that Spain had three "black"s in a row earlier on; which I hitherto thought was not allowed...

I can't understand these pairings. Anyone spot what I've missed?

One possibility is that the pairing rules which I posted, extracted from the ECU Tournament Regulations on their website, are not the precise rules actually in use at the event.

It wouldn't be the first time that something like that has happened.

[Mark Howitt]

So far the performances of both teams have been pretty shameful- will write more about this when I have time.

[Mick Norris]

Bo. 24 Montenegro Rtg - 22 England Rtg
12.1 WGM Vojinovic Jovana 2346 - IM Houska Jovanka 2415
12.2 WFM Milovic Aleksandra 2171 - IM Ciuksyte Dagne 2327
12.3 WFM Stojanovic Marija R 2095 - WFM Yurenok Maria S 2106
12.4 Blagojevic Tijana 1925 - WFM Bhatia Kanwal K 2087


22. England (RtgAvg:2234, Captain: Glenn Flear / TB1: 5 / TB2: 13.5)
Bo. Name Rtg FED 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Pts. Games RtgAvg Rp
1 IM Houska Jovanka 2415 ENG 0 ½ 1 ½ ½ 0 2.5 6 2362 2305
2 IM Ciuksyte Dagne 2327 ENG ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 1 1 5.0 7 2264 2422
3 WFM Yurenok Maria S 2106 ENG ½ 0 ½ 0 1 1 3.0 6 2169 2169
4 WFM Bhatia Kanwal K 2087 ENG 0 0 ½ ½ 1 2.0 5 2154 2082
5 WFM Hegarty Sarah N 2060 ENG 0 0 1 0 1.0 4 2116 1923

Decent performance so far, and a win today would take them above their seeded position

Best of luck to them

[Mick Norris]

Bo. 8 England Rtg - 28 Finland Rtg
15.1 GM Adams Michael 2734 - GM Nyback Tomi 2631
15.2 GM Short Nigel D 2698 - IM Sammalvuo Tapani 2492
15.3 GM Jones Gawain C B 2635 - IM Agopov Mikael 2450
15.4 GM Pert Nicholas 2563 - IM Karttunen Mika 2434

Best of luck today

[Jonathan Rogers]

remembering that we do have two teams England's women made probably their best result today in drawing with Greece, which involved wins against two WGMs on boards two and three.

Sarah Hegarty though lost again (and so has lost all her games except against Norway). Is it a student thing perhaps (David Howell being the other player who has come mid-term)? I think that she should have to be dropped for the next round now that the team is starting to gain some momentum and might still be able to achieve its pre-tournament goals, even though this was probably not the original game plan (since she missed the first few rounds already). The mens' team might be different; there isn't much momentum to maintain.

To be fair, she has lost three games with black against players 200 points higher rated than her, hardly a disaster, especially as she has had chances in several of the games. I think Glenn is capable of captaining the team and has done a good job given the strength of the opposition.

Ok, we are just following the results here. It had also passed me by that Sarah had three Blacks from four, and all against the three tougher opponents too.

Perhaps my main point was really that one should be prepared to depart from pre-tournament plans; whether or not this is such a case is indeed hard to say without seeing all the games. Nonetheless, I still tend to think that the team selection for today is the right one.

[Jonathan Rogers]

So far the performances of both teams have been pretty shameful- will write more about this when I have time.

Perhaps you won't have time. The women are performing to their seeding, for a start, so if you want to criticise them, then you have to complain instead about the fact that they were so lowly seeded in the first place - but I don't know whom you propose to criticise for that, and I don't see how you can criticise the decision to send the lowly seeded team, since it is sponsored!

[LozCooper]

So far the performances of both teams have been pretty shameful- will write more about this when I have time.

Perhaps you won't have time. The women are performing to their seeding, for a start, so if you want to criticise them, then you have to complain instead about the fact that they were so lowly seeded in the first place - but I don't know whom you propose to criticise for that, and I don't see how you can criticise the decision to send the lowly seeded team, since it is sponsored!

I agree with Jonathan's comments regarding the women's team. They have performed to their seeding and could easily have had more points, the German match being one obvious example. Maria Yurenok has had a fine debut and Dagne has made a very good comeback to the team after a three year absence.

As regards the open team, disappointing yes, poor maybe but shameful definitely not. We are on the same points as Israel and Ukraine which gives an idea of the strength of the tournament. We were 2-1 up against Armenia & Czechs, 1.5 each against Israel but the final game went against us on each occasion. Had we beaten Poland yesterday (and as captain I take full responsiblity for the results and the selection) I don't think anyone could have grumbled about the team's performance.

I still hope for a strong finish and whilst we are not going to achieve the placing we had hoped for it has not been through any lack of effort from the players or captain.

[Richard Bates]

"Shameful" is a pretty ridiculous comment. Unless you've got some photos of some dwarf throwing events or something?

The women's team have clearly performed about par - as makes sense when one looks at the performance ratings - Dagne and Maria a bit above, Jovanka and Sarah a bit below, and Kanwal at par.

The men's team are clearly suffering particularly from David's poor form - whether this is due to the switch from full time player to university student and/or the possibility that he suffers particularly from the time control (or some other factor of which we are not aware) only he could probably say. One would hope it's the second option for the sake of his chances in the London classic.

In general though these tournaments are very difficult for captains - in many ways it would be a lot simpler if we just sent 4 players, especially for a nine-round tournament, and just take the risk that nobody is taken ill (perhaps the captain could be a strongish grandmaster as a reserve just in case, but not expecting to play?). In the old days we had six players for 4 boards (over a longer tournament), and the game point format meant it was perfectly possible to rest players whilst both not terminally damaging the team's overall tournament chances (because a "poor" individual match result could be recovered with a couple of large wins against the consequent weaker opposition) and without having problems managing colour sequences (not too difficult when you can rest two players at a time). The trouble these days is that if somebody has a poor result with black, the temptation is to rest them only to potentially find that after their rest day they are then reintroduced with another black - admittedly this problem is mitigated partly by the pairing system which doesn't generate rigid colour sequences.

[David Pardoe]

You cant criticise the UK teams for there efforts at this event.
However, I do wonder whether some restructuring might be beneficial for this event.
Firstly, if the England team is sponsored, why dont the sponsors get a mention anywhere?
Personally, I`d like to see this reformated as a 6 or 7 board event..and I`d also like to see the present UK teams replaced by a combined UK team, on the basis that each of our `home` countries is allocated at least one board. ie, at present that might mean England taking say 4 boards, & Scotland, Wales, and N Ireland taking 1 each..if seven board teams. (Maybe Scotland might claim 2 boards).
Such a team....say Team `Shell GB` would be more cost effective (saving money for all three federations...and maybe easier to sponsor/find sponsorship for....and I guess could give a creditable account of themselves). Not sure how much `weight` these events carry, in terms of prestigeousness for our respective chess scenes. Certainly it would be good to find ways of using such events to raise the profile of `British Chess`, as well as help with costs, etc.....
It might also be good to hold a `home championships` event, which might attract some of our `up & coming` players, and not necessarily involve the `top guns`.
At the other end of the scale...chess needs good publicity, and needs to generate fresh interest from grass roots players. We need an initiative(s) throughout the chess movement to attract new players at the 0 - U125 level...if we could double the numbers at these levels (and I dont mean just juniors), it might help reinvigourate our clubs and leagues and create a new generation of players to replace those that resulted from the `Fischer boom`.

[Jonathan Rogers]

I agree with much of Richard's analysis - these events are particuarly difficult for captains. If/when we are again thrown on our own resources when it comes to sending teams, his suggestion of sending four players only might be the best way forward.

Another difficulty compared with, say, 25 years ago is that we are not playing for medals anymore. Back in the good old 80's the reserves did at least know they are playing for a medal winning team, and could perhaps find it easier to warm the bench with that in mind. And sometimes it was reasonably clear that the reserve was weaker than the others (Watson scored 4/5 in 1988; he didn't play much but was able to produce the goods when selected).

None of that is true now. It must be difficult to have a player mostly kicking their heels during an event when it is clear that the team is not going to scale the heights anyway, and that leaves you with a problem where there is clearly one or two players who should, on form, be benched. (The problems are greater when there is not so much to choose between some of the lower players, generally speaking, which is perhaps the case now. Then if one of them has a bad start, you have to decide whether to bench him, or to give him another chance - it might just be a bad start, who knows unless he is given another chance! - etc)