12-09-2017, 03:10 PM
On the whole I'd say idea sounds sensible. Only flaw that I think Andy H touched upon a bit before is that depending on when the 6 months runs from it's possible that there may not be a lot of tournaments run at that time to fit all the qualification matches and I remember reading that apparently FIDE rated events for people over 2200 can't have 3 hour sessions so it might be an issue if people are excluded from congresses with max limit sections.
I have also read quite a few people saying it's hard to get matches against strong opposition in Scotland. With this scenario people would either face strong players in local competitions or players who play regularly would then have opportunity to face strong players representing Scotland.
I'll note that Keti idea with her potentially ruled out to me isn't really a huge issue. If we take it to logical extreme in opposite direction and found ourselves with Carlsen, MVL, Kramnik, Aronian and Caruana all mysteriously discovering they have a Scottish grandmother and deciding to represent Scotland at Olympiads while simultaneously deciding their new found Scottish roots don't go far enough to actually visit Scotland or play in local events then I don't think it would benefit Scottish chess. On the other hand if we field an ambitious team of 2200s who are active and work on their chess a lot but struggle to get norm opportunities we could be looking at several new IMs and GMs that to me would be a much bigger benefit.
At most maybe a wild card like in Ryder cup might be viable in exceptional circumstances (e.g. Was an astronaut on International Space Station or broke their leg) although problem is that exceptional circumstances is subjective
I have also read quite a few people saying it's hard to get matches against strong opposition in Scotland. With this scenario people would either face strong players in local competitions or players who play regularly would then have opportunity to face strong players representing Scotland.
I'll note that Keti idea with her potentially ruled out to me isn't really a huge issue. If we take it to logical extreme in opposite direction and found ourselves with Carlsen, MVL, Kramnik, Aronian and Caruana all mysteriously discovering they have a Scottish grandmother and deciding to represent Scotland at Olympiads while simultaneously deciding their new found Scottish roots don't go far enough to actually visit Scotland or play in local events then I don't think it would benefit Scottish chess. On the other hand if we field an ambitious team of 2200s who are active and work on their chess a lot but struggle to get norm opportunities we could be looking at several new IMs and GMs that to me would be a much bigger benefit.
At most maybe a wild card like in Ryder cup might be viable in exceptional circumstances (e.g. Was an astronaut on International Space Station or broke their leg) although problem is that exceptional circumstances is subjective