22-12-2011, 10:49 PM
The worlds is a really tough event as expected and just now Scotland are struggling to compete with the top players from many other countries. As Clement pointed out we win a good chunk of our points from filler players from the home nation or countries close to it (eg. Brazil and Argentina from the last one). I'm not trying to say our kids aren't talented or strong, because they are, and I'm not advocating not sending a squad there either. I as a few others on this thread are trying to make the point that there are maybe more appropriate tournaments for some players.
Robin and Paul have done excellent work recently matching up members of the Scotland squad to coaches such as myself, Andrew Green and Clement amongst others and we can use this to our advantage. Tournaments like the Czech open and (especially I'd have thought) the British seem like they can provide this advantage. I strongly believe that we need to send a coach to events such as the Worlds and Europeans to get the full benafit from them and if memory serves the next world junior is in South Africa(?). This requires a massive cost to send another body down there and I found coaching from back home very hard, having to do prep around lectures/work was pretty difficult. If we choose events where the squad can play equally strong games and our stronger players are more willing to go to then we can get an effective set up going where we have several coaches going along side. This seems like a solution that deserves at least a trial before we reject it outright. There is also maybe a possibility of tieing it in with family holiday eg Cesenatico was right on a beach in a very touristy resort which seemed pretty popular for tourists as well as chess players. We have limited resources and pulling them together in ways like this seems pretty logical to me at least.
Robin and Paul have done excellent work recently matching up members of the Scotland squad to coaches such as myself, Andrew Green and Clement amongst others and we can use this to our advantage. Tournaments like the Czech open and (especially I'd have thought) the British seem like they can provide this advantage. I strongly believe that we need to send a coach to events such as the Worlds and Europeans to get the full benafit from them and if memory serves the next world junior is in South Africa(?). This requires a massive cost to send another body down there and I found coaching from back home very hard, having to do prep around lectures/work was pretty difficult. If we choose events where the squad can play equally strong games and our stronger players are more willing to go to then we can get an effective set up going where we have several coaches going along side. This seems like a solution that deserves at least a trial before we reject it outright. There is also maybe a possibility of tieing it in with family holiday eg Cesenatico was right on a beach in a very touristy resort which seemed pretty popular for tourists as well as chess players. We have limited resources and pulling them together in ways like this seems pretty logical to me at least.