13-04-2022, 03:02 PM
(13-04-2022, 01:52 PM)Matthew Turner Wrote: Lets take a look at European Team Championship in Slovenia
Excluding myself (from the rating list) the players are now the 16th, 37th, 41st, 58th highest rated Scottish players along with Freddie Gordon. Clearly then there are many many factors that contribute to the make up of the team.
I believe that we should be aspiring to send close to the top 5 players, so that mean many current potential 5th boarders missing out. That would be tough on some players, but you know what it should be tough to get into the Scottish team. Wouldn't it be great if we could say to the Glorney team you should aspire to play in the Olympiad in 2032, but you'll need to be GM standard to make the team.
Matt, You can cherry-pick a Euro Team Champs during a pandemic and use inactive players in your counts and ignore the fact that several players called off after being selected...but these omissions don't really help your argument.
I would love to see a team of strong and active players represent Scotland: Rowson, Aagaard, Shaw, Motwani...yourself among them perhaps...but those days are long gone. The vast majority of Scotland's strongest players simply don't want to play Olympiad or Euro teams anymore. If you were instead to rank those who do want to play, you'll get more or less the teams that get picked...let's say 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th on rating, and a slightly random board 5 for various reasons.
It is what it is...having a strong player, say a 2476-rated GM, regularly playing in Scotland would be great, giving players coming through a visible target, in the way IM Andrew Greet is at tournaments for example. Maybe things will improve again. I hope they do, and there are people trying their best with hee-haw in the way of resources to do that. Hopefully you can find a way to fit yourself into that picture of growth. But it won't be done by belittling the efforts of those who try and making spurious claims about the effects of eligibility votes.