Junior Grades?

[robin moore]

Now some folk may think Mike is at the wind-up here, but I am gonna confess to something from a past life. I used to own, train and gamble on greyhounds rather successfully. I only worked the independent tracks (commonly known as flappers) mostly in the west and central Scotland. On the racecard was the dog's recent times to complete the full length of the course. I was not interested in this. I had a virtual dossier on dog's times to the first bend at various tracks as the "bend" was so sharp that the first dog round it nearly always won in the short run-in. Now, to put things into a chess perspective, Mike is effectively saying that you are as good as your best result. It may be argued by many that there are players in Scotland who have a tendency to do rather well when money is at stake, but when out of the running fade into oblivion. This has the effect of keeping their grade low enough that they are able to capitalise when their chance comes along. A bit like the greyhounds, the dog's owners knew what times they were capable of if they got their "mark". If they didn't they would deliberately "stop" them or run them down the field. Mike may have a perfectly valid point here, should you be graded on your best result ? I think not but I can see where he may be coming from and I do not wish to imply for a second that most of us are cheating in some way, I am simply saying that if things drop right for us over a weekend, we are all capable of a result that is way beyond our present grade. Their are multiple other considerations to make about grading "best" performances. It may be your local tournament where you have a great record against your opponents, it may be a tournament where no one knows you or your style of play, it may be abroad and artificially skewes your performance higher than really achieved. I like the grading system we have in place at present very much, I think it is professional,very well organised and I hope it always remains so. Hopefully we will get some interesting replies to this one !

Robin.