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Is it an organisational goal to win this (any/all sections)?
Note: a "goal", not just a 'wish'.
That may seem like a moot question, but I'm not sure it is.
At the moment, we are 'taking part' - which is fine (my daughters loved it) and in general it's a fantastic experience for the kids. To win, though, we'd need to approach things a little differently and that starts pretty much now - just as it would for any seriously competitive activity. Whether that's what we are about as an organisation, though, is a question that first needs to be honestly asked and answered. Is junior chess even a priority?
Personally, I feel such goals can be quite inspirational for all concerned and are perhaps what Chess Scotland needs to revitalise itself. What if ..
So,...2016?
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Interesting and important post Peter.
What can Chessscotland do as an organisation to raise the standard of the Junior players who represent Scotland in one year? Most of them already have coaches and ultimately the progress of a player depends on how much work he/she is willing to put in themselves anyways (10000 hour rule and all that).
One thing I think that should be made clear (particularly to the older juniors) is that playing chess for Scotland is a privilege and that they are expected to put in a lot of work in to raising their game when they have been selected (we are talking hours per day rather than hours per week/month) but kids have social lives and other interests and school.
We can try to increase the numbers of kids playing chess in Scotland in various ways (schools programs, encouraging stronger junior players to start playing adult congresses and joining adult clubs sooner to reduce the dropout rate) but this is not going to make any difference to 2016 Glorney results (2020 yes 2016 no).
I like the idea of having a concrete goal and making a concerted effort to reach it starting now, but I think we need to discuss what we should do to reach the goal and what the goal should be.
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The first thing is to "clarify the aim" ; to be clear on whether or not we have that goal - I'm not sure it's obvious that we do. It may be, for example, that (having limited resources) we see progressing our more advanced and senior players as being more important. That's not entirely unreasonable - neither answer would be 'right' or 'wrong,' it's simply that we need to know which it is. The point is that without first clarifying what we want to achieve it is too easy to end up being busy being busy and doing what we did last year and the year before - I notice last year's scores are about the same as this year's for example.
If we decided we wanted to win this next year and that that was a priority then I have no doubt we could do that. I don't think it even takes more money, or even more enthusiasm. It's really just about clarifying the aim. I'd give my time to making that happen because it's an interesting and engaging and worthwhile challenge. Such things are inherently motivating - and I'm pretty sure there are no shortage of others who would feel the same way.
A "plan" is detail - there are various ways to address the detail ; the first thing is to be clear on whether there is an agreed and genuine and serious goal that we want to devote ourselves to achieving. As my elder daughter demonstrated at the Scottish, you can make a serious difference in less than a year -
and it's not all about time.
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Scotland won in 1965 & we should have won in 1977 too when I played - dormitory accommodation badly affected my score.
I don't see why we can't win in 2016. We have won the Faber a few times recently. However there does seem to be problems delivering results.
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Peter makes some very salient points. I think he is correct that this isn't really a question of money or enthusiasm. All the Scottish players want to win for the team and are very committed at the tournament. For example in the first round none of the players finished in under two hours, I cannot recall that ever happening before.
I would like to see a determined effort to win in 2017 and there is no reason why Scotland couldn't win all the sections, I think the Glorney itself would be difficult and might require a bit of assistance from the other nations. Why 2017? I was impressed by the Stokes team and I suspect they are quite likely to be the Robinson team in 2017, so we can Identify the players we need to target.
2017 also makes sense because we have been set another challenge, how do we organise an event which comes close to the Irish? We'll have a bit of time for that, since it will not come round to Scotland until 2018. Could we get Nicola Sturgeon to open the Glorney, I don't know, but I can tell you that we will have a lot better chance if she is welcoming the winning team(s) to Holyrood.
What should we do with the teams that we have identified for 2017? Let's give them some advice on what they should be playing in - if we can identify a few tournaments, perhaps some of the players could share rooms and cut down costs for parents. What level of opening preparation should they have? Perhaps ten moves in all their main lines? What about endgame knowledge? What about tactics? Can we suggest a reading list and web resources. The Irish arrange pre-Glorney matches for their team to mimic the conditions, time controls etc. This is more of a problem for Scotland with the clash with the Scottish championships, but perhaps this could be fitted in at a different time.
There is a huge amount of talent in Scottish junior chess (players, parents and coaches) and it will not take a lot to make a big difference.
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I am not certain of this (perhaps a CS official can confirm?) but I have heard that the Glorney cycle will revert back to Scotland hosting in 2017. Scotland should have been the host in 2013 but due to unforeseen circumstances had to be switched to Wales.
If that is the case, I feel we would have our best chance of winning a section in that year. All of our present strongest Glorney and Gilbert contenders would still be U17 or younger. I wouldn't wish to hazard a guess at the younger age groups as a lot can change in a couple of years but we certainly have some quality improving young players.
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Really interesting conversation. Agree with Peter's point that the goal is where it all starts. From the outside, it looks like the Irish and Welsh have both improved a lot - given that improvement (or at least high performance), is their something that they've changed in their approach to juniors thats having an impact on their performance?
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can we make sure it doesn't clash with scottish championships as best players will want to play in that instead
