Olympiad Goals

[Clement Sreeves]

OK Clement, you have an international budget of, say. £3000-4000 each year (optimistic) which is for adult and senior chess. Explain to me how you would use this please..? Feel free to give it away to other areas, but you'll have to justify it!

Give money to any new clubs trying to start up for equipment and league fees

Give clubs £10 for every new member they can recruit

Help promote the fact that chess can help fight Alzheimers

Spend money on events to advertise and promote the game to a larger audience

Not strictly speaking adult budget but:

Figure out how to keep kids that play at primary school playing chess when they move to secondary school. (Hint: watch out for Andrew Green's upcoming Edinburgh Chess Academy)

[Clement Sreeves]

Those are just a few random ideas I'm sure there are better ones and can be refined. I would say that it makes sense to give money to Olympiad players if they cannot afford it otherwise. Having the strongest team there is important and while in an ideal world we would pay fees to the players I don't think it is the best use of the money with our budget.

[andyburnett]

OK Clement, you have an international budget of, say. £3000-4000 each year (optimistic) which is for adult and senior chess. Explain to me how you would use this please..? Feel free to give it away to other areas, but you'll have to justify it!

Give money to any new clubs trying to start up for equipment and league fees

Give clubs £10 for every new member they can recruit

Help promote the fact that chess can help fight Alzheimers

Spend money on events to advertise and promote the game to a larger audience

Not strictly speaking adult budget but:

Figure out how to keep kids that play at primary school playing chess when they move to secondary school. (Hint: watch out for Andrew Green's upcoming Edinburgh Chess Academy)

OK, all well and good Clement. I've just done the exact same with 'your' Junior International budget Yes, we have very limited resources, but is this really the route we want to take?

[andyburnett]

Those are just a few random ideas I'm sure there are better ones and can be refined. I would say that it makes sense to give money to Olympiad players if they cannot afford it otherwise. Having the strongest team there is important and while in an ideal world we would pay fees to the players I don't think it is the best use of the money with our budget.

We don't pay players any fee to participate Clement and several of the squad will not be claiming back their expenses as they know money is tight. Those that do will still be out of pocket for representing their country. Without CS help or outside financing there is little doubt that many would be unable to play at all - definitely not something I would like to see.

[Clement Sreeves]

OK, all well and good Clement. I've just done the exact same with 'your' Junior International budget Yes, we have very limited resources, but is this really the route we want to take?

Pretty sure I don't count as a junior anymore

But yes I agree it needs to be a concerted effort and not just the adult budget used to push this long term strategy. Once you get more players it is likely that sponsorship will be easier to find or possibly getting more money from the government.

[AndrewGreen]

The one growth area we have is primary chess. Lothian Junior Chess's numbers have doubled in the last three years. One idea I suggested at a recent Chess Edinburgh meeting, is to run a primary competition on either the Saturday or Sunday of a congress. You could easily get 100 players paying an entry fee of £10. With an additional £1000 you could dramatically increase the prize fund and attract foreign players and also encourage the top players in Scotland to play. The children would love seeing Grandmasters playing and also seeing the very best juniors compete against adults. Primary, minor, major, challengers and open could be the way forward.

[robin moore]

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.chess-results.com/tnr188223.aspx?lan=1&art=0&turdet=YES&flag=30&wi=984">http://www.chess-results.com/tnr188223. ... =30&wi=984</a><!-- m -->

I had a look at the most recent Benidorm International where many Scottish players have competed in the last seven or eight years. The organisers run various local junior championships (u8-u18) in the same venue though not necessarily at exactly the same time as the adult events. The kids are very well behaved and possibly playing in the same floor as the adults not only heightens their event importance but maybe teaches them what it's like to play at a major amateur event.
Finding the right size of venue is obviously crucial if going down this route for organisers. You also would need to build in costs of extra arbiting staff/equipment hire etc but I would be strongly in favour of it being tried in Scotland.

[Alan Tate]

2. Andrew G says he finds it unsettling that it's not ok to not play.

Quit twisting my words; I said nothing of the sort.

I wasn't quoting you, merely pointing out that you don't seem to bothered by the current situation.

I find most of the views here backward, negative, or with agenda...

There's only one person who is blatantly pushing their own agenda here. Alan plays a lot of tournaments but missed out on selection this year. I believe he would like nothing more than to see a ruling put in place which might conveniently disqualify a few of the players who would ordinarily be chosen ahead of him on rating and consistency of results.

I restrained myself from pointing this out in my previous post as I didn't want the discussion to become too personal, but to see Alan, of all people, talk about others having an agenda is too much. Alan, you clearly have the ability to make the team when playing at your best, so I suggest that you focus on improving your own game and results. Leaving the discussion to prepare for your next tournament has been the most useful thing you've contributed to this thread so far.

Don't restrain yourself, I was hoping for more! You haven't pointed anything out yet though, I'm waiting.
This talk of disqualifying players is absolutely baffling. Do Quality Chess workers work 24/7 365 days a year or what?

I sincerely want as much competition as possible. Colin is a gentleman and a legend in Scottish chess having represented Scotland for the last 2 decades and I'd love to see him recover some form. Seeing you on board 1 and doing quite well is competition and it's motivating. Personally, I'd like to make the team on merit, but under no circumstances will I play on a lower board than players who don't know five moves of opening theory and play six games a year. This in itself is sufficient motivation for me to become a better player and I'm grateful to the selectors for their foresight in their selections.

****************************************

I'd like to offer some friendly advice about the openings in Baku: They were well below par. We don't have a hope in hell of scoring against the bigger teams if we give them clear advantages right out the opening. This is an area that really needs to be worked on but should be no problem given the wealth of opening books, strong players and authors that the majority of the team have access to.

When players refuse training, play crappy openings in spite of having this wealth of resources, don't interact at all with the fans, and don't play in Scotland, I have every right to ask questions and yes, as I've said before.... it's insulting.

My words are in the capacity of a Scottish chess player who cares more about how Scotland performs than individual players. I believe (perhaps wrongly given how sensitive some are) that all good players can respond to criticism positively. Sometimes I can't resist needling people but we're all adults here so you're just going to have to deal with it or ban me so you can carry on being nicey nicey Scotland who never wins. Think of me as a cross between Roy Keane at the 2002 World Cup and Conor McGregor.