Council meeting

[amuir]

David - what needs changing urgently ?

[Hugh Brechin]

Trying to change things is good, but I'd like to hear what the argument is against waiting another two months for the AGM, where the whole membership can vote on these things. I suppose 'then we can have the selection framework in place in good time for an entire season' is an understandable argument. Putting it into place after an August vote might be challenging.

Having read over all of the motions (or at least all of the ones in the zip file), I think they all sound interesting and worthy of debate. I think in a number of cases key stakeholders aren't going to be Council members, and I feel that the AGM would be a more appropriate forum to make these decisions. I think Donald's point about key people not being Council members is also pertinent in the case of the Hamilton motions, though I can understand that the proponents wish to have those decisions in place for the summer's tournaments.

At any rate I think there's a strong argument for at the very least revisiting this stuff in August.

[David Deary]

David - what needs changing urgently ?

In my view, the junior selection process is taking too long. I don't want to hijack this topic and I'm not looking for any official response.

A quick example is the U16 Olympiad. Which is in Chongqing this year (21-31 July):
An email asking for players availability was sent on the 15th April. A mere three months before the event began. Considering it was in China - player availability should have been sorted out in January at the very latest. As a consequence of this slow process Scotland is not sending a team in spite of the fact that the top three players eligible to play wished to play but two additional players could not be found due in no small part to the tardiness of CS’s attempt to organise a team.

[Phil Thomas]

The zip file under discussion contains four documents.

Three of these documents are quite small, and take up a negligible amount of space.

The fourth document, taking up about 90% of the file, is a proposal to introduce a new system for selecting Juniors to represent Scotland in international junior events.

It is my purely personal opinion that this proposal is not proper for Council, but should be discussed at the Chess Scotland AGM.

My reason for holding that view is that the proposed system concerns primarily the following people:
- the Junior International Director;
- the team of selectors for junior international events;
- the juniors who are in contention for selection to represent Scotland;
- and the parents/guardians of those juniors.
Few of the members of Council are actually among these concerned people. And while all CS members are entitled to attend Council meetings and express their views, only Council members may vote at Council meetings. I think everybody affected by the proposal should be able to vote on it, and therefore the proper forum to discuss it is a general meeting, not a Council meeting.

As I say, that's my pesonal opinion - and I'm no longer either a Council member or a member of the team of selectors, so whether the proposal is discussed at Council or not and whether it is approved or not has no direct impact on me.

I agree with Donald: this proposed system is not a proper subject for Council to discuss. But for a different reason. The agm puts directors in place to direct. There is little in this inordinately long document that needs to be discussed before the IJD puts it into place. However, there is one part of the document that is plain and simply wrong. FIDE does not provide funding to Chess Scotland for free accommodation places. Firstly Fide does not handle the money, the host nation does. Secondly free accommodation is specifically given to one invited player per federation per section.

I checked today to confirm, in my own mind, that the system has not changed. I quote from the Euroyouth entry form - which is easily obtained on the FIDE web site (not zipped)

"7.2 Free accommodation and full board will be provided for invited players and
players with personal rights from August 28, (dinner) to October 9 (lunch)".

The document submitted to council raises the prospect of, for example, the only under 10 player present paying in full in order to subsidise a second, third or fourth player in the U18 boys event. This is clearly not what is intended by the hosts. This, I suggest, is a fit subject for council to discuss. Worse than that the U10 player might not even get any coaching.

[David Deary]

I'm curious about those suggesting that the AGM is where some agenda items should be discussed (I still haven't read them so I may well agree with you) and what they believe the role of Council is? Seeing as its on the agenda as well.

[amuir]

The adult selection process is much simpler - emails between selectors, nothing fancy.
I wish there was less controversy in junior chess. I recommend openness & honesty.

[Mike Scott]

I tend to agree with Phil in that the directors are there to make such decisions. Democracy is about electing folks to take informed decisions on our behalf. However it is a good thing that when a major new policy is being proposed it is subject to discussion / scrutiny by the membership both as a mechanism to improve it - Phil has already highlight one possible fault - but also to help make all those affected by it aware of its likely impact.

[David Deary]

Why has a post been removed from this thread? Unless I imagined it, there was another post on this thread.

I am beginning to get tired at the excessive level of moderation on this forum. In the recent past, topics have disappeared and posts deleted without any consultation or communication. In my view, It’s another reason that this forum is dead compared to the old one. It is odd that personal attacks are allowed to stand on this ‘public’ forum against certain posters and legitimate points that cannot be construed as an attack are removed.

I would ask the moderators to seriously consider whether they are applying the forum rules linked below.
http://www.chessscotland.com/forum/viewt...?f=4&t=413

[Patrick McGovern]

Given the major changes that are mooted for the council meeting would it not be better to give them due consideration at the AGM? We could have the situation when policy is changed (or not) and decision then reversed at AGM.

[Phil Thomas]

Given the major changes that are mooted for the council meeting would it not be better to give them due consideration at the AGM? We could have the situation when policy is changed (or not) and decision then reversed at AGM.

An excellent well thought out post from Pat. The motion on junior selection runs to a 10 page pdf. File. There is inadequate time to discuss on the notice board before the council meeting and one doubts that there will be time during the council meeting.

Totally agree with Sean about the need to test the system by trying it out his methodology on juniors that have played at least 4 events. I was surprised though that only a single player was selected to test the system (Murad).

The motion tells us that Murad had 4 congresses at which he graded out at 1924, 1812, 1829, 1910. Mean of these 1869. Very close to live grade of 1848. Hence the grading system works.

However, looking up Murads Scottish events today I am puzzled to find on the grading page 4 different numbers 1663 (Ayr) 2065 (Edinburgh) 1654 Hamilton 2180 (Dundee). The mean of those 4 is 1891. Which again is close to the live grade of 1848.

All of which merely tells us that the grading system is working.

Let us do a mind experiment. Suppose Murad played another 4 congresses and scored identical results to the first 4. His strength would then be evaluated from these 8 numbers.
1663, 2065, 1654, 2180, 1663, 2065, 1654, 2180.
The correct way to do this would be to average all 8 – result is still 1891.
The incorrect way to do this is to average the highest 4 and get 2123.

Where did the extra 232 points come from ?
Its not magic its a serious mathematical flaw.
Cherry picking data this way gives, in effect, a set of corrupt raw data.

I wondered why the grade of player number 1 on the list was not subjected to the same treatment. From the grading database Andrew McClement has 2 tournaments -the Scottish and the 4NCL in England.
Tournament performances were 2129 and 2368.
The mean of those 2 numbers is 2244 - significantly higher than live grade.

It concerns me that the example given for Monica Espinosa, suffers from the input of poor quality raw data.

For Monica on the grading database I can see, today ,4 tournaments with grading results of 1663(Ayr) 1347 (Edinburgh) 1621 (Glenrothes) 1375 (Girls Championship).

The data actually entered was 1454 1428 951 with no fourth tournament.

Can somebody please tell the notice board readers where that number of 951 came from? If it was a typo it needs to be corrected.