24-07-2015, 08:43 PM
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.
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.