04-03-2014, 08:44 AM
Andy Burnett,
You raise some interesting points which everybody would agree with to a certain extent. Primarily I see the point you are making is that young Scottish players need the spur of competing in the Olympiad and then hopefully the experience of competing as part of their development process. That is all great in principle, but the reality is that Roddy McKay is Scottish Champion and that the spur of Olympiad competition hasn't created lots of budding GMs over the last 20 years.
I would say that if this is a key factor for Scottish Chess then really we need to think a little bit outside the box. In my opinion this is about selection criteria not eligibility criteria. Why not say as a CS (or International Director) policy that we are going to select a Scottish European Championship team where all the players are U30 or even U25. I don't know if that will work but it might?
Matt
You raise some interesting points which everybody would agree with to a certain extent. Primarily I see the point you are making is that young Scottish players need the spur of competing in the Olympiad and then hopefully the experience of competing as part of their development process. That is all great in principle, but the reality is that Roddy McKay is Scottish Champion and that the spur of Olympiad competition hasn't created lots of budding GMs over the last 20 years.
I would say that if this is a key factor for Scottish Chess then really we need to think a little bit outside the box. In my opinion this is about selection criteria not eligibility criteria. Why not say as a CS (or International Director) policy that we are going to select a Scottish European Championship team where all the players are U30 or even U25. I don't know if that will work but it might?
Matt