Chess Scotland Noticeboard

Mike Scott · King Joined: 01 Feb 2007 Posts: 676 Location: Edinburgh

Having just checked the Perth entry form and noticed that the primary events will be 8 rounds at 15mins per player.

For P5&Under this makes some sense but if we are looking to cater for those older or better players that may be on the edge of international selection or may actually been selected their options are very limited with the choise between 30 min allegro games or a four hour full length games. While those primary juniors at the very top of the grading lists are now successfully competing in the latter those just below still struggle at that level and it seems possible that it will count against them.

If we're looking to develop juniors with an eye on playing in international events, which all use at least 60mins +15, and normally longer, this surely can not be right.

Unfortunately, in my experience, many players when they first start to slow down and think about their moves find it hard to move back to the faster time control. So not only is the short time control not good for their chess development it takes away one of the advantages they have over less experience players and so their performance may well not really reflect their true ability.

I also feel that such short time controls does send out the completely wrong message. What is it that we all tell them? "Take your time..." but whats the point when they play in such events?

Now thats another problem. A player is in form that particular day could quite easily bank a bucket load of grading points while a player that is out of form can equally well loose a load of pts. If the event is allegro graded then this would be less of an issue but as the AGM resolution on this matter appears to have been ignored I guess this event may still be main list rated (?).

How can you compare the performance of a junior who plays in the adult event and whose results - and hence grading - do not reflect the competitive nature of the games played - against a player that does well in the primary events?

What do you advise juniors to do? Go for grading points in the primary or go for the experience and learning in the adult section?

Its a real shame that there are so few (if any - though I believe Glasgow last year had one) events that are played at the longer time control but have a grading limit of say 1000.

While this is a critism of short time controls I do not want this to be read as a critism of the congress or the organisers itself.