ECC eligibility discussion thread

Chessrookie

Can somebody explain the sham of Adare playing a group of mercenaries and other clubs players in this competition. It makes a joke out of them being one of Ireland's two representatives.
Fair play to Gonzaga for having a genuine team made up of all their regular players (pity they don't have Sam)

Tim Harding

Chessrookie wrote: »

Can somebody explain the sham of Adare playing a group of mercenaries and other clubs players in this competition. It makes a joke out of them being one of Ireland's two representatives.
Fair play to Gonzaga for having a genuine team made up of all their regular players (pity they don't have Sam)

It seems to be in the nature of the event that nearly all teams (except Gonzaga, agreed!) have mercenaries.
For example, Blackthorne Russia (an English team sponsored, I think, by the company that helps finance Bunratty) is playing an all-GM team called Alkaloid in which Chinese GM Yu Yangyi is on board five! Their top four are Ivanchuk, Jakovenko, Andreikin, and Kryvoruchko, so five players over 2700.

I don't know why Sam isn't available as clearly Gonzaga would be stronger with him. Conor O'Donnell may get a chance of an IM norm, though, if he does well.

I do agree somewhat about Adare, although I think three of their foreigners are not mercenaries but live in Ireland. Since they are mostly going to be playing in the lower reaches of the event, why have a GM? Perhaps he's a personal friend of Mirza.

What is really needed though is a proper qualifying tournament with at least eight teams and only genuine club members, and held at a time of year when the strongest genuine clubs want to enter. Also it needs to be held in Leinster next. I am not sure that the recent amendments passed at the egm will make a huge difference to eligibility of players?

cdeb

Did the recent changes affect the ECC? Or was it only for the NCC?

Can the ICU rule on who clubs send to the ECC?

Agree it seems pointless for Adare to be sending the team they are sending. What do regular Adare club members make of it? Or is it just accepted that without bangers like that, they wouldn't be going to the ECC anyway?

Tim Harding

1.2 The teams shall be composed of six players all of whom must be members of the club and were entitled to play for the club in the national team championship of the federation which was organised within one year before the start of the current European Club Cup. However, players who are foreigners to the federation in which the national team championship is organised, must have played at least two games in this championship. Foreigners are defined as those which are either belonging to another federation in the FIDE Rating List valid at the start of the national team championship or have a permanent residence outside the federation in which this national team championship is organised.
1.2.1 If a participating club wants to include a player who does not fulfil the requirements of article 1.2 the club has to pay an amount of 2500 Euro (1000 Euro for the women’s event) to ECU. These players have to be announced to the Tournament Director before the deadline for nomination of teams and the extra fee has to be paid to ECU before start of the competition.
In the open competition no more than two players, in the women’s competition no more than one female player, may be replaced.
1.2.2 Players, who are considered as foreigners according to F.1.2, and who have been playing at least three times for the same club in previous European Club Cup competitions are exempted from the obligation to play at least two games in the championship of the federation for this club.

I found the above regulations at

http://www.europechess.org/regulations/tournament-regulations/european-club-cup-and-european-club-cup-for-women/f-1-participation/


I suppose the ICU do not have any say on who clubs send, except they should ensure that all players satisfy the ECU regulations.

I should indeed like to hear which members of the Adare team in Skopje are regular club members who play in the Munster competitions, and what their "ordinary" members think.

Can somebody explain on what grounds the various players on the Adare team in Skopje are qualified?

Tychoo

Adare must have some sugar daddy to pay for their team

Tim Harding

Tychoo wrote: »

Adare must have some sugar daddy to pay for their team

Or everyone just pays their own expenses?
That's probably what Gonzaga do?

Tychoo

Coaching must pay well so.

brilliantboy

cdeb wrote: »

Agree it seems pointless for Adare to be sending the team they are sending. What do regular Adare club members make of it? Or is it just accepted that without bangers like that, they wouldn't be going to the ECC anyway?

I don't know if there are regular Adare club members

It's also important to draw the distinction here between straight up mercenaries, of which there are a few no doubt, and foreign born players who play an active and important role in Irish chess. It would be a shame if rules designed to prevent the former were to negatively impact the latter.

Tim Harding

There is absolutely no problem with foreign born players resident here and active in Irish chess; I am one myself.

The problem can arise if non-resident foreign players are brought in to strengthen weak clubs and so prevent genuine clubs qualifying for the ECC.
Even more so if they are not real clubs at all. I am not saying Adare is not a real club but I am asking.

A competition to find out which clubs in the country are really strongest, and so qualify for the two ECC places, should really include the top three or four clubs in the Armstrong.

So let's say an 8-team event with the previous winner of the NCC, plus three Leinster clubs [apart from the NCC winners if they are, as usual, Gonzaga or Trinity/Elm Mount/Benildus], two each from Munster and Ulster and a club from Connacht (they could take the place in rotation, or organise their own competition to decide who gets it).
If a club from Munster or Ulster win the NCC that region gets the extra place the following year and Leinster is down to 3.

An advantage of having at least eight teams (which I don't think has been achieved in recent years) can be seen from the following.

ECU tournament regulations say:
"1.1.6 The clubs which play in a federation in which a national team championship is organised, must have ended in the top-half of the ranking of the highest division of this championship organised within one year before the start of the current European Club Cup."

So from a four-team competition only the top two can be entered. In, say, an eight-team competition, if the team that won or came second couldn't get organised to play in the ECC then the third or fourth placed club could replace them.

In practice Trinity wouldn't be able to include undergraduates if they qualified and took their place, because the event tends to fall in term time. Next year, for example, it's in Serbia, 5-13 Nov. Last year the dates were early September and would have suited but the NCC was held the weekend immediately before exams began and we were unable to raise a team.

sinbad68

There certainly is No shortage of xenophobic crap on this thread. Players who pay out of their own pockets to go and play are described as mercenaries & English names are described as " good Irish names " !!.Most of the teams playing in this European cup are artificially manufactured and several are GM only teams with players who don't live or play anywhere near each other !, and here we get a few Holier than thou thinking that other teams in this competition are being cheated by teams representing Irish clubs!.

It would have been much better if this competition was described as European team championship rather than club championship, then we would could openly form in some cases new teams as was the case in scarry cup with teams playing against each other in a tournament to qualify and would offer all good players a chance to go to European cup rather just clubs like gonzaga who have a batch of strong players.

Tim Harding

sinbad68 wrote: »

There certainly is No shortage of xenophobic crap on this thread. Players who pay out of their own pockets to go and play are described as mercenaries & English names are described as " good Irish names " !!.Most of the teams playing in this European cup are artificially manufactured and several are GM only teams with players who don't live or play anywhere near each other !, and here we get a few Holier than thou thinking that other teams in this competition are being cheated by teams representing Irish clubs!.

It would have been much better if this competition was described as European team championship rather than club championship, then we would could openly form in some cases new teams as was the case in scarry cup with teams playing against each other in a tournament to qualify and would offer all good players a chance to go to European cup rather just clubs like gonzaga who have a batch of strong players.

I didn't describe anyone who pays out of their own pocket as a mercenary.
But I am not aware that there is any GM who is a genuine Irish club player except Alex Baburin and I have doubts about Adare's board 2 also.

However I do agree with your second paragraph. It should be made easier for small countries like Ireland to compose their teams any way they want. It's different for those countries which have semi-professional leagues (Bundesliga etc) as it's right they should use in the ECC the same players that they employ in their national competitions.

brilliantboy

Tim Harding wrote: »

There is absolutely no problem with foreign born players resident here and active in Irish chess;

Well the eligibility criteria for international selection as amended at the recent EGM would suggest otherwise.
Any changes in the way NCC/ECC eligibility is determined should be carefully considered so similar nonsense doesn't creep in.

http://www.icu.ie/system/downloads/000/000/223/eligibility_criteria.pdf?1440800624

2. To be considered for selection, a person not qualifying under the above criterion
must, on 1st of January of the year in which the representative international
tournament is scheduled to take place, have been :-

• resident in Ireland for a period of not less than two years; and
• registered on the FIDE Rating List under IRL for a period of not less than one year.

...

7. Not more than one third of a representative international team (including substitutes),
may be made up of players who qualify under 2.

rob51

Wow this thread has put me in the most unlikely position of defending Adare and agreeing with Sinbad in a single post!!
Jan Heinrich, Bernd Thee and of course Gabriel Mirza have lived here and played in the Munster Leagues for many years. Despite the surnames they are all active league players in Munster.

Anthony Fox has also played for Adare, as a guest player, in the Munster League for several years.
Milos Pahor I don't know but he certainly played for CCYMS in the Munster League last year and was resident here.

I don't know where GM Sanduleac lives but since Adare is run by John Alfred and Gabriel I doubt if he is a mercenary in the strict sense of the word.

LorcanOToole

Tim Harding wrote: »

Can somebody explain on what grounds the various players on the Adare team in Skopje are qualified?

I have to defend Adare here. It may be ridiculous to field a bunch of Romanian "mercenaries" at the NCC but in the ECC these are called "players" and us regular club guys are called "chess tourists".

I've played in this tournament 3 times. The first time with Ennis in 2005 Gawain couldn't play so we had 7 unrated players. There was lots of unwanted attention in our direction - and believe me its uncomfortable when some of the greatest players in the game are complaining about the prospect of playing us. In fact there was a push that year to split the event into "A" and "B" events. So Ennis have been fielding 2 Czech masters ever since and everybodys blushes are saved.

Another year the late Tom Clarke had to prepare for a game against Kasparov! Naturally Kasparov was fearful of Toms legendary attacking style and sat that one out.

Do you think super GMs give a jot how those Romanians qualified to play for Adare? To them it would otherwise be embarrassing to play an entire team of chess tourists.

This is an important consideration for formulating NCC rules.

south of the border

"I have doubts about Adare's board 2 also"



Milos Pahor from Slovenia is living in Cork and played in the Munster Chess leagues last year (2014/15) for CCYMS.

cdeb

First off, thanks to those giving a bit of info on Adare!

This comment was interesting -

brilliantboy wrote: »

I don't know if there are regular Adare club members

I guess where some posters here are coming from is that most clubs (and we seem to be talking Leinster clubs here) are a group of locals who play together, have a club night to head down to where generally it'd only be other club members who'd attend, and so forth.

Is it the case that Adare isn't a club in that sense of the word? For example, I've always found it weird that Munster teams will invite Leinster players to play in their leagues. It just seems to be against the general idea of developing your own club.

So to follow on from that, if St Benildus qualified for the tournament and I was on the panel (as unlikely as all that is), I'd be rather annoyed to be bumped off to be replaced by a foreign GM who has nothing to do with the club (and I accept that though Adare have many foreign names on their team, most of them have been active on the Irish circuit for a while). I think Bray have been particularly guilty on this front as well in the past - and it does seem as if recent rule changes have restricted this.

Have to say, Lorcan's comments on the reaction to the weak Irish teams was interesting too. But should Irish clubs be that bothered what others think? There's a (small) tail anyway; is it not worth genuine club members playing, even if they're amongst that tail?

To an extent, it reminds me of the tennis scene in the Simpsons where the main characters each replace themselves and then cheer "their" team anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rfX-L-zLpw

If we qualified, I think it'd benefit the club far more to compete the way Gonzaga are competing - but maybe that's naive?

Tim Harding

south of the border wrote: »

"I have doubts about Adare's board 2 also"


Milos Pahor from Slovenia is living in Cork and played in the Munster Chess leagues last year (2014/15) for CCYMS.

OK, apologies to him; I was mixing him up with somebody else. I recall he was playing on next board to me at Bunratty and did say he was living in Cork.

I disagree with Lorcan and side with the "chess tourists". High-rated GMs paid to play for other teams have to take the risk that they might get a low-rated opponent in the first round. It's one of the charms of the event? They will win the game anyway which won't cost them rating points.

Their main danger is that they take a norm-hunting IM too lightly as happened to Ivanchuk against Hunt.

rob51

Tim Harding wrote: »

OK, apologies to him;
Their main danger is that they take a norm-hunting IM too lightly as happened to Ivanchuk against Hunt.

The Munster League could be even more dangerous. Carl Jackson, playing for Ennis A, drew with GM Vasile Sanduleac playing for Adare last year. Apparently Carl should probably have won.

Unlike Bunratty the Munster League Division 1 is FIDE rated. So it's not without risk for wandering GMs.

rob51

cdeb wrote: »

First off, thanks to those giving a bit of info on Adare!

I guess where some posters here are coming from is that most clubs (and we seem to be talking Leinster clubs here) are a group of locals who play together, have a club night to head down to where generally it'd only be other club members who'd attend, and so forth.

Is it the case that Adare isn't a club in that sense of the word? For example, I've always found it weird that Munster teams will invite Leinster players to play in their leagues. It just seems to be against the general idea of developing your own club.

Most Munster clubs also follow the same model. The idea of "importing" players I think came about as a sort of arms race to qualify for the NCC / ECC several years back when the rules were different. I think it also started with clubs using previous members who were studying or working in Dublin.

On the subject of Adare, John Alfred has always described it as an 'open' club with members worldwide. At least that's the term I recall from various MCU AGMs where there were attempts to define a club for league purposes. That explains the GM 'members'.

In reality most of the regular team members are actually based in Munster but I think the club itself is mostly juniors. It turns out that it's not really a good thing if you are scheduled to play Adare around Bunratty though.:D