International team tournaments

RooksPawn

The European Team Championship will be played in Batumi, Georgia, from 24 October to 2 November. Why is there no Irish team? Have we ever entered this event? I think it is only played in non-olympiad years.

Ireland is not the only absentee (no Portugal or Wales either, nor Latvia surprisingly). Scotland is the lowest seeded of the 40 countries.

I note also that the ICU website has put out a call for senior players to express an interest in going to the World and/or European 50+ and 65+ championships in 2020.

cdeb

There were four people interested anyway when the ICU took names for it earlier in the year. Maybe one or more weren't able to go in the end?

We have played in it before alright, though not for a good few years now I think.

Edit - in fact, you can see our full record on olimpbase.org. We last entered in 2005. We had a very strong team - Babs plus 3 IMs - and came 31st of 38. The four interested this year were 2 FMs and two decent juniors; it would have been the bottom seed by 100 points on average, and 220 points per board off the third bottom seed. I don't know if that was a factor in a team not being entered in the end.

So presumably there just isn't the interest among enough top players to give up a week's holidays, which is a shame, but understandable.

sodacat11

The recent European Seniors Team Championships in Croatia were great fun because the events were held in a beautiful seaside resort with guaranteed sunshine and a lovely hotel at a very reasonable price. Another plus was the amount of activities available away from the chess including cycling, swimming, ballroom dancing classes, bocce and organised tours. It meant that we could bring wives/partners and that they would have a proper holiday too. Another bonus was the chemistry between all of those in our party of fourteen as we all socialised together and got on really well.
I don't know what Batumi in November is like but it doesn't sound quite so appealing and nor does Wrocklaw , where they are intending to host the next European Senior Teams. Team events, and especially senior team events, need to be held in places where there is more to do than just chess.

checknraise

Unlike the Olympiad the European Teams is self funded so there is never as much demand to play compared to the Olympiad. We should try to put a team in future but we would need 2300+ on average to be anyway competitive.