Friday, August 22, 2014

Short run

Reading Jonathan Rogers' analysis of England's Olympiad performance and the lessons to be learned from it - and the discussion that followed - it seemed to me that there was one obvious question that nobody was asking, even though it sat up and begged to be asked. Should Nigel Short have been selected?

Naturally the question is only being asked in retrospect, since I didn't ask it before the Olympiad and to my knowledge nobody else did either. But Nigel's performance - 1.5 out of 5 - was so glaringly poor that the wisdom of having selected him must surely be in question.


In some ways the 5 is as significant as the 1.5. If a player were to score 30%, but in eight or nine games, and hence served the purpose of protecting a player on a lower board simply by turning up, that'd be one thing - sacrificing some game points higher up in order to gain them lower down. But if a player's in such poor form that he, or his team captain, feels he needs to be left out in more than half the games, you're not even achieving that.

So what, you say - you could say that of any player who's performed badly. Of course you could, normally, but in this instance it was surely known in advance that Nigel had business other than chess in Tromsø, since he was heavily involved in Garry Kasparov's election campaign. So, in retrospect, was it wise to select a player whose mind, for perfectly good reasons, wasn't necessarily going to be on the job?

Of course it may be that the selectors, or the captain, or the player himself, feel that the campaigning was nothing to do with it, that it was just unexpectedly poor form. Fair enough if they do. But obviously the question does present itself.

Precisely because it does so in retrospect, it can be asked in a general way rather than being solely about Nigel. For the future - is it wise to select a player for the Olympiad who is likely to have other commitments than the team? Are you likely to get the best out of them if you do?

No use crying over spilt milk, sure. But while the mopping-up is going on, it seems a good time to ask the question. Given how few games the nominal number three was able to play, might it not have been better to give somebody else a chance?

[Nigel Short index]

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure it was a question of "not able to play" as "not selected to play". Suppose in a team competition you select four players from five in every match, you have a fixed order and your nominated 1,4 and 5 are on top form. The outcome is that you are likely to field them in most matches, leaving board two to be filled by the players ranked 2 and 3.

Another way for Nigel to be present but not playing much would have been to nominate him as the number 5. That still leaves the problem of who to play at 2 which would also have arisen if he hadn't been selected and replaced by perhaps Nick Pert or Jonathon Hawkins.

RdC

ejh said...

I'm not sure it was a question of "not able to play" as "not selected to play".

I'm thinking of them as meaning much the same thing. In other words I'm not suggesting that Nigel was ever not selected because he was physically elsewhere. I've no reason to assume he wasn't available for all eleven rounds.

Anonymous said...

At the end of the tournament, Nigel was physically elsewhere, in the FIDE General Assembly. It was a wasted appearance on the overrun day, coinciding with round 11 as not enough turned up to make the meeting quorate.

But if his chess had been on devastating form, I believe a number of potential substitutes were available for "representing the ECF in meetings".

RdC

Jonathan B said...

Reminiscent of RDK in Buenos Aires ’78 and Malta (I think in 1980, perhaps.

If this does turn out to be Short’s last Olympiad - which I don’t expect to be the case and hope it isn’t, it would be a shame to go out like that way.

Anonymous said...

I guess the question is who would you have taken instead, with McShane unavailable. There is not exactly a deep bench.

It was a laughable at the forum, when Short pointed to Istanbul as his capacity to deliver for the team. It sort of reinforced the view he could do a job.......when there was no higher priority, such as a Fide election. For the life of me I can't understand why he seemed to believe until the very end Kasparov would win, and he wasted his time at the Olympiad. I would have put the probability of England winning a medal- even gold- ahead of GK winning.

Makes you wonder also if he reduced his fee?

PH

ejh said...

He may well have done. I have no information at all on what anybody got paid.

Anonymous said...

same old, same old. fighting the same battles over and over again. first keene and now short.

Jonathan Rogers said...

I deliberately omitted to mention Short's political distractions from my analysis because I felt unable to even guess how much they affected him. In Istanbul 2012, he was also politically active - precisely because CJ was apparently not doing the job he was supposed to do at the General Assembly (see other SBCB entries) - and that didn't seem to affect his chess.

Apparently in various Facebook discussions with Emil Sutovsky, Short has been stressing that he has been in poor form all year. He admits his distractions in Tromso may have contributed to his especially bad results, but thinks this it was only a contributory factor.

Of course, the insight that he has been in bad form already does support Justin's argument that perhaps he should not have been selected. I myself would not go that far, with all other available candidates being some 100 points or more lower and no outstanding young player of 20 or so. But he should have gone as our board five so that whenever he played, the result would be less likely to be a catastrophe. As I argued on the forum, reducing the potential for foreseeable disasters should be our first priority when deciding board orders.

Anonymous said...

Unless you could contrive a repetition, there was a no draw within 30 moves rule in the Olympiad.

So draws by reputation were that bit more difficult to obtain, particularly on board 2 or board 3.

RdC

ejh said...

Short has been stressing that he has been in poor form all year. He admits his distractions in Tromso may have contributed to his especially bad results, but thinks this it was only a contributory factor.

Yes, quite probably. He's not been in form for a while. He's also getting older, something which I'm in position to appreciate may be a factor.

But he should have gone as our board five so that whenever he played, the result would be less likely to be a catastrophe. As I argued on the forum, reducing the potential for foreseeable disasters should be our first priority when deciding board orders.

Quite a viable point of view, I'd have thought. What I'm vaguely keen to know is whether any of this - poor form, distractions - was taken into account beforehand.