Selection zugzwang

I was in a discussion recently where I tried to explain why the puppet master in MCF has truly painted himself into a corner this time and why this Olympiad could be a seriously disastrous outing. Zugzwang.

Selection is a highly charged affair. Most people train hard and come to compete for a place. Other people try to come in through the back door because they feel their player won't make it in a straight fight. Still others want a place for other services rendered to the puppet master. And some want a place because their association hasn't done a good job but has a vote at AGM as a bargaining chip to make them look good. A number think they deserve a place because of a title earned in another era. So it's a very complicated affair.

So that was why FGM pushed for proper selection criteria for SEA games 2011.

From my experience in trying to put in criteria in PICA in 2009, I realised how difficult it can be. The other committee members resist as that is their power card to "respect" instead of doing good work. The parents want their short cuts. Some resist because they feel that the selection criteria must be "perfect" according to their imagined problems before we can put something out.

And I felt the best way was to just put something out and then do a good postmortem and improve on it year by year based on the real problems we face from practice in real situations.

Therefore I realised that selection will be a major issue for the Olympiad. It will always be an issue if selection is made a political tool for control and for votes.

Why? Because that does not find us the best players. So it is very short sighted.

So lets look again at the Olympiad fiasco. I wrote on my blog before the event that we can either use the SEA games criteria if no proper postmortem was done or we can try to find some improvement to the process just using our reasoning. And I made some suggestions. Limit the rating for the selection proper and use a challenger cup for the rest. But this all fell on deaf ears.

So now we have this situation. No matter what the puppet master does now, he is going to piss someone off. If he goes back to my suggestion it will show he cannot think. That would have been the simplest and most straight forward way. Much simpler then the situation now. Now there are just too many deals. The puppet master has to weigh which deal will help him survive the AGM. And there are no good options. He has already pissed off too many people.

And so he cannot decide. Zugzwang.

And the players and our Country's standing in the world chess community will suffer as a result. I don't think there is anything he can do now to reverse that huge blunder. Chess. Think before you move.

I tried to warn you my friend. Keep your politics out of chess. Keep selection clean. Rely on your good work for re-election instead. By my count, you won't make it. But lets see.