Carl Ja­cobs

It seems un­for­tu­nate that the T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion is will­ing to go to court to set­tle an is­sue in which it holds a rather shaky po­si­tion.This is the at­ti­tude to be gleaned from an e-mail post­ed by as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Rus­sel Smith fol­low­ing the pro­to­col let­ter filed by FM Mario Meritt threat­en­ing ac­tion against the as­so­ci­a­tion's re­cent de­ci­sion to change the cri­te­ria for se­lect­ing play­ers to rep­re­sent the coun­try at Olympiads.

A lawyer and one of T&T's lead­ing play­ers, Mer­ritt had ar­gued strong­ly against the pro­pos­al which would break the es­tab­lished pat­tern by which the first three win­ners of the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onship tour­na­ment qual­i­fied au­to­mat­i­cal­ly to rep­re­sent the coun­try at the fol­low­ing Olympiad.When the pro­pos­al came be­fore a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing some two weeks ago, Mer­ritt point­ed out that since play­ers, in­clud­ing him­self, had al­ready qual­i­fied to play in the na­tion­al fi­nals it was too late for the as­so­ci­a­tion to at­tempt to change the cri­te­ria with re­spect to Olympiad se­lec­tion.

The change, in fact, would be un­fair since win­ners of two qual­i­fy­ing con­tests would be de­prived of the le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion of play­ing at the Olympiad should they se­cure any of the first three places. DR, one of the del­e­gates rep­re­sent­ing the Knights Chess Club, was per­suad­ed by the log­ic of Mer­ritt's ar­gu­ment and vot­ed against the pro­pos­al.Lat­er he was pleased to learn that this process of se­lec­tion was not the prod­uct of mere con­ven­tion but was in fact the re­sult of a de­ci­sion tak­en sev­er­al years ago at the as­so­ci­a­tion's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing in lay­ing down the cri­te­ria for such rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

For pres­i­dent Smith and his ex­ec­u­tive to at­tempt now to change such a fixed way of se­lec­tion mid­way through the na­tion­al tour­na­ment strikes DR as not on­ly un­just but al­so quite un­nec­es­sary. True, the time lag be­tween the end of the na­tion­als in May and the Nor­way Olympiad in Au­gust 2014 seems un­usu­al­ly long but that is a prob­lem which could be cor­rect­ly ad­dressed with­out in­flict­ing such an un­ex­pect­ed and un­war­rant­ed change mid­stream of the con­test. Sad­ly, how­ev­er, the as­so­ci­a­tion does not seem to see it that way even in the face of an im­pend­ing law­suit.

DR ex­pect­ed that the T&TCA pres­i­dent would read­i­ly ap­pre­ci­ate Mer­ritt's ar­gu­ment, that he was mak­ing an ob­vi­ous mis­take by vi­o­lat­ing a clear-cut laid-down prin­ci­ple and, in the in­ter­est of all, the as­so­ci­a­tion should move prompt­ly to have re­scind­ed the de­ci­sion tak­en at the spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing.In­stead, how­ev­er, Smith has is­sued a lengthy e-mail in which he ex­press­es the view that Mer­ritt had "a pre­med­i­tat­ed plan to sue" since he proved "in­flex­i­ble" about dis­cussing the mat­ter any fur­ther.But re­al­ly, what was there now to dis­cuss? Mer­ritt had made his po­si­tion quite clear at the SGM and in­di­cat­ed his in­ten­tion to seek re­dress by tak­ing the As­so­ci­a­tion to court.

Smith must ap­pre­ci­ate that this is­sue has passed the dis­cus­sion stage. It is now left to the As­so­ci­a­tion to re­act to Mer­ritt's pro­to­col let­ter in two ways: It can ei­ther con­cede to the con­tend­ing ar­gu­ment or con­test it be­fore a judge in which case the cash strapped or­gan­i­sa­tion will have to find fees to pay its coun­sel.DR now asks, can the T&TCA af­ford to lose, as it most like­ly will? At this stage, it seems quite disin­gen­u­ous for the T&TCA pres­i­dent to in­vite the ag­griev­ed play­er to par­tic­i­pate in a tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee "to look holis­ti­cal­ly in­to the is­sue of per­for­mance and de­vel­op­ment." In re­gard to which, DR must won­der what­ev­er be­came of all those won­der­ful de­vel­op­ment plans for the sport pro­duced by pre­vi­ous com­mit­tees and ad­min­is­tra­tions? And will this ef­fort, if it pro­duces any­thing at all, not dis­ap­pear in­to lim­bo al­so?

Re­gard­less of what some mem­bers of the coun­try's chess play­ing com­mu­ni­ty may feel, Dou­ble Rooks de­rives no plea­sure from writ­ing about such un­hap­py mat­ters.But no sport, in fact no so­cial en­ter­prise, can grow and thrive if it is not dri­ven by per­sons of hon­esty, fair play, with a love for its ac­tiv­i­ty and the can­dour to call a spade a spade.So far, it seems to DR, that the roy­al game in T&T has not been spec­tac­u­lar­ly for­tu­nate in at­tract­ing en­thu­si­asts of that cal­i­bre.