Carl Ja­cobs

It is un­for­tu­nate that T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) pres­i­dent Rus­sell Smith should see it fit to pro­long the ab­surd and di­vi­sive dis­pute which arose re­cent­ly over his pro­posed change in se­lec­tion cri­te­ria for the forth­com­ing Olympiad.

DR had thought that FM Ryan Harp­er's over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port­ed mo­tion check­mat­ing his move would have brought ab­solute clo­sure to the is­sue. But no, Smith, for rea­sons dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand, still seems de­ter­mined to have the fi­nal say, lament­ing the threat­ened court ac­tion as ill-found­ed and lead­ing to a re­luc­tance by spon­sors to sup­port the sport.

Smith ex­pressed his pique at the end of a TTCA re­lease re­port­ing on the suc­cess of T&T ju­niors at the sec­ond Carif­ta Chess Cham­pi­onships held in Ja­maica last month.

In the fi­nal para­graph, he de­scribes FM Mario Mer­rit's in­tend­ed court ac­tion against the as­so­ci­a­tion's pro­posed cri­te­ria change as "a poor­ly thought out mat­ter" which had no mer­it in law, and de­pend­ed on a "le­git­i­mate ex­pec­tion" by two or three top play­ers who want­ed to main­tain the sta­tus quo in place for sev­er­al years.

"In the end," Smith not­ed, "they moved a mo­tion which sought to end the gam­bit in light of a glar­ing court de­feat star­ing them in the face."

Smith's think­ing in this mat­ter is dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand. Some may even see it as bizarre.

To be­gin with, what does the pres­i­dent hope to achieve by drag­ging on a quar­rel af­ter the as­so­ci­a­tion's mem­ber­ship, at a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing on March 17, had put it de­ci­sive­ly to rest by an al­most unan­i­mous show of hands? What­ev­er his an­noy­ance at such a re­jec­tion, what­ev­er his be­lief in the val­ue of his own pro­pos­al, Smith must know that pro­long­ing an open con­tention like this can on­ly dam­age the in­ter­est of the as­so­ci­a­tion he serves and the sport he ad­min­is­ters.

If, as the TTCA pres­i­dent claims, Mer­ritt's threat­ened court ac­tion led to a re­luc­tance by spon­sors to sup­port the sport, then his con­tin­u­ing irate re­ac­tion can on­ly serve to ag­gra­vate that re­luc­tance. It must al­so cast se­ri­ous doubt on his de­mo­c­ra­t­ic cre­den­tials since, as TTCA pres­i­dent, he ob­vi­ous­ly finds it dif­fi­cult to ac­cept the mem­ber­ship's whole­sale ap­proval of Harp­er's mo­tion.

It is un­for­tu­nate too that the pres­i­dent, even on sober re­flec­tion, fails to­tal­ly to un­der­stand the mer­it of Mer­ritt's case and in­stead poohoos the prin­ci­ple of "le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion," par­tic­u­lar­ly as it ap­plies to play­ers who have qual­i­fied for the na­tion­al fi­nals. Apart from be­ing a prop­er le­gal ar­gu­ment, it seems eth­i­cal­ly un­fair to abrupt­ly de­ny a spe­cif­ic ben­e­fit from per­sons, af­ter they have cho­sen to en­gage in a reg­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ty for which the ben­e­fit is a recog­nised re­ward.

It is al­most anal­o­gous to de­priv­ing the win­ner of a tour­na­ment of his le­git­i­mate prize, by de­cid­ing to re­move the prize af­ter he had en­tered the con­test with the con­fi­dent ex­pec­ta­tion of re­ceiv­ing the prize if he wins.

It seems, how­ev­er, that this prin­ci­ple, ex­plained ad nau­se­am by Mer­rit and a num­ber of oth­er play­ers, is too ab­struse for the TTCA pres­i­dent to com­pre­hend. His at­tempt to change the well-es­tab­lished and long-stand­ing cri­te­ria by which play­ers win­ning the first three places in the na­tion­al cham­pi­onship au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fy to rep­re­sent the coun­try at the next Olympiad, was mis­placed be­cause of its tim­ing.

Smith sought to have his pro­pos­al rat­i­fied af­ter the start of the 2013 qual­i­fy­ing events from which play­ers had al­ready qual­i­fied to con­test the fi­nals with, of course, the ex­pec­ta­tion of rep­re­sent­ing T&T at the forth­com­ing Olympiad in Nor­way should they se­cure any of the first three places.

As Olympic bronze medal­list John Raphael put it, Smith was at­tempt­ing to change the Olympiad se­lec­tion cri­te­ria in mid stream.

For DR, how­ev­er, the sad­dest as­pect of this af­fair is the di­vi­sive­ness it con­tin­ues to gen­er­ate in a de­vel­op­ing sport that needs all the uni­ty, har­mo­ny, co­op­er­a­tion and sup­port it can get both from with­in and with­out.

Clear­ly, the pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cre­at­ing this kind of co­he­sive­ness lies with the TTCA pres­i­dent him­self who, un­for­tu­nate­ly in­stead, has alien­at­ed a num­ber of ma­jor play­ers, up­set a large sec­tion of the chess-play­ing com­mu­ni­ty and gen­er­at­ed vibes that would hard­ly im­prove the im­age of the sport or en­dorse its claim to be a mind game that en­hances strate­gic and crit­i­cal think­ing.

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