Cathy Interviews Ian Rogers

Hands up anyone who still remembers Cathy Chua! Well, I don't because she was before my time in the Aussie chess scene, but I'm sure some of you do. Cathy Chua also happens to be the author of "Australian Chess at the Top", a definite must-have.

Nowadays, Cathy writes a blog on bridge, but recently found some time to make a couple of posts on the Olympiad in Dresden. There's even a very lengthy interview with grandmaster Ian Rogers. Asked what he thought of the new scoring method, GM Rogers was straightforward:

Awful - there are simply too many teams and not enough score groups with match points. (This could have been predicted, but FIDE admitted that they did no simulations before changing the system. (See Shaun Press’ blog), Also, it discourages fighting in all games since 2.5-1.5 is almost as good as 4-0.

For Australia it could have been great had our open team won our last match and moved into the top 20, since the yoyo effect is exaggerated. But overall the new system is worse for the middle teams who are all crowded around 50% and could finish anywhere.

At least under the old system you needed to lose 0-4 in the last round to drop dramatically - now a narrow 1.5-2.5 loss is enough to see you plummeting down the standings.

Read more in "The Overtrick". Look out for tomorrow's post, too, as Cathy has promised an interview with none other than GM Zong Yuan Zhao!