Amateurs vs Professional

In sport there is amateur and professional players. Some sports has clear line drawn between amateur and professional competition and non of them can meet and compete because standard is too different ( e.g. boxing, tennis, baseball). Some sport like soccer has a mix of professional and amateur players/teams with the latter always find hard to compete with the professional and found themselves in lower league and division. In basket ball there also used to have segregation between amateur and professional until some history was made. In 1988 olympic in order to improve the standard of competition of the basketball event, rule was changed to allow professional players participation and the US sent a "Dream team" of star players from NBA to compete. It becomes a one sided event competition with adults against boys type of skill gap resulting in landslide victory for the US team. The US "Dream team" made a mickey out of the other teams, showing their incapability and weaknesses and a vast gap in basketball skill. Down the road the Olympic basketball was still dominated by the professional players till very recently, US is no more champion anymore for 2 or 3 consecutive olympic, (the last olympic champ is Argentina).

Why a so called professional unbeatable team of NBA stars becomes beatable? Obvious reason is others have woken up, realising that they need to improve and has improved and bucked up, and the competition standard has indeed improved with teams from other countries producing players and strategies on par with NBA stars standard.

This lesson learnt is indeed a very good reflection of what is happening in Goldfish circle. The so call amateurs are true hobbyist and the professional are the commercial of sellers, dealers, farmers and breeders.

Should a competition be strictly hobbyist or open to commerical? Restricting commercial with only hobbyist competiting even you won a trophy you would still think there is some big boys down there not competing and is the standard of competition high without the commercial best fish competing? Do you want to win just for sick of winning or want to know the true results of your fish standard? A true champion is one who can compete with anyone in the world and not just with small circle of players.

Like the popular tennis game, there are many tennis tournament, but only a few are call grand slam! Major part of the point awarding system for ranking the world top players emphasize on player that win the grand slam tournament. This is what all hobbyists should brace themselves in and for the highest level.

Only with commercial best fishes involvement, then the competition standard will improve and one would also improve if one participate in those competition. Even if one lost, one would know why his/her fish lost out with glory by comparison .

A good competition may come with other set of awards like the 'photogenic' awards which give a hobbyist a chance to win. Winning smaller prize in a grand competition is a clear indicating of one standard and allow oneself to brenchmark with the big guns! So in the next competition one can aim and target for the bigger prize. And soon you will find yourself side-by-side with the 'untouchable NBA Players'!

Thank you,

Fynnmood