« Reply #17 on: Saturday 01 August 20 11:50 BST (UK) »
Don't give up Romilly, just take a break, you never know what might turn up.
I don't doubt Blaine Bettinger's credentials and would like to read his book but a lot of the research he references also relates to matches of 5cM, even 2cM, not to the 6cM and 7cM matches that will be deleted at ancestry.
I accept many of these 6-7cM matches are "noise" but from what he says, perhaps as much as 50% of them are genuine matches, that's many tens of thousands of my matches that will be deleted, to my detriment. At the moment, I can choose to ignore the many irrelevant matches and cherry pick the interesting ones. Soon the interesting ones will not be accessible.
I also don't accept that matches of 6-7cM are extremely distant matches. I have 9 known matches of 6-7cM and my mother has 14, that I can attribute to precise ancestors - mostly my 3 x or 4 x grandparents. Many of these small matches had family trees that overlapped with mine in a clear way. No ambiguity.
GEDMatch Kit no. CE7119959
Maternal: Thirlwell, Dobbins, Stamp, Rochester, Laws, Nicholson, Cavanagh, Jessop, Clough/Cleugh, Charlton, Weightman, Swinhoe, Swainson, Purdie, Carney…
(Northumberland, Cumberland, Ireland)
Paternal: Gilmour, McGrath, Oram, Green(e), Hepplewhite, Graham, Bugbird, Hanley, Hutton, Bellott, Busfield, Blake, Bugbird, Dwyer...
(Ireland, County Durham, especially Hartlepool, Whitby, North Yorkshire, Middlesex, Surrey, ia)