Grade Update

[Roger de Coverly]

Is that not possible??

It's possible but not desirable.

At the simplest level, you have a tournament restricted to players under a grade of x. You have to decide in advance whether to enter the tournament. Your grade is x-1. You don't want to play in a league game that could add +2 to your grade.

That's not to mention all the issues that can be caused by late reporting of results.

The international system will shortly move to monthly updates. I think that's as rapid as reasonably feasible. Even that system has to have rigorous cutoffs for the reporting of results, so you don't get the new ratings immediately corrupted by late reporting of results.

What the ECF could do, but almost certainly won't, is to move to a system where everyone has two grades. The official one is used for calculations and stays the same for six months or a year at a time and the unofficial one is what the official one will be at the next half yearly or yearly update.

[Alex Holowczak]

Can someone explain to me, why grades can not be updated as soon as a match or congress has finished. They do it with in 24hours at my golf club.

The Birmingham Rapidplay will be submitted for grading tonight, within 3 hours of the tournament finishing.

I managed to submit the grading file for the BUCA and LTR this year within 24 hours. (LTR would have been quicker, but I didn't want to pay for Internet on the train back from Euston...) This is notable because I had to do them manually. Indeed, I was manually grading the LTR as the tournament was going on in a spreadsheet, having set it up in advance. How many other congresses have arbiters that do manual grading during the event?

With league matches it's more difficult. Think about the wheels that need to turn:
(1) You need to submit results to League Records' Secretary - this may include by post, of course
(2) League Records' Secretary needs to submit results to grader
(3) Grader needs to grade the games

Leagues aren't set up with efficiency in mind in terms of grading.

[Neill Cooper]

Can someone explain to me, why grades can not be updated as soon as a match or congress has finished. They do it with in 24hours at my golf club.
Thought it would work like this
Match finishes
Email result to whoever
Whoever puts result into database
Database churns out grade and displays on website

Is that not possible??

I think quite a few 'area' grades are done like that already - e.g. Berkshire Junior, Yorkshire.
The problems occur when you have adjournment in club matches - when does the match finish? Do you submit the games individually for grading when they finish?

[Richard Bates]

On the downside of the present system, your grade doesn't reflect your true level. I am 138, but have only lost one game out of ten, so I would assume I am better than 138. On the other hand, a club mate can not win a game for toffee, so he is playing a lot lower than his grade.

I wouldn't necessarily assume that. My grade is 221. I have played 12 games this grading period performing at 237. My "current grade" ie. the one which would be published under a constantly updated system is... 221! I will probably play 23 games this six months counting towards the January list. To just hold my grade i will have to perform at 226 over those 23 games. Although because of my good start i "only" need to perform at 215 over the remaining 11

[Roger de Coverly]

On the downside of the present system, your grade doesn't reflect your true level. I am 138, but have only lost one game out of ten, so I would assume I am better than 138. On the other hand, a club mate can not win a game for toffee, so he is playing a lot lower than his grade.

A grade is an estimate of strength and as with all estimates needs data. If you have previously performed at 138 over 30 games, it doesn't necessarily mean you are better than 138 even if you have had a run of good form.

Whole papers and rating philosophies can be built on the relative balance to use between historic and current results.

Particularly with Elo style systems, it's always possible to produce an update after the game or event. In a national or international system, you have to be very cautious about using this rating for the next event because you have no certainty that there aren't other results. So a system would need to operate like the FIDE one, it tells you the provisional change to your rating, but doesn't change it until the next global update. The other advantage of that method is that you have a history which is consistent for all players so you can look up historic ratings.

[Roger de Coverly]

Why may I ask, have the ECF started grading players every 6 months then, if a yearly one is correct?

With other organisations (FIDE etc) moving to more frequent reporting, they felt they had to do something. Whether what they are going to do is particularly sensible remains to be seen. It's partly speculation and leaks as to what they are in fact intending. Personally I would have though it more sensible to move to a two grade system. You have the official grade which is invariant for 6 or 12 months and the unofficial, but published grade, which can change with every game processed.

[Richard Bates]

I would say it is more difficult to make it work than golf handicaps thats for sure.
Why may I ask, have the ECF started grading players every 6 months then, if a yearly one is correct?

Did anyone say that? I was just making the point that your "up-to-date" grade would not be based on the ten games you have played this season, but would incorporate the twenty games that you played prior to that. In principle the most important thing is the number of games included in calculating the grade. Therefore, all things being equal, the more games included the better (and therefore one would say using a year is better than half a year). However all things aren't equal, because the desire to include as many games as possible has to be balanced by the fact that people's strength changes so "old" games offer less reliable data. Also the advantages of more games are diminished once they reach a certain level - the ECF system uses 30 games as a key number.

For many people the main outcome of switching to 6 monthly grades will be to switch their grading calculation period from one based upon time (the last year) to one based on games played (the last 30 games). Using a year had the advantage that it coincided with a "season", so automatically picked up fluctuations in form that occur throughout a season. Really a year is the only period which makes specific sense if you are going to base a grade on time period. Now that it has been got rid of there is no principled reason why the system couldn't be updated far more regularly (provided the technology will allow), based at all times on the last 30 games played. Possibly it could still specify a time period as well to avoid form fluctuations caused by people playing very frequently. The only real (but very practically important) objection is Roger's point about certainty for entering rating limited tournaments. However there is no reason why a tournament couldn't specify a grade "as at a certain date" (like the ECF is doing with the Counties Championship).

[kishanpattni]

I think this topic is quite interesting. I certainly would favour a more frequent update on grades or rating. For many players such as myself, a rating is more than just a statistical figure. It's a figure that represents my pride and progress in the game (which at the moment is not too good ). I think the entire game could improve immensely if there were more statistical updates. Most newspapers are loaded with football stats, example, number of consecutive wins/losses, home wins, away wins etc. Think of all those people who only pick up the paper just to look at this!! Maybe the thought is a little extreme but if there was a more regular statistical updates on chess, how well would the game develop?

Kishan

[Paolo Casaschi]

I think this topic is quite interesting. I certainly would favour a more frequent update on grades or rating. For many players such as myself, a rating is more than just a statistical figure. It's a figure that represents my pride and progress in the game (which at the moment is not too good ). I think the entire game could improve immensely if there were more statistical updates.

If knowing the progress of your ECF rating game by game is that important to you, it's not very difficult to calculate yourself an estimated instantaneus ECF rating from your last 30 games (or more if played in the last official rating window) and from the last published rating of your opponents.
Not exactly right and official, but it would give you a good idea of your progress, especially if you play a large number of games.