Players under 2050 in Opens

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Alex McFarlane
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by Alex McFarlane » Thu May 04, 2017 9:28 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:Using (W-We) is an admission that the pairing scheme is unduly influenced by the exact sequence in the ranking of players in the middle and to the tail of tournaments.
Or it can take account of the player who is having a good tournament and as a result meets very strong players in the later rounds as opposed to the player who starts badly and has a number of easy wins against lower rated players.
I know I have seen numerous cases in weekenders where a player loses out on the grading prize due to a last round loss and is overtaken by a 'slow-starter'.
W-We invariably means only one winner. When it is decided by score there can be multiple ties. This is good if you want lots of prizewinners but bad as few of them remain for the prizegiving to pick up a relatively small sum.
NickFaulks wrote: Has there ever been a case in the Classic where a norm has been ruined by having to play two <2050 opponents
There was at least one when I was at the event.
It also depends what you mean by ruined. I've had many cases where a player has needed to win in the last round where boosting two players to 2050 would have meant only a draw was needed. And conversely, when you could enhance two players, I've had players playing for a norm who would otherwise have not had a chance. I will admit that I don't remember if these were in the Classic, certainly one of the cases I recall was at Hastings.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu May 04, 2017 9:50 am

Alex McFarlane wrote: I will admit that I don't remember if these were in the Classic, certainly one of the cases I recall was at Hastings.
Hastings discourages lower and non rated players in the Masters by charging higher entry fees. It's done that for non rated players going back to the days when the minimum to get a FIDE rating was 2200 for men. It does however express its rating prize as best performance by xx and under.

Alan Walton
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by Alan Walton » Thu May 04, 2017 10:29 am

The recent Reykjavik tournament had the following rating prizes (3 places), which were decided by points scored and then by tiebreak

2400-2201, 2200-2001, 2000 and under; considering nearly 50% of players were under 2000 this could be consider to favour stronger players

The tiebreak was based on victories, this personally was not the best and I would have used some Buchholz tiebreak method

There was also a secondary best performance prize based on rating improvement

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu May 04, 2017 11:36 am

Alan Walton wrote:2000 and under; considering nearly 50% of players were under 2000 this could be consider to favour stronger players
Something and under is the usual international practice, from which the London Chess Classic FIDE Open and now the ECF are diverging.

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JustinHorton
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by JustinHorton » Thu May 04, 2017 3:10 pm

I don't know much about grading so I usually stay out of these, but a question: are grading-performance prizes liable to be affected by people having being drawn (or not drawn) against ludicrously-underrated juniors?
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu May 04, 2017 3:32 pm

JustinHorton wrote:are grading-performance prizes liable to be affected by people having being drawn (or not drawn) against ludicrously-underrated juniors?
In the (W-We) method, you sum up the points (We) you are expected to score and compare this to the points you actually score (W). (We) is based on the tables in the FIDE rating description which give expected score values for rating differences. If you play someone who is a bit better than their rating, it's more difficult to score points against them.

Kevin Thurlow
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Thu May 04, 2017 7:54 pm

I may be tired as I have just chased a fox out of my back garden, but why should a 2051 at the bottom end of a tournament be more worthy of a grading prize than a 2049 at the bottom end of a tournament?

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Michael Farthing
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by Michael Farthing » Thu May 04, 2017 9:28 pm

Well,for the same reason that a 151 player should not be allowed into an under 150 section whereas a 149 should.
BTW What had the fox done to deserve being chased away?

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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by NickFaulks » Thu May 04, 2017 9:54 pm

Michael Farthing wrote:Well,for the same reason that a 151 player should not be allowed into an under 150 section whereas a 149 should.
Perhaps you should read Kevin's question more carefully.
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Stewart Reuben
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by Stewart Reuben » Fri May 05, 2017 1:12 am

JustinHorton wrote:
are grading-performance prizes liable to be affected by people having being drawn (or not drawn) against ludicrously-underrated juniors?

I presume you were innocently loading your question. Of course, if somebody is wrongly rated, the pairining system will be damaged and thus, with it, the prizes application.

W-We has the advantage that a player is not damaged by the opponents he is paired with, assuming they are correctly rated. It also has the advantage that, if all events are say, 2000 to 2200. players at the lowest end are able to win rating prizes. Since the organiser is trying to lure in weaker players with prizes, it is more likely to succeed. As Alex wrote, it is extremely unlikely there will be a tie in this system.
Best acore 2199-2000 has the advantage that it is easier to understand.
Then there will be another prize perhaps 1999-1800 and so on.

Somebody wrote that a system that is not widely used must be inferior. I gave some thought to that. It isn't necessatily correct. e.g.
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Virtually only in Britain do we usually start the last round at the same time as all the other rounds. In Crete I asked the organiser why the last round was starting in the morning and all others at 3pm. He sdmitted it was primarily tradition. It is very bad for the quality of the chess. We do it correctly in Britain.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by Roger de Coverly » Fri May 05, 2017 1:24 am

Stewart Reuben wrote: We do it correctly in Britain.
Have you looked at the timetable for the 2017 British?

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Michael Farthing
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by Michael Farthing » Fri May 05, 2017 7:30 am

NickFaulks wrote:
Michael Farthing wrote:Well,for the same reason that a 151 player should not be allowed into an under 150 section whereas a 149 should.
Perhaps you should read Kevin's question more carefully.
I have. I am still of the view that the analogy holds: namely that cut-off lines are sometimes necessary but inevitably produce "unfairness".

However, I cannot for the life of me think why this topic gets all this attention. I'd abolish rating prizes (and preferably prizes) entirely: the prize is being able to play. Monetary prizes simply encourage manipulation, gamesmanship, unsporting behaviour, ill-feeling and eventually cheating.
[Rant over].

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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by NickFaulks » Fri May 05, 2017 7:55 am

Michael Farthing wrote:I have. I am still of the view that the analogy holds: namely that cut-off lines are sometimes necessary but inevitably produce "unfairness".
We'll just have to disagree. I see a big difference between being deprived of a rating restricted prize because your rating is too high and being deprived of that, or any other, prize because your rating is to low.
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Kevin Thurlow
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Fri May 05, 2017 9:03 am

"BTW What had the fox done to deserve being chased away?"

They're nasty and destructive pests, and the birds were getting agitated.

Rating prizes are artificial anyway because ratings are artificial. So there is an air of randomness. I have some sympathy with the idea of not having prizes, but I think most people do play for fun and are genuinely surprised and pleased when they win something.

I attended a prize-giving in Krakow, even though I had not scored highly enough to win a prize. Apparently, they had a policy of only awarding prizes to people who turned up for the prize-giving, and not everybody did, so at one stage, the Chief Arbiter invented a special prize for being the only English player. That event did have a rating floor, so if you were too low you had to play in a lower section.

Stewart Reuben
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Re: Players under 2050 in Opens

Post by Stewart Reuben » Fri May 05, 2017 4:50 pm

It is interesting to compare chess, bridge and poker.
Chess we are always used to having prize money in tournaments and none in leagues. The lower sections in the British Championships would have the advantage with no prize money that it comes from the entry fees. 20% of those fees, even for the under 8s goes in VAT.
Bridge have has at most token prizes in most events in England. I guess that syems from the wish to convince the government that bridge is NOT a gambling game and thus should not be liable to the problems of the gaming laws.
Poker almsot invariably has prize money.

Kevin, Swisses are extremely artificial and, of course, there is a mesure of randomness.

The Evening Standard London Congress we used to have so many special prizes that you might even get one with 50%., if you turned up for the prizegiving.

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