ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Debate directly related to English Chess Federation matters.
David Pardoe
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by David Pardoe » Fri Sep 19, 2014 2:05 pm

Graham Borrowdale wrote:
Kevin Thurlow wrote:"The issue immediately before your discussion, abolition of adjudications, may well overrun and overlap. If leagues are desperate to retain adjudication even at the risk of opting out of ECF grading, their players have no need to be forced into ECF membership."

Surrey has a system which works well for nearly all players, that there is a choice of adjudication (of which there are very few), adjournment, QP (30 moves in an hour plus 20 minutes)and Fischer timing for league matches. SCCA has contacted Alex H explaining this and asking for a re-think. I pointed out to SCCA that Alex was obsessed with QP and wanted it installed no matter how much damage it did to chess. I favour QP/Fischer timing myself, but understand (and care) that lots of people don't. It might leave SCCA with a difficult choice next AGM. Do you drive away those players who don't want to play speed chess? I think SCCA is big enough to have its own grading system- most players only play in the league and internal club competitions anyway and many club players do not care about gradings. Unless there's a sizeable majority for QP finish, it is just possible that a counter-proposal, saying "we carry on as before, run our own grading system, and by the way, you don't have to be ECF members" might just win...

ECF should be encouraging people to play chess. I hope the ECF meeting throws out the proposal to stop grading games in leagues where someone else might have opted for adjudication!
A great deal of common sense written there by Kevin, in my view. While it might be acceptable to refuse to grade the odd game which has been adjudicated, a method of completion both players will have agreed on, it can not be right to refuse to grade the whole league because that fairly remote possibility exists.

On the subject of dropping game fee so that players have to join the ECF before they can play a single league game, that is most likely to discourage newcomers from playing. My own league already has that rule, and is quite literally dying from lack of new players. There might not be a connection, but we should do as much as we can not to discourage newcomers.
Graham,
Your final point about new members is vital...but, its not just about not discouraging newcomers....its about positively encouraging newcomers.
One of the classic problems for league chess is that newcomers can find it difficult to get on the ladder, because the bottom rung is too high..
By this, I mean that leagues and clubs must cater more effectly for novice level players, ie..those in the ungraded and U80 range..
They must set up leagues that specifically cater for this group of players, and run internal club competitions that cater also for these people...
They must also make more concerted efforts to attact such novice players to local clubs and welcome such players..
Adverts in the local Press `Forthcoming Entertainments` section can help...if they can get the papers to publish..
Also, to establish networks with local Secondary schools and colleges, to encourage youngsters to join up, or even to start there own clubs and enter teams in `novice leagues`....
BRING BACK THE BCF

Martyn Harris
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by Martyn Harris » Fri Sep 19, 2014 2:12 pm

I hate, loath and detest adjudications, but I see no reason to bar such games from grading. The purity of the grading list is already corrupted by match specific practices such as agreeing draws in good positions so as to secure a match win that a few adjudicated results hardly matter. Indeed I suspect it is not merely matchplay that has an effect. Congress last rounds often feature quick draws and desultory play.

Full membership? Rename game fee temporary bronze membership, the congress supplement temporary silver membership and the job is done.

Fourteen month membership? Yes please. Indeed I would suggest that after end June only extended memberships covering to the end of the following season should be available. Make life much easier for tidying up the finances at the end of the season and for getting membership in place for early season congresses. There may be a small number of people who only play in the summer months who could effectively take advantage by only joining alternate years, but the numbers are surely too small to worry about.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by Roger de Coverly » Fri Sep 19, 2014 2:16 pm

Martyn Harris wrote: Indeed I would suggest that after end June only extended memberships covering to the end of the following season should be available.
According to the Membership Director's report (?), they are intending to do this.

Brian Valentine
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by Brian Valentine » Fri Sep 19, 2014 2:58 pm

I'd like to write a few words about the proposal on adjudications as someone who has been involved in the development of the proposal. I am ECF manager of grading.

The eligibility for a game being graded is that "The FIDE Laws of Chess are used" (see help section in the Grading Database).

The issue arose as an outcome from a more general correspondence about rules that leagues should introduce to cover various FIDE law changes (e.g. zero tolerance, mobile phones). A paper covering various issues is being drafted.

The problem we have is, as Alex has said, that adjudications is not a valid completion of a game and therefore it can be argued that such games should not be graded at present. It is realised that this would cause objections, since adjudicated games have been the accepted for a long time. It seemed right that Council should deliberate on this point before implementation and hence there is the proposal that can be voted down or amended if that is the wish of Council.

If it voted down then Council will at some stage have to define what counts as a game of Chess for grading purposes if the FIDE Laws are no longer the yardstick.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by Roger de Coverly » Fri Sep 19, 2014 3:16 pm

Brian Valentine wrote: If it voted down then Council will at some stage have to define what counts as a game of Chess for grading purposes if the FIDE Laws are no longer the yardstick.
The practice of adjudication pre-dates FIDE. For that matter ECF grading pre-dates the extension of the detail of FIDE laws of chess from international into national chess.

There's a whole pile of past Laws of Chess at the arbiters' site.
http://www.chessarbitersassociation.co. ... /laws.html

Very little is in them about the practice of adjudication, even though it was standard operating practice for every graded game that didn't have adjournments up to around forty years ago.

Is there any reason why the ECF cannot have a short supplement describing where national practice either extends or varies from the FIDE Laws? You then refer to that as part of the conditions of grading. It's fully accepted that adjudicated games are not to be FIDE rated, which isn't the case if the ECF wanted to have its own less ridiculous phone and device rules.

Personally I would recommend a transition period, that if league players really aren't capable of managing their time to complete a game within an evening, that the adjudication point be moved to say move 60 or even move 90. That gives a fixed target, meaning that Appendix G (10.2 as was) would never apply.

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IM Jack Rudd
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by IM Jack Rudd » Fri Sep 19, 2014 5:54 pm

As the representative of Barnstaple Chess Club (one of the requisitionists on this agenda item), I suppose I'd better say something about our place with regards to this issue:

Barnstaple's current rules are that you do not have to be an ECF member to join the club, but you do have to be one to play any graded internal games. Entering any of our internal tournaments is normally a commitment to playing at least seven graded games anyway, so there would be no financial reason for our competition entrants to not become ECF members.

External games - we play rather fewer of these; the Devon League is very spread out with very small divisions. We would be looking at four or five games a year in those competitions, and very rarely need to field anyone who isn't already a member - it has only happened once in the four or five seasons since we re-entered the league.

To summarize: Game Fee is meaningless to us. We have signed this proposal merely to spark discussion on an important subject.

Ian Thompson
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by Ian Thompson » Fri Sep 19, 2014 9:05 pm

benedgell wrote:I've just been calling it Game Fee discussion paper. Bit worried with it being virtually last on the agenda that it'll be rushed over at the end. I'll copy the paper in full onto here:

"The general opinion of the board is that the ECF should work towards phasing out game fee over time in favour of a pure membership scheme. The aim of this discussion paper is not to pass judgement on this. Instead the aim is to encourage the various leagues, counties, congresses etc to discuss how they use game fee (if they do so) and any problems they feel would need to be resolved before they could accept a pure membership scheme.

From this the ECF will be better informed as to what they need to do before they can introduce a pure membership scheme, and have a better idea of the time scale that this aim may involve."
Fundamental requirement No. 1 is that a member isn't penalised for unknowingly playing a game against a non-member.

Leagues can have rules saying all players taking part must be ECF members. What they can't do is ensure that the rule is complied with. What happens if a match result is submitted to the league and the league then finds that one of the teams fielded a non-member of the ECF? Let's suppose that the non-member lost his game, so his opponent would consider himself penalised if the game wasn't graded.

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Carl Hibbard
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by Carl Hibbard » Fri Sep 19, 2014 9:08 pm

The code of conduct here:

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-conte ... onduct.pdf

Suggests:

3.4 ECF officials shall preferentially communicate on the ECF website/Forum (e.g. news of ECF events should be published on an ECF site before other sites).
Cheers
Carl Hibbard

Roger de Coverly
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by Roger de Coverly » Fri Sep 19, 2014 9:35 pm

Carl Hibbard wrote:ECF officials shall preferentially communicate on the ECF website/Forum
There is a practical problem with this when it comes to a "Communications Strategy", which is that readership of the official forum, as measured by the "Views" count isn't very large. So if you actually want your announcement to be read, as opposed to merely published, it has to be somewhere with a wider readership. The repost of the short paper on Game Fee has just 29 views and no comments.

I'm a bit confused as to who is the author of the original. Is it Ben and his fellow requisitionist(s) or the ECF Board in response to the Agenda item?

John Philpott

Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by John Philpott » Fri Sep 19, 2014 10:25 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote
I'm a bit confused as to who is the author of the original. Is it Ben and his fellow requisitionist(s) or the ECF Board in response to the Agenda item?
The former.

Richard Bates
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by Richard Bates » Sat Sep 20, 2014 8:04 am

An adjudication is just an adjournment where both players mutually agree to conclude the game without resuming on the basis of further analysis, where they agree to subcontract the analysis to a common third party. Since third party analysis isn't forbidden and can't be prevented for adjournments, I'm not quite sure why it should be considered such a departure from the normal conduct of a game of chess as to undermine the grading system which is IMO the only real justification for it to be effectively imposed on Leagues (and by extension players) by the ECF, presumably against their wishes. Taken to its logical extension you would potentially refuse to grade any game that isn't played out to checkmate, certainly you would ban adjourned games from grading. Which would probably be fine by AlexH, i imagine, but wouldn't be consistent with the stated aim of the proposals ('compliance' with FIDE laws of chess).

Roger de Coverly
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sat Sep 20, 2014 9:17 am

Richard Bates wrote:An adjudication is just an adjournment where both players mutually agree to conclude the game without resuming on the basis of further analysis
The bit about writing the next move down and putting the score-sheets in an envelope is usually omitted, but the analogy does bring adjudication back within the Laws. Open sealed moves were not unheard of, so the previous move could be considered the "sealed" one.

Particularly if it's a league where adjournment or adjudication is haggled over at the end of the session, you could have a process whereby the end of session is called, the next move is sealed and if the adjudication option is selected the sealed move becomes open. The difference between that and intending to continue, but checking with an engine and finding the results clearly drawn or clearly lost is not great.

Ian Thompson
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by Ian Thompson » Sat Sep 20, 2014 10:40 am

Richard Bates wrote:An adjudication is just an adjournment where both players mutually agree to conclude the game without resuming on the basis of further analysis, where they agree to subcontract the analysis to a common third party. Since third party analysis isn't forbidden and can't be prevented for adjournments, I'm not quite sure why it should be considered such a departure from the normal conduct of a game of chess as to undermine the grading system which is IMO the only real justification for it to be effectively imposed on Leagues (and by extension players) by the ECF, presumably against their wishes.
And it's also not much different from team matches where games are adjourned and the team captains agree results, e.g. if you agree a draw a board 2, we'll agree a draw on board 3, etc.. Arguably, this practise is a bigger corruption of the grading system than adjudications. With an adjudication you at least aim to get the 'right' result if the game had continued. With my example, you're not. You're trying to get the right result for the teams, but not necessarily the individual games.

benedgell
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by benedgell » Sat Sep 20, 2014 11:12 am

John Philpott wrote:Roger de Coverly wrote
I'm a bit confused as to who is the author of the original. Is it Ben and his fellow requisitionist(s) or the ECF Board in response to the Agenda item?
The former.
I wrote the article, but have been in discussions with several members of the ECF board throughout the process, so its been somewhat of a collaborative effort.

Ian Thompson
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Re: ECF Council - Controversial Issues

Post by Ian Thompson » Sat Sep 20, 2014 4:04 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Carl Hibbard wrote:One legal case too, going to take a while to read the lot.
It appears to involve a chess parent so all bets are off, but the monetary value of the Junior Grand Prix is not high and the first prize is £ 100.
It's not even that. Only the women's Grand Prix has cash prizes. The junior prize is £50 off a future British Championship entry fee. What the junior winners do get, though, is qualification to play in World and European Youth championships, so maybe that's what's at stake.

Whatever it is, I would expect Council to be told what the claim is, what the costs of defending it are likely to be, and what the consequences of losing might be, both financial and otherwise.