Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

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Alan Walton
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Alan Walton » Mon Feb 06, 2017 10:18 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:The reason we didn't implement it is resource-based. For an event the size of the London Chess Classic, or the British Championships, we'd have to check the ratings of about 1000 entries over a 6 or 12 month period. We have some software that looks up the rating being used for the tournament, but it isn't as sophisticated as checking the ratings going back 12 months.
This is a relatively straightforward job,

You have the historical FIDE rating files, the FIDE code of all entries; therefore you can use Excel and vlookup formulae to get the 12 month history, then extrapolate the highest, average, lowest etc. from this list

Should only take and hour or so

Ian Thompson
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Ian Thompson » Mon Feb 06, 2017 10:18 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:I think letting an ineligible player play in a tournament, and then disqualifying them afterwards, would be an excellent way for potential entries to lose confidence in your event.
You wouldn't be doing that. I thought the suggestion was that players' eligibility for rating prizes based on relative rating performance should be based on highest rating in the last 6 months or a year. That would be separate from being eligible to play in the tournament which would remain determined by current rating.
Alex Holowczak wrote:I don't know enough about what happened in the Blackpool event, where they retrospectively decided a player was ineligible, but I'd be keen to avoid going to court at the end of a tournament having disqualified them even if I did win the case.
That was different. The organisers let someone play in a tournament based on an estimated rating and then decided they shouldn't have done. Rating prizes are usually restricted to rated players only, so no estimates are involved. If you do allow unrated players to win these prizes then you have to estimate their rating and there is no actual rating to get wrong.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Feb 06, 2017 10:28 pm

Alan Walton wrote: Should only take and hour or so
Self certification by the players is more difficult than it ought to be, because of the ridiculous FIDE insistence that you have to register for their online server before being allowed to view your historic rating performance. The number of users of FIDE's server is measured in thousands, so falls a bit short of the FIDE President's belief in 600 million chess players.

For many tournaments, having to play in the Open rather than a rating restricted tournament is no great hardship. It is a problem if there isn't a tournament you can be promoted to, or if like Gibraltar, it has run out of space.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Feb 06, 2017 10:39 pm

Ian Thompson wrote: That was different. The organisers let someone play in a tournament based on an estimated rating and then decided they shouldn't have done.
It was vaguely parallel to the Challengers and Amateur tournaments at Gibraltar. These are rating restricted, so the question arises as to who should be permitted to play in them. The Blackpool winner had been inactive, so once the entry had been accepted, I doubt the organisers had much in their favour in withholding prize money.

Alex Holowczak
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Alex Holowczak » Mon Feb 06, 2017 10:47 pm

Alan Walton wrote:
Alex Holowczak wrote:The reason we didn't implement it is resource-based. For an event the size of the London Chess Classic, or the British Championships, we'd have to check the ratings of about 1000 entries over a 6 or 12 month period. We have some software that looks up the rating being used for the tournament, but it isn't as sophisticated as checking the ratings going back 12 months.
This is a relatively straightforward job,

You have the historical FIDE rating files, the FIDE code of all entries; therefore you can use Excel and vlookup formulae to get the 12 month history, then extrapolate the highest, average, lowest etc. from this list

Should only take and hour or so
Are you willing to volunteer to do it, then?

Brian Towers
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Brian Towers » Mon Feb 06, 2017 10:49 pm

NickFaulks wrote:A suggestion I made ages ago is that players should have been below the rating limit continuously for the past twelve months. I don't know why every tournament wouldn't wish to do that, although Gib does seem to get scalped more than most.
This is actually a fairly trivial problem. About a year ago I decided it would be interesting to data mine the FIDE rating data which is available for download. I designed my database structure and wrote software to populate the tables with downloaded FIDE data but got bored and abandoned it. Were I to resurrect it it would take a bit of setting up - I do some basic checks looking for anomalous data which I might need to correct for (new federations being the obvious one) - but then it would be less than an hour's work once a month. Getting the MAX rating for each of a list of FINs would be just programmatically feeding a list of FINs into a stored procedure.
Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now.

Alex Holowczak
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Alex Holowczak » Mon Feb 06, 2017 10:51 pm

Ian Thompson wrote:
Alex Holowczak wrote:I think letting an ineligible player play in a tournament, and then disqualifying them afterwards, would be an excellent way for potential entries to lose confidence in your event.
You wouldn't be doing that. I thought the suggestion was that players' eligibility for rating prizes based on relative rating performance should be based on highest rating in the last 6 months or a year. That would be separate from being eligible to play in the tournament which would remain determined by current rating.
Perhaps I've misunderstood. I thought the suggestion was to be used even to determine eligibility. That's certainly what I thought Nick Faulks implied when he made the suggestion.
Alex Holowczak wrote:I don't know enough about what happened in the Blackpool event, where they retrospectively decided a player was ineligible, but I'd be keen to avoid going to court at the end of a tournament having disqualified them even if I did win the case.
That was different. The organisers let someone play in a tournament based on an estimated rating and then decided they shouldn't have done. Rating prizes are usually restricted to rated players only, so no estimates are involved. If you do allow unrated players to win these prizes then you have to estimate their rating and there is no actual rating to get wrong.[/quote]
Often you have to "estimate their rating" using something that isn't their rating. E.g. a standardplay rating in a Rapidplay. And two different sources: ECF or FIDE. In my tournaments, anyone I can give a number to by way of an estimate is eligible for a rating prize. This makes sense to me - if we're using the number for pairing purposes, they should be eligible for the prizes that that estimate will give them.

But these estimates aren't really estimates, they're "other" ratings. So now do I need to look up all their Rapidplay ratings as well as Standardplay ratings...

Alex Holowczak
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Alex Holowczak » Mon Feb 06, 2017 10:52 pm

Brian Towers wrote:
NickFaulks wrote:A suggestion I made ages ago is that players should have been below the rating limit continuously for the past twelve months. I don't know why every tournament wouldn't wish to do that, although Gib does seem to get scalped more than most.
This is actually a fairly trivial problem. About a year ago I decided it would be interesting to data mine the FIDE rating data which is available for download.
I'm not sure all organisers will share your interest in data mining, so there needs to be another solution.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Feb 06, 2017 10:57 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote: I'm not sure all organisers will share your interest in data mining, so there needs to be another solution.
Organisers are ECF members with voting rights. The ECF could do it as a service to its member organisations.

FIDE allow extensive downloads. Every month, the latest rating list is downloaded and used to populate a table.

Stewart Reuben
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Stewart Reuben » Tue Feb 07, 2017 12:32 am

In 1963 I moved to the US. My first tournament was the New Jersey U2200 Amateur. I entered in all innocence, having no idea about the US Rating system. I won with 5.5/6. Next month my rating was published at 2350+. It took some time to get my rating down to a more realistic level. But being over 2200, I held the US master title.
Not all that seems to have changed in the past 50+ years.
Of course the reason Gibraltar has more difficulties with possible sandbaggers is that the rating prizes are so high.

Geoff Chandler
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Geoff Chandler » Tue Feb 14, 2017 2:50 am

I'll repeat Nick's request.

"Is there a list of [all] prizewinners anywhere?"

Adding what won the best game prize?

Joshua Gibbs

Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Joshua Gibbs » Tue Feb 14, 2017 4:38 am

Geoff Chandler wrote:I'll repeat Nick's request.

"Is there a list of [all] prizewinners anywhere?"

Adding what won the best game prize?

Id ask on twitter... i would but my accounts been restricted and i cant make any more with my phone number

Joshua Gibbs

Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Joshua Gibbs » Wed Feb 15, 2017 1:03 pm

Geoff Chandler wrote:I'll repeat Nick's request.

"Is there a list of [all] prizewinners anywhere?"

Adding what won the best game prize?
I asked on my business twitter
they'll be available very soon

Geoff Chandler
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by Geoff Chandler » Thu Feb 16, 2017 1:16 pm

Results appearing in dribs and drabs.

Alan Tate won a grading prize and Best game went to Nigel Short (though the person
who told me could not remember who against) it must have been v Caruana.

Here is Nigel in an excellent after game interview following the Caruana game.

"I've been around for a thousand years..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzmbTmcAec

LawrenceCooper
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Re: Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

Post by LawrenceCooper » Thu Feb 16, 2017 2:23 pm

Geoff Chandler wrote:Results appearing in dribs and drabs.

Alan Tate won a grading prize and Best game went to Nigel Short (though the person
who told me could not remember who against) it must have been v Caruana.
Topalov-Deac won the best game prize.