New January 2012 grades

Discussion about all aspects of the ECF County Championships.
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Neil Graham
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New January 2012 grades

Post by Neil Graham » Wed Jan 25, 2012 4:27 pm

I was going to e-mail Alex about this but as it's of general interest I'll post here.

The grades taken for the 2011/12 competition are those from the July 2011 list. Consequently anyone with a published grade in July 2011 will still be eligible even if their new grade exceeds the competition limit in grading restricted events.

The SCCU have, in my view correctly, stated that a completely new published grade in the January 2012 will supersede any previous estimation relating to eligibility. I was surprised to learn that the ECF will not be doing the same (neither will the MCCU).

Once we get to the final stages, captains will have to go through the rigmarole of submitting all the results to date for players ungraded in the July 2011 list even though a proper January 2012 listing might have occurred. This will affect a very few low graded players I suspect. Surely the ECF should have confidence in its new list and use that?

David Pardoe
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Re: New January 2012 grades

Post by David Pardoe » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:04 pm

Neil,
This is just one reason why I criticised the twice-yearly approach to grading.....
A similar arguement could be applied for leagues...but most of them have side-stepped this by simply `ignoring` the new half-year grades.
This leads to the obvious querks that you point to...ie, a 170 player could suddenly end up playing in the U160 team, creating obvious concerns, and perhaps leading to the `heavywieghts` out psyching the opposition by packing top boards with these `overgraded` players.
On the flip side...if you use the new grades, that could cause a captain to loose some of his key players, half way through the season, which many county captains may find irritating...having to suddenly find new replacements.
The other problem you might get, if different groups use different guide lines, is that some will apply one interpretation and others might use a different standard... Confusing or what.....
BRING BACK THE BCF

Alex Holowczak
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Re: New January 2012 grades

Post by Alex Holowczak » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:57 pm

The Union Reps had a little argument amongst themselves in my inbox while I was on a train coming back from the London Classic.

I neglected to put it on the ECF website, for which I will consider myself told off.

Anyway, after consultation with the Chief Arbiter and the Director of Home Chess, we came up with this. I copy what was sent to the Unions below, exactly as it was written in the e-mail:
What I wrote to the Unions wrote: "As such, the guidance is essentially to treat the January grading list as though it doesn't exist.

Suppose you have an ungraded player in July who gets a grade in January. He will still be regarded as ungraded for the purposes of the competition, and as such he must be cleared to play in all sections bar the Open, as per the rules.

The ungraded player will be estimated in the same way as previous years. That is to say, I will go on the best information made available to me. For example, a player may have played in congresses in January and February, which will appear in the grading database. Therefore, the player's estimated grade will be different from their January grade. It may be that the player's January grade is the best information available, in which case that's what will be used for the player for the purposes of the competition."
The logic is that the rules have not changed, so we have to do exactly what we did last year when it came to this issue.

I'll attempt to get this on the website.

Feel free to question away.

Richard Bates
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Re: New January 2012 grades

Post by Richard Bates » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:53 pm

Why exactly are twice yearly grading lists being introduced again?

There are obvious disadvantages which have been discussed elsewhere (such as inaccuracy caused by late submission and a large chunk of the season operating under out of date grades and the difficulty of planning in advance to play in tournaments around the February/March period) but i cannot off-hand think of a clearer example justifying their introduction than that an ungraded player should cease to have an "estimated" strength once they come on the January list. And yet in this example even the ECF does not treat this grade as "official" for the purposes of their own competition! Madness. Just IMHO of course.
Last edited by Richard Bates on Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Neil Graham
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Re: New January 2012 grades

Post by Neil Graham » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:56 pm

Firstly in answer to David, I'm not suggesting changing grades mid-stream for those people already qualified on the grading list of July 2011.
Once you are in that list, that is the grade that is used for the 2011-12 competition.

At the moment I am the highest graded player in the Notts Under 140 team. Whilst not wishing to pre-empt the January 2012 list, I think you will find that my grade in the new list would preclude me from playing in the Under 140 team. With that in mind, I have been making valiant efforts since 01/01/2012 to return my grade to the Under 140 level!

However to return to my main point, I understand what Alex is saying (that it would need a rule amendment) but I would suggest that assuming that the January list is here to stay that such an amendment is proposed for the future. If a previously ungraded player has played sufficient games to have a published grade by the January list, that should be their grade for the competition. Everyone will play games between January and July; but why have to go through a complicated and time-consuming procedure to check every result if there is a published grade already there? The SCCU methodology (to take the Jan 2012 grade as a replacement for all previous estimated grades) seems absolutely correct as Alex will no doubt find when faced with substantial numbers of checks prior to the national stages.

Neil Graham
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Re: New January 2012 grades

Post by Neil Graham » Wed Jan 25, 2012 8:02 pm

Richard Bates wrote:Why exactly are twice yearly grading lists being introduced again?

There are obvious disadvantages which have been discussed elsewhere (such as inaccuracy caused by late submission and a large chunk of the season operating under out of date grades and the difficulty of planning in advance to play in tournaments around the February/March period) but i cannot off-hand think of a clearer example justifying their introduction than that an ungraded player should cease to have an "estimated" strength once they come on the January list. And yet in this example even the ECF does not treat this grade as "official" for the purposes of their own competition! Madness. Just IMHO of course.
Thank you Richard, much more succinctly put than my woffle! :D

Alex Holowczak
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Re: New January 2012 grades

Post by Alex Holowczak » Wed Jan 25, 2012 8:09 pm

Neil Graham wrote:However to return to my main point, I understand what Alex is saying (that it would need a rule amendment) but I would suggest that assuming that the January list is here to stay that such an amendment is proposed for the future. If a previously ungraded player has played sufficient games to have a published grade by the January list, that should be their grade for the competition. Everyone will play games between January and July; but why have to go through a complicated and time-consuming procedure to check every result if there is a published grade already there? The SCCU methodology (to take the Jan 2012 grade as a replacement for all previous estimated grades) seems absolutely correct as Alex will no doubt find when faced with substantial numbers of checks prior to the national stages.
I would be very happy for the SCCU rule, as it stands, to be put to Council in April along with my rewrite. I'll send them a copy of my rewrite so they can even integrate it. (This is something else I should get on the website...) They can get it on the Agenda by being a constituent unit. I'd be quite happy to implement such a rule if it existed! I won't write it myself because the SCCU will no doubt contain many better draftees than myself, so I'll leave it with them (or any other Union if they wanted).

It won't be that time consuming. Remember that with the grading enhancements coming up, there will be far more information online than before. I don't mind the "extra" work. It's the sort of computer-based, mundane, dronelike task I tend to be pretty okay with. There aren't that many ungradeds who feature regularly in county chess, save maybe for the bottom sections.

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