2013 Final Stage

Discussion about all aspects of the ECF County Championships.
Kevin Williamson
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by Kevin Williamson » Sun May 19, 2013 7:42 pm

We have a controller who circulated the new rules to the captains, understands the rules and implements the rules. I’d say that makes a good controller. To be honest, I’m not sure what else he is supposed to do.

Reading through the full set of rules is not a particularly exciting thing to do, but it is the responsibility of the captains, and to be fair to Alex the main changes were highlighted in his email to captains sent on 02/04/2013. Personally I thought they were a little Draconian, but it doesn’t matter what I think, they’re the rules we are playing to.

Thankfully it would seem that no match results have been reversed as a result of any misunderstanding, so it would appear that there’s no significant harm done.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun May 19, 2013 7:49 pm

IM Jack Rudd wrote: The issue is not related to his being able to play, it's related to where in the team he should be allowed to play.
They were penalised not because of where in the team he played, but that he played at all. Personally I think that controllers should accept captain's estimates and only step in when something gross is being perpetuated. The controller doesn't after all insist on demanding an eligibility statement for every player.

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IM Jack Rudd
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by IM Jack Rudd » Sun May 19, 2013 8:07 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
IM Jack Rudd wrote: The issue is not related to his being able to play, it's related to where in the team he should be allowed to play.
They were penalised not because of where in the team he played, but that he played at all.
You're missing the point. The rule is that he's not allowed to play at all; the reason for the rule (in the Open section; it has a dual purpose in the other sections) is to ensure his position in the board-order can't be manipulated for the purposes of gaining an unfair advantage. (I hasten to add that I don't think Lancashire were trying to gain an unfair advantage, and from what I saw of his play yesterday, the player in question seemed to be placed on the right board.)

Roger de Coverly
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun May 19, 2013 8:13 pm

IM Jack Rudd wrote: the reason for the rule (in the Open section; it has a dual purpose in the other sections) is to ensure his position in the board-order can't be manipulated for the purposes of gaining an unfair advantage.
It's something of a disproportionate penalty demonstrating the combined perils of making rule changes without proper consideration and inflexible controllers.

As one of the Warwickshire players pointed out, for some counties it's hard enough getting out a reasonable team in the first place without having part of your team declared not eligible through not having filled in a form. Next season, you think, why bother?

Richard Bates
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by Richard Bates » Sun May 19, 2013 8:32 pm

It is pretty clear that under the "letter" of the rules the penalties have been applied correctly. And as such it is easy to fall back on "Lancashire have only themselves to blame" - however wouldn't it be better if they didn't have the opportunity to make the mistake in the first place? The Counties Championship will only suffer further if the outcome of matches become more regularly determined after the event, and on procedural technicalities which have no bearing on the outcome over the board.

Given that it was felt necessary for the rules to exist, it is disappointing is that they apparently have no flexibility built in to them - whether through a clause allowing 'discretion of the Controller' (with a Controller being confident enough to apply any discretion fairly) or through less draconian penalties. Or even, shock horror, allowing team captains to over-rule through agreement. Because even with the best will in the world there will be unplanned breaches of these rules, or else games will be defaulted unnecessarily simply because a captain, needing to find player(s) at short notice does not have time to secure the necessary permissions. So if you MUST get permission off the Controller, then the 7 day limit should go. Or there should be some allowance for exceptional circumstances to avoid defaults. If you MUST have ECF membership, then there should be some flexibility to acquire it (or pay an equivalent fine) after the event.

As Roger correctly in this case states - the Counties Championship, as with most amateur chess, requires goodwill between captains and players to exist at all. When winning becomes so important that rules have to be introduced and implemented draconianly to avoid sharp practice, the whole fabric such as it is will fall apart. Rules is rules, but better is when goodwill makes all but the outline rules unnecessary. If this penalty had resulted in a changed outcome of the match would Somerset have wanted to win like that? Would they have even had the option of declining to advance to the next round?

Alex Holowczak
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by Alex Holowczak » Sun May 19, 2013 8:46 pm

Richard Bates wrote:So if you MUST get permission off the Controller, then the 7 day limit should go.
There have been a few applications for late clearances. In all cases, I've phoned the opposing captain, and asked if he objects to the clearance request being made. Yet to hit one that has.

This happened for one of the matches. I was e-mailed asking to clear someone. I phoned the other captain who was happy for the clearance to be made. I was e-mailed the membership number confirmation e-mail to verify that he was a member. He played the next day.

I agree that the 7 day limit is too long, but it's a hangover from the old rules.

I can do something about that. What I can't do anything about are captains not asking at all, or not checking their grading/membership status.

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Sun May 19, 2013 8:50 pm

I had realised that ungraded players needed to be cleared to play in the County Championships, possibly for the regional stages as well (such as SCCU Championships, not sure about that), but definitely for the Final Stages (the 'national' stages) of the competition. What I hadn't realised was that this 10-point rule had actually been brought in. It must make things more complicated for the captains. What do people here in general think about that rule about board order? Should it be debated more thoroughly and reconsidered for next time?

One thought I had was what happens if someone who doesn't have an ECF grade but does have a FIDE rating, performs within the ECF system way above or below that FIDE rating. Would the ECF grading take precedence for board order, or should some flexibility be allowed? This generally applies when people new to the system (usually from abroad but sometimes from other parts of the UK) arrive with FIDE or other ratings but no ECF grade. How was the old formulation of "descending order of strength" handled in such cases?

Alex Holowczak
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by Alex Holowczak » Sun May 19, 2013 8:55 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:What I hadn't realised was that this 10-point rule had actually been brought in. It must make things more complicated for the captains. What do people here in general think about that rule about board order? Should it be debated more thoroughly and reconsidered for next time?
Council has made a decision on this. If Council ever gets around to discussing a County Championship proposal, maybe this is a possibility.
Christopher Kreuzer wrote:One thought I had was what happens if someone who doesn't have an ECF grade but does have a FIDE rating, performs within the ECF system way above or below that FIDE rating. Would the ECF grading take precedence for board order, or should some flexibility be allowed? This generally applies when people new to the system from abroad arrive with FIDE ratings but no ECF grade.
I would probably convert FIDE to ECF, and look at their ECF-grading performance.
(1) If they'd played a reasonable number of ECF games, but not 9 or more games, I'd probably go for the higher grade of the two as their estimate.
(2) If they hadn't played many ECF games, I'd probably just convert their FIDE rating and use that as the estimate.
(3) If they'd played 9 or more games, I'd probably use their ECF performance as their estimate.

Richard Bates
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by Richard Bates » Sun May 19, 2013 9:02 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:
I agree that the 7 day limit is too long, but it's a hangover from the old rules.

I can do something about that. What I can't do anything about are captains not asking at all, or not checking their grading/membership status.
2 scenarios, both involving an Open captain having to acquire a player at short notice:

1) Captain finds a player, asks if they are an ECF member - answer no, but happy to join if necessary. Can they play, even though membership won't go through until after the event?

2) Captain finds a player, but the player is ungraded. For whatever reason the Controller is unavailable. Opposition captain is happy to waive the clearance requirement to avoid one of their players receiving a default victory. Can they play?

I think that the rules should allow both of these. I'm not sure they do at the moment (a 'Controller's discretion' clause would solve that).

David Pardoe
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by David Pardoe » Sun May 19, 2013 9:10 pm

All seems right by the letter of the rules..
But what of these rules..?
Estimating an `ungraded` players strength to 10 grading points is pure guesswork...almost an irrelevance, I`d have thought. But you must give some official clearance for players, I guess.
On a slightly changed tac....are we looking at revising the grading boundaries for the counties events..?
I know that Lancs proposed a return to previous 25 point spreads/boundaries, which I think makes sense, but I believe even greater boundary spreads might be beneficial, in conjunction with larger team sizes, as mentioned in a previous thread.
Having fewer county matches, involving larger teams, would save on costs, travel, venue hire, and if properly structured, with intermediate banding, could boost county participation. By intermediate banding, I mean that ..lets say the new grade bands were Open, U170, U135, U100...and you played either 20, or 24 board matches. In the U170 section, you might impose intermediate limits where no more than 6 players were `over 160`, no more than 6 were over 150 - 160 band, no more than 6 were over 140 - 150 range...leaving 2 or more in the over 135 category..which would ensure good spreads of players across various boundaries. ie, and limited front loading.
However, this might be for future consideration...
As Alex has said...maybe those who originally accepted the rules should have consulted more carefully and perhaps read through the proposals more carefully.
BRING BACK THE BCF

Alex Holowczak
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by Alex Holowczak » Sun May 19, 2013 9:25 pm

Richard Bates wrote:1) Captain finds a player, asks if they are an ECF member - answer no, but happy to join if necessary. Can they play, even though membership won't go through until after the event?
Yes they can play, but they should become a member online - then the membership will demonstrably go through before the match. (We can check!)
Richard Bates wrote:Captain finds a player, but the player is ungraded. For whatever reason the Controller is unavailable. Opposition captain is happy to waive the clearance requirement to avoid one of their players receiving a default victory. Can they play?
The rules definitely do not allow this.

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IM Jack Rudd
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by IM Jack Rudd » Sun May 19, 2013 9:29 pm

David Pardoe wrote: Having fewer county matches, involving larger teams, would save on costs, travel, venue hire, and if properly structured, with intermediate banding, could boost county participation. By intermediate banding, I mean that ..lets say the new grade bands were Open, U170, U135, U100...and you played either 20, or 24 board matches. In the U170 section, you might impose intermediate limits where no more than 6 players were `over 160`, no more than 6 were over 150 - 160 band, no more than 6 were over 140 - 150 range...leaving 2 or more in the over 135 category..which would ensure good spreads of players across various boundaries. ie, and limited front loading.
This suggestion bears all the hallmarks of a solution in search of a problem, and I don't think it'll work to counter the underlying problem, which is that larger counties tend to have more players to choose from than smaller counties in any given grading range.

Richard Bates
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by Richard Bates » Sun May 19, 2013 9:35 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Richard Bates wrote:1) Captain finds a player, asks if they are an ECF member - answer no, but happy to join if necessary. Can they play, even though membership won't go through until after the event?
Yes they can play, but they should become a member online - then the membership will demonstrably go through before the match. (We can check!)
And if for some reason the membership website is unavailable?
Alex Holowczak wrote:
Richard Bates wrote:Captain finds a player, but the player is ungraded. For whatever reason the Controller is unavailable. Opposition captain is happy to waive the clearance requirement to avoid one of their players receiving a default victory. Can they play?
The rules definitely do not allow this.
Which is demonstrably silly, since it has been acknowledged that the only reason for needing "permission" for an ungraded player in the Open is for the purposes of obtaining an estimated grade for Board order purposes - and yet, having obtained this grade the captains have the right under the rules to ignore it!

John Swain
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by John Swain » Sun May 19, 2013 9:47 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Richard Bates wrote:Captain finds a player, but the player is ungraded. For whatever reason the Controller is unavailable. Opposition captain is happy to waive the clearance requirement to avoid one of their players receiving a default victory. Can they play?
The rules definitely do not allow this.
There is something wrong when both captains are happy to overlook a minor infringement of the rules so that a game is not won on default and a match is therefore more competitive. The captains (and the controller) should not be prisoners of the rules. Whatever happened to commonsense?

The rules obviously need simplifying for the benefit of captains and controller. Alex must have better things to do with his time than enforce these pettifogging rules and then justify them on the Forum.

The competition has tremendous potential but there are too many obstacles. Too many counties struggle to find captains (is it any wonder with labyrinthine rules?), too many teams default boards, or, as yesterday, whole matches, at fairly advanced stages of the competition.

It should be so different. Yesterday, I played in a good-spirited under 180 match between Notts and Cambs. There were four juniors playing, which was a good sign, several players under 40, and not everyone was bearded and over 50 (like me!) The match went down to the wire with Cambs winning by a point. This was a great advert for county chess.

Sean Hewitt
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Re: 2013 Final Stage

Post by Sean Hewitt » Sun May 19, 2013 9:57 pm

The event is looking for a controller. Why doesn't a forumite volunteer for the role? He or she could then draft any required rule changes for the next council meeting.

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