Ungraded Players at Golders Green Rapidplays

[Paul Sanders]

Players like clearly defined sections where they know the spread of the grades they will be facing.

Well a radical approach would be to run just one section but with accelerated pairings for the first 2 or 3 rounds. Would that get the ungradeds in their appropriate quartile by round 3 for an average GGR entry?

I have never understood why players cling to the rating section structure. It strikes me that it creates very strong incentives to plateau... Maybe that's the attraction though.

[Daniel Young]

At Richmond Rapidplay a couple of weeks ago we had a chap turn up and proudly announce he'd won the Golders Green U120 the week before with 6/6, followed by asking if he could play in our U80 section!

He ended up in the U135 which he steamrollered. If it hadn't been for his upfrontness I may well have let him in the U80 as there was nothing to suggest otherwise. There was no sign of him on the Master List as the previous tournament had been too recent.

The lowest section at Richmond is U-100, isn't it?

There was also someone who scored 4.5/6 in the U-170 section at the November 2010 Richmond Rapidplay, and then entered the U-120 rapidplay at the London Chess Classic a few weeks later. To be fair, he was moved up two sections after two rounds, but it was too late for me by then...

[Roger de Coverly]

I have never understood why players cling to the rating section structure. It strikes me that it creates very strong incentives to plateau... Maybe that's the attraction though.

I know the French in particular like the open structure, but alternate rounds where you crush someone rated 300 Elo points below and get crushed by someone 300 points higher isn't always what you're looking for in a tournament.

[James Coleman]

Sorry, I meant Under 100 Daniel yes!

[Adam Raoof]

I have never understood why players cling to the rating section structure. It strikes me that it creates very strong incentives to plateau... Maybe that's the attraction though.

I know the French in particular like the open structure, but alternate rounds where you crush someone rated 300 Elo points below and get crushed by someone 300 points higher isn't always what you're looking for in a tournament.

I think that the (relative) decline of the Kings Head rapidplay tournament does suggest that the market for one section events is limited. However the e2e4 events prove that just three sections can work, possibly because they attract the most ambitious players who are trying to improve their game and rating.

[Alex Holowczak]

I thought the Grading Master List was a once a year thing

You thought wrong; Richard provides graders with updated lists every other month, or so it seems. The reason being you don't create three new John Smiths, one who played in Golders Green, one who played in Richmond, and one who played in Poplar three weeks in a row, and they all inherit new grading codes.

[Mick Norris]

Players like clearly defined sections where they know the spread of the grades they will be facing.

Well a radical approach would be to run just one section but with accelerated pairings for the first 2 or 3 rounds. Would that get the ungradeds in their appropriate quartile by round 3 for an average GGR entry?

We tried that in Manchester a few years ago, it wasn't popular

[Roger de Coverly]

Richard provides graders with updated lists every other month, or so it seems..

Lists of new players aren't anything new and essential to get clean data. Do the lists contain performance data as well though? If so, there's a case for publishing them as year to date performance ratings, particularly for new players.

[David Pardoe]

Maybe the answer to this is rather simpler..he says.
If congress organisors were mandated to IMMEDIATELY flag up any notable performance by an ungraded player to the graders/ECF, they could be immediately flagged up on the radar, and maybe logged on the Master List.
I`d include Congresses, Rapidplays, and maybe any notable league performances. The same thing could be done with juniors, and maybe such players could be put on accelerated gradings, that could be further adjusted (incrementally), ...either `up` or `down`. So you might need to record particularly bad results.
It might be interesting to estimate how many such players we are talking about. On the congress scene, my guess would be a dozen or so players. From juniors, I`d guess maybe 100 or so...of significance. And from leagues, you might be talking similar numbers...but thats just my guess.
Such moves might negate 90% of cases where a 6-monthly upgrade was needed. There may be a separate case for regrading players over 200 more frequently, but here I`d only select players who are playing significant numbers of games.

[James Coleman]

Not sure what radar they'd be flagged up on though, unless you're talking about issuing new masterlists practically all the time. I don't think it's a problem for leagues. There's no cash involved and by the time a performance would be seen to be notable the player would probably be well on the way to getting a grade anyway, particularly if longplay lists are being issued every six months from now on.

[Alex Holowczak]

Richard provides graders with updated lists every other month, or so it seems..

Lists of new players aren't anything new and essential to get clean data. Do the lists contain performance data as well though? If so, there's a case for publishing them as year to date performance ratings, particularly for new players.

If I'm interpreting all the columns correctly, there's a column that (say) has a "grade" of 97 over 6 games played. AFAIK, those came from two events: a summer league and a congress in July. So they don't appear in the end-of-year list. So I'm guessing that's a sort of column to say: His grade over the 6 games he's played is 97. Of course you need 9 games to get a grade.

For the Birmingham Rapidplay, Dave Thomas and I used this column to get estimates for people who entered on the day.

[Simon Dixon]

I remember a few years ago, I played in a tournament run by Francis Bowers at Kings Lynn. A chap arrived 5 minutes before the start of R1 and wanted to play in the minor U100. Francis put him in the open section and yes, you guessed it, he finished in 2nd place with 5/6.

I do not know why most organisers, (Francis B being the exception) feel obliged to put ung players in the lowest sections, which they seem to win with relative ease. It is not fair on players who have grades to find themselves playing against ung sharks.

The simplest solution with ung players is to put them in the open. If they are only there to play a few games of chess, then it does not matter who they play against.

PS; I notice ung players sweeping the board again this month at the Golders Green RP.

[Adam Raoof]

I remember a few years ago, I played in a tournament run by Francis Bowers at Kings Lynn. A chap arrived 5 minutes before the start of R1 and wanted to play in the minor U100. Francis put him in the open section and yes, you guessed it, he finished in 2nd place with 5/6.

I do not know why most organisers, (Francis B being the exception) feel obliged to put ung players in the lowest sections, which they seem to win with relative ease. It is not fair on players who have grades to find themselves playing against ung sharks.

The simplest solution with ung players is to put them in the open. If they are only there to play a few games of chess, then it does not matter who they play against.

PS; I notice ung players sweeping the board again this month at the Golders Green RP.

You have a point, and I have (in the past) just had a rule about ungraded players not winning more than 50% of any prize. In the future I will do as Sean Hewitt suggested, and any ungraded player who enters on the day goes in the Open - if they enter in advance I will have time to check their bona fides

[Brendan O'Gorman]

Adam,

Sounds like a good solution. Limiting an ungraded player's prize money does nothing to assuage the graded player's resentment at being denied a chance of winning a prize themselves.

[Adam Raoof]

Adam,

Sounds like a good solution. Limiting an ungraded player's prize money does nothing to assuage the graded player's resentment at being denied a chance of winning a prize themselves.

I just noticed the following results from the weekend's London Rapidplay.

http://www.londonrapidplay.co.uk/londonrp/

Do we never learn?

;-(