Six monthly grades

General discussions about ratings.
John Charman
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Six monthly grades

Post by John Charman » Thu Jul 14, 2011 2:21 pm

I am aware that starting this year the normalplay grades are to be published in July and January.

Here in Norfolk we have taken the decision that the July grades will be used for any Norfolk competitions for the whole year where grading is used as eligibility for entry to a particular section of a tournament or to select board order in a match etc. I am led to believe that this policy is also to be adopted by the ECF for their events.

I would welcome comments on how I should answer the following question posed by some of our players - "Can I ask, what is the point of giving you a grade in Jan, but you can not use it?"

May I add that I am not asking for comments in any flippant way but because I genuinely cannot think of a reasonable direct reply to the question.

LozCooper

Re: Six monthly grades

Post by LozCooper » Thu Jul 14, 2011 2:24 pm

John Charman wrote:I am aware that starting this year the normalplay grades are to be published in July and January.

Here in Norfolk we have taken the decision that the July grades will be used for any Norfolk competitions for the whole year where grading is used as eligibility for entry to a particular section of a tournament or to select board order in a match etc. I am led to believe that this policy is also to be adopted by the ECF for their events.

I would welcome comments on how I should answer the following question posed by some of our players - "Can I ask, what is the point of giving you a grade in Jan, but you can not use it?"

May I add that I am not asking for comments in any flippant way but because I genuinely cannot think of a reasonable direct reply to the question.
Well it will be relevant in tournaments although it may depend on the dates of the tournament as to which grade they use.

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Thu Jul 14, 2011 2:28 pm

You could also say that for those receiving their first grade, it will be useful. Though will players ungraded in a July list and playing in a league not be able to use their newly minted grade from a January list? That seems to defeat one of the purposes of all this.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Jul 14, 2011 2:31 pm

John Charman wrote:May I add that I am not asking for comments in any flippant way but because I genuinely cannot think of a reasonable direct reply to the question.
Congresses will probably use it and match captains might change their board order within teams. The obvious point is that it gives active new and returning players a grade six months earlier than they would otherwise get one. Also it will be used (we think) for calculations in the second half of the season. So where a player has improved from 180 to 200 and you beat them, you have beaten a 200 player instead of a 180 one. Contrawise of course if the grade has collapsed.

Also, fairly obviously, you get a better picture of which juniors have improved and by how much.

Sean Hewitt

Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Sean Hewitt » Thu Jul 14, 2011 2:34 pm

This is not meant to be flippant but if you can't think of a reasonable reply, then it suggests that perhaps your initial decision was not correct.

I believe that a more reasonable decision is that the grade in force at the start of an event will remain in use for the duration of the event. This means an event starting in August uses the July grade but an event starting in March uses the January event.

The answer to your question then becomes "You can use your new grade in event which start after it comes out. It would not be fair to make someone ineligble for an event mid way through, when then they were eligible at the start". The exception of course is ungraded players who receive an initial grade mid way through an event.

Of course, it may be that all events in Norfolk start before January, in which case the reply above can be used in any case.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Jul 14, 2011 2:35 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:Though will players ungraded in a July list and playing in a league not be able to use their newly minted grade from a January list? That seems to defeat one of the purposes of all this.
That will depend on how you write the rules for your competitions. If you adopt the view that when you give permission for an ungraded player to play in a restricted team, that permission lasts for the whole season, then it doesn't matter. You might expect match captains to shuffle their board orders if a new or returning player was blatantly out of position. But they'd might do that on the basis of results anyway.

Alex Holowczak
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Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Alex Holowczak » Thu Jul 14, 2011 4:18 pm

Worcestershire has a handicap knockout tournament, based on grades, which runs from Octoberish through to Mayish. It was agreed at the Worcestershire AGM to use the January grades for the use of handicap calculation for matches in the knockout cup played after Christmas.

Sean Hewitt

Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Sean Hewitt » Thu Jul 14, 2011 4:25 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:Worcestershire has a handicap knockout tournament, based on grades, which runs from Octoberish through to Mayish. It was agreed at the Worcestershire AGM to use the January grades for the use of handicap calculation for matches in the knockout cup played after Christmas.
That seems reasonable as it does not affect eligibility.

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Adam Raoof
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Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Adam Raoof » Thu Jul 14, 2011 4:27 pm

After making a decision about which list will remain in force to determine eligibility throughout the duration of your league, you might then use the new list to determine board order within each team (as the new ECF grades will give you an indication of the relative strength of the players).

You may decide that players who have been ungraded, but who then appear on the list in January may become ineligible for certain grading-limited events.

The new grades will give tournament organisers more information, new players and juniors will get grades quicker than they ever did before, and leagues will have no arguments about who should play on what board!

This is very common in lots of countries where they publish grading lists three or four times a year.
Adam Raoof IA, IO
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Alex Holowczak
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Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Alex Holowczak » Thu Jul 14, 2011 6:01 pm

Sean Hewitt wrote:
Alex Holowczak wrote:Worcestershire has a handicap knockout tournament, based on grades, which runs from Octoberish through to Mayish. It was agreed at the Worcestershire AGM to use the January grades for the use of handicap calculation for matches in the knockout cup played after Christmas.
That seems reasonable as it does not affect eligibility.
These were our thoughts entirely!

Paul Cooksey

Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Paul Cooksey » Thu Jul 14, 2011 6:47 pm

I assume ECF is more volatile than Elo for more frequent lists. Has this been discussed already?

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Jul 14, 2011 7:09 pm

Paul Cooksey wrote:I assume ECF is more volatile than Elo for more frequent lists. Has this been discussed already?
It has and hasn't. Continuing to base the calculations on thirty games reduces volatility but I have reservations about the method being used. As a for example consider a five round tournament played May 2011. This will be included in the July 2011 list about to be published and we will suppose that there are at least 30 games played in the season. Let's now suppose that 25 games are played up to and including the cut off for the January 2012 list.

There are at least two ways of adding up to 30 games. You could just take the last 5 games from the 2010-2011 season, or you could take 5/30 ths of the whole 2010-2011 performance. They are proposing the former approach. I'm not sure of the practical effect but it seems marginally wrong to double count end season results in this manner. The same will apply in July 2012 where the results just before the last cut-off will also be double counted.

I would imagine that even amongst players with regular A grades, that only a minority will play as many as thirty in a half season.

I suppose the effect of double counting end season results will average out over the whole graded population, but has the potential to increase the "error" in any individuals grade.

Paul Cooksey

Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Paul Cooksey » Thu Jul 14, 2011 7:43 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:I suppose the effect of double counting end season results will average out over the whole graded population, but has the potential to increase the "error" in any individuals grade.
If I am doing the maths right, the k of ECF is about 27 (I know it doesn't work in the same way, and I claim no expertise, but suppose +/- 50 against an opponent of your own strength, divided by 30 games multiplied by 8 for Elo conversion is reasonably fair). A normal k of 15, needs more than 50 games, probably over several seasons, which creates a different issue.

I am not saying I consider Elo inherently superior. But my understanding is that Elo was designed to reflect changes based on small numbers of games, whereas ECF was not.

Alex Holowczak
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Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Alex Holowczak » Thu Jul 14, 2011 10:43 pm

Paul Cooksey wrote:I assume ECF is more volatile than Elo for more frequent lists. Has this been discussed already?
By whom? It has been discussed by the grading team. They're aware of these issues.

What I don't understand is why there was barely a murmur when this was up for vote at Council, yet now the decision has been made there's a lot more fuss about it.

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: Six monthly grades

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Thu Jul 14, 2011 10:51 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:What I don't understand is why there was barely a murmur when this was up for vote at Council, yet now the decision has been made there's a lot more fuss about it.
Happens all the time. Many people only really start to think and talk about something when it becomes a reality. Crazy I know, but that's (some) humans for you. Sometimes, also, some issues only become clearer once an abstract becomes something more concrete.
Last edited by Christopher Kreuzer on Thu Jul 14, 2011 10:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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