Roger de Coverly wrote:As they are doing a complete reboot of the system, the level at which they pitch the new grades is arbitrary and therefore IMHO should have been put to the ECF board and council for approval. There may even be October council motions to this effect..
This is complete nonsense. The level for the new grades is far from arbitrary. The Statistics show that players graded more than 215 have not suffered from deflation. To change their grades in anyway would be totally wrong. Therefore, it was decided to use this steady group as the base, and re-grade everyone else relative to this base. How on earth can that be said to be anything other than right and proper??
Roger de Coverly wrote:
Howard Grist has stated earlier that the problem is one of attenuation - in other words the spread between high grades and low grades increases over time. This will look like deflation at the low end ( where there are more players) and inflation at the high end ( citing the current FIDE ratings of top players). Players in the middle will stay put.
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We are not talking about an ELO based system - we are talking about the Clarke system. If this were true of the ECF grading database, perhaps you could explain why there is no inflation (or deflation for that matter) of our highest graded n (215+) players?
Roger de Coverly wrote:
Sean thinks the problem is to do with rapidly improving players. I'd agree but rapidly improving players have been with us for 40 years and in fewer numbers than there have been in the past.
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Absolute numbers are meaningless. Ratios are the important consideration - and 32% of players in the ECF grading database are juniors. I would be amazed (though I dont know) if the ratio has ever been as high as that previously.
Roger de Coverly wrote:
The difference in the past few years in the treatment of new players is that the estimation software may well bring them in at a lower level than the previous approach of grader's guess/estimate thereby acting as a deflation pull in the sub 100 range. I don't think the practice of using the rapid play grade as an estimator helps much either. .
So, you are suggesting that when the ECF, 5 years ago replaced a graders "guessed grade" for new players with an accurate, calculated, grading estimate this somehow caused deflation that we know has been around for at least 12 years and by extrapolation has been around for 30 years?? What utter tosh!!
Roger de Coverly wrote:The generally stable level of the grades of players in the over 125 area and the general stability in the sum(published grades)/number(published players) statistic suggests to me that adding 15-25 points across the board is an inflationary increase . I would also agree with the blogger that if you going to do a lot of analysis work on the system and introduce a discontinuity in the historic series of grades, then you might as well formulate the necessary rules and calculate an Elo based system at the same time.
Roger, Roger, Roger - what is your agenda here? On what basis do you make the completely false claim that grades of players over 125 are generally stable? They aren't - so show us your evidence! And although the mean average is approximately static, this is meaningless and proves nothing (either way). I've already proved that with an ealier post so if you are having to resort to previously discredited claims you must be on shaky ground.