January 2012 grading list

General discussions about ratings.
Alan Burke

Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Alan Burke » Tue Jan 31, 2012 12:24 pm

Matt, the problem in using the new grades could be that, because the entry form was produced several months ago, some people who have already booked accommodation at Blackpool might now discover that, due to the new grading list, they are forced to enter a different section to which they originally intended - and some of those people just might not want to do that. (ie They were towards the top of one grading section and have a chance of winning some money, whereas now they are towards the bottom of the higher section and so might think it not worth their while entering - not everybody just enters "for the fun of it".) Those people would then have also wasted any money paid for accommodation.

I would suggest that any tournament to be played within 2 months of a new grading list being issued should use the previous gradings.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Roger de Coverly » Tue Jan 31, 2012 12:25 pm

Matt Mackenzie wrote:I must admit I am puzzled at the Blackpool Congress decision to use last summer's gradings. I can certainly see it leading to disputes :?:
Until 2010, events at the British used the new recently published grades for pairings, but the year old grades for eligibility. At Sheffield in 2011, they used the out of date grades for pairings as well. For Junior events in particular, this could have resulted in seriously out of date ranking orders.

If Blackpool use July 2011 for both eligibility and pairings, that's consistent at the probable cost of randomising the pairings somewhat.

Richard Bates
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Richard Bates » Tue Jan 31, 2012 5:19 pm

Mick Norris wrote:Is this somehow worse for Longplay events?

With Rapidplays we have been dealing with this for a while

Stockport (this weekend) uses the August grades and says so

Manchester (25 March) uses the January grades, and the first entry deadline is towards the end of Feb, and of course there is an Open section so no-one will be excluded
I think there is a world of difference between rapidplays (presumably one day) and weekend congresses. Playing in a weekend congress generally requires a commitment in time and planning which just rarely applies to rapidplays. There may be Friday evening games necessitating planning time off work. There will often be a requirement to book accommodation for one or two nights. And finally the simple fact that one is giving up two or three days to play will generally mean that a greater importance is put on the nature of the tournament itself and people will be less prepared to just enter any section. I think people also probably enter weekenders earlier.

The flaw in using August grades for tournaments several weeks past January publication is that firstly they are "inaccurate" and secondly that it undermines the whole purpose of half yearly lists (which personally i still thinks owes far too much to "being modern" and "because we can" than any intrinsic advantages). It would be different if the January grades were genuinely "interim" with no change in the calculation of July grades.

Paul Dupré
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Paul Dupré » Thu Apr 05, 2012 2:57 pm

I see nobody mentioned Luke McShane 275 - surely the highest 'ECF grade' ever by an Englishman.
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Ian Thompson
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Ian Thompson » Thu Apr 05, 2012 10:44 pm

Paul Dupré wrote:I see nobody mentioned Luke McShane 275 - surely the highest 'ECF grade' ever by an Englishman.
No - http://www.ecfgrading.org.uk/?ref=105483B&progress=1 in 2003 for one (perhaps the only one, who knows?)

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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Paul Dupré » Thu Apr 05, 2012 11:07 pm

Ian you should know better than that. Michael's grade was only a D grade, officially does not count as a full grade based on 30 games.

This means that I must be right - 275 the highest ever 'ECF grade' by an Englishman.
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Alex Holowczak
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Alex Holowczak » Thu Apr 05, 2012 11:30 pm

Paul Dupré wrote:Ian you should know better than that. Michael's grade was only a D grade, officially does not count as a full grade based on 30 games.
A 'D' grade is an official grade. All of X, A, B, C, D and E are official ECF grades, and are used for calculation of others' ratings. (As opposed to * grades, that aren't.)

Paul Dupré
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Paul Dupré » Fri Apr 06, 2012 12:21 am

Heh Alex, I've been around since before you were born. And I am a grader - don't try to bull**it me. I know they count for grading, but 'the record for the highest ever full ECF grade' can only be X, A, B or C - anything else is based on less than 30 games.

Many years ago at the Surrey Congress D & E grades could only win 1/3 of the 1st Prize in the grading sections - I don't suppose you knew that. The masterlist was never even shown to bods like you or me. Now, anything goes and you can pretend to be under 130 and win Blackpool. Wow, easy now ain't it.
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Alex Holowczak » Fri Apr 06, 2012 12:32 am

Paul Dupré wrote:Heh Alex, I've been around since before you were born. And I am a grader - don't try to bull**it me. I know they count for grading, but 'the record for the highest ever full ECF grade' can only be X, A, B or C - anything else is based on less than 30 games.

Many years ago at the Surrey Congress D & E grades could only win 1/3 of the 1st Prize in the grading sections - I don't suppose you knew that. The masterlist was never even shown to bods like you or me. Now, anything goes and you can pretend to be under 130 and win Blackpool. Wow, easy now ain't it.
Ah, the age card...

Anyway, are you saying that your definition of "full ECF grade" means you can only be X, A, B or C? I'd challenge that. The 30-game requirement is neither here nor there, in my opinion. I mean, why not 10 games? Why not 50 games? My definition of "full ECF grade" extends to anyone with a published grade. If we're publishing them, they must mean something.

I'm aware of the history that the masterlist wasn't available to all, and that you used to have to buy printed Union masterlists, and that the National Grading List only contained players graded over n, where n varied depending on the flavour of the day. You accessed this national list by purchasing the ECF Yearbook. I'm also aware that a Birmingham player who played in a congress in London would probably end up with different grades in the MCCU list and SCCU list.

AustinElliott
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by AustinElliott » Fri Apr 06, 2012 1:15 am

Alex Holowczak wrote:[I'm also aware that a Birmingham player who played in a congress in London would probably end up with different grades in the MCCU list and SCCU list.
Which in a roundabout sort of way reminds me of the 1970s story that I briefly recounted over here.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Roger de Coverly » Fri Apr 06, 2012 8:18 am

AustinElliott wrote: Which in a roundabout sort of way reminds me of the 1970s story that I briefly recounted over here.
The way the old system was supposed to work was that if you played in an out of Union event and quoted a published grade, that could identify you as someone for whom the grading performance needed to be forwarded to the other Union's graders. It didn't always work, particularly for ungraded players. In the absence of publication of the data underlying the grades, crucially the exact count of games, it was impossible for individuals to check that all their games had been included and they hadn't been credited with performances from someone else.

In its time, grading helped grow the BCF's office functions, since when grading went national you had to employ someone to do it. Somewhat later it became apparent that because of its core nature, you couldn't expect just anybody to understand the importance of correct processing, the chasing up of apparent errors and knowing key organisers. As a consequence grading administration is now a paid post but outside of the office.

Alex Holowczak
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Alex Holowczak » Fri Apr 06, 2012 9:57 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:In its time, grading helped grow the BCF's office functions, since when grading went national you had to employ someone to do it. Somewhat later it became apparent that because of its core nature, you couldn't expect just anybody to understand the importance of correct processing, the chasing up of apparent errors and knowing key organisers. As a consequence grading administration is now a paid post but outside of the office.
Although, that doesn't always help either. A localish junior who made his first foray into graded chess in 2002 travelled up and down the country. Most of his games were done by Bundles, even though Howellian system of just reporting individual results had been in place for at least 3 years by then. He had a fairly everyman name; it wasn't Smith, but it wasn't something odd like Holowczak either. The individual in question proceeded to have seven unique grading references in the end of season grading list! :roll:

All of this was not unreasonable in the era when a new player playing congresses all over the country, and no local organisers had any knowledge of a grading reference for him, or any electronic Checker to check him against. But this was as recent as 10 years ago!

Paul Dupré
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Paul Dupré » Fri Apr 06, 2012 11:39 pm

How about this one - Grandmaster Bogdan Lalic - he's famous ffs, how can graders make this error.
Extract from my own personal database
160447J LALIC BOGDAN 236
161854E LALIC BOGDAN 253
163145H LALIC BOGDAN 233
160511C Lalic, Bogdan 241 <= still used today, obviously
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Alex Holowczak
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Alex Holowczak » Sat Apr 07, 2012 12:00 am

Paul Dupré wrote:How about this one - Grandmaster Bogdan Lalic - he's famous ffs, how can graders make this error.
Extract from my own personal database
160447J LALIC BOGDAN 236
161854E LALIC BOGDAN 253
163145H LALIC BOGDAN 233
160511C Lalic, Bogdan 241 <= still used today, obviously
In 1994, it would have been the same error as above. He was new to the system and played in different events. Graders had no way of checking up whether he had played anywhere else before he played in their events. And so, four Bogdans appeared in the grading list. In the days before a monthly updating masterlist that was distributed to people in an electronic form, I would imagine this could easily happen.

I imagine 1994 was still the era of doing grading by Committee on bits of paper too. So anything could have happened...

Roger de Coverly
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Re: January 2012 grading list

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sat Apr 07, 2012 8:18 am

Alex Holowczak wrote: I imagine 1994 was still the era of doing grading by Committee on bits of paper too. So anything could have happened...
Home computers were becoming relatively commonplace. What wasn't was Internet Access, so central allocation of grading codes or instant communication between graders wasn't part of the design until some years later. That's why the Howell system had this approach of trying to merge records using dates of birth. Although if you only had 360k diskettes and a processor that ran at 10 mHz, the amount of data you could process was limited.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer/AT

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