July 2012 grading list now live

General discussions about ratings.
Paul Cooksey

Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Paul Cooksey » Thu Jul 26, 2012 2:52 pm

Krishna Shiatis wrote:I would like to say thank you to Adam and the grading team for the sweeping changes they have made and for all the extra information we now have at our fingertips.
I think Krishna might be missing a subtlty of this debate, that the website and the grading system are owned by two different teams. It is really the system itself we were discussing. But it certainly does no harm to acknowledge the excellent work done to improve the grading site, Michael has done an great job in many ways and Adam can rightly take credit for this going ahead.

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Adam Raoof
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Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Adam Raoof » Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:00 pm

Paul Cooksey wrote:
Krishna Shiatis wrote:I would like to say thank you to Adam and the grading team for the sweeping changes they have made and for all the extra information we now have at our fingertips.
I think Krishna might be missing a subtlty of this debate, that the website and the grading system are owned by two different teams. It is really the system itself we were discussing. But it certainly does no harm to acknowledge the excellent work done to improve the grading site, Michael has done an great job in many ways and Adam can rightly take credit for this going ahead.
To be fair, they are part of the same team, and Michael could not have made the progress that he has without the cooperation of the rest of the team. The grading system itself is under discussion in this thread, but I see no danger of anyone actually making a point that might cause the grading team to reconsider the grading system!
Adam Raoof IA, IO
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Paul Cooksey

Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Paul Cooksey » Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:07 pm

Adam Raoof wrote:To be fair, they are part of the same team, and Michael could not have made the progress that he has without the cooperation of the rest of the team. The grading system itself is under discussion in this thread, but I see no danger of anyone actually making a point that might cause the grading team to reconsider the grading system!
Apologies, particularly to Krishna. I wrongly formed this impression from some of the responses in the previous website discussion.

I was trying to make the point we have the equivalent of a car with nice new bodywork, but an old formerly reliable engine, which an enthusiast has been fidddling with, and appears to be misfiring.

I am sure Adam's point is not that the Grading team consider any discussion of the system as redundant, because our opinions are worthless. but it does seem to read that way.

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Adam Raoof
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Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Adam Raoof » Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:13 pm

Paul Cooksey wrote:I am sure Adam's point is not that the Grading team consider any discussion of the system as redundant, because our opinions are worthless. but it does seem to read that way.
Discussion is not always worth the time it takes unless you know what end you want to achieve. If you want to say that the current grading system produces inaccurate results, then you have to give some evidence of this, and attempt to prove it. And you have to define 'accurate'! As far as I can tell, a grading system is mainly there to indicate the ability of a player relative to others. As an organiser I care that the grades provide me with reliable seeding in a tournament, and that it indicates if a player is in the correct section for their ability. It does that!
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Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Paul McKeown » Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:15 pm

Adam Raoof wrote:I see no danger of anyone actually making a point that might cause the grading team to reconsider the grading system!
Why do you say that? My experience is that the system jumps about rather spikily now, as it doesn't have the weighting of older results to stabilise it, in the way Mike Gunn stated. The last recent results in a grading period gain undue weight, exactly as MG stated. That is my experience, too.

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Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:17 pm

Adam Raoof wrote: if someone disagrees then the action they need to take is to write a paper and submit it to the grading team for consideration.
It's the other way round. The grading team have been tampering with the system for several years now without exposing their changes to reasoned discussion. So there was the regrading, the treating of juniors as new players, the introduction of 30 game count backs, all going through without it appeared, much of a formal approval process, or indeed that much change control by way of parallel running.

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Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Krishna Shiatis » Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:19 pm

Paul Cooksey wrote:Apologies, particularly to Krishna. I wrongly formed this impression from some of the responses in the previous website discussion.
That's OK, no harm done! :)

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Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Krishna Shiatis » Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:24 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Adam Raoof wrote: if someone disagrees then the action they need to take is to write a paper and submit it to the grading team for consideration.
It's the other way round. The grading team have been tampering with the system for several years now without exposing their changes to reasoned discussion. So there was the regrading, the treating of juniors as new players, the introduction of 30 game count backs, all going through without it appeared, much of a formal approval process, or indeed that much change control by way of parallel running.
I do agree with Roger about this as the changes seem to happen and we do not seem to find out until after. Also, I think that Adam is saying that not much will change by debating it here.

Perhaps the way forward is to bring it up at council about the way that things are done? Any major changes requiring prior approval and as Roger has suggested that they have parallel running.

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Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:34 pm

Adam Raoof wrote: As an organiser I care that the grades provide me with reliable seeding in a tournament, and that it indicates if a player is in the correct section for their ability. It does that!
We are starting to express doubts that it is doing this. If averaged over a whole season you play at about your normal performance but it's split into an "on form" half and an "off form" half, then you can quite likely end up being 10 points either side of where you would have been on annual grades. It's magnified by the six monthly periods as you can legitimately play in different types of events in the two halves. If you do well or badly in 9/10/11 round events, all three of the major ones are in the July-December segment of the year.

John McKenna

Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by John McKenna » Thu Jul 26, 2012 5:16 pm

The Elephant Lurking Outside (named ELO) has already been mentioned in passing. Is the ECF dead against introducing either it's own ELO ratings (like the US) or using FIDE's system?
As already mentioned previously, it would involve extra effort to set up up an ECF ELO rating system. However, if everyone ends up on the FIDE rating system the ECF grading system will wither away and finally become redundant when the last person on it gets a rating. Unless, of course, there's a policy to keep grading forever?

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Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Paul McKeown » Thu Jul 26, 2012 5:30 pm

FIDE only seems dangerous, you end up hostage to whatever T&C's they decide to impose.

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Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Paul McKeown » Thu Jul 26, 2012 5:35 pm

As for replacing the current system designed by Richard Clarke with a system based on Arpad Elo's ideas, that could be done easily enough. The problem is that you would be likely to get bogged in arcane discussions as to k-factor, whether to use a function or look-up tables, whether you resolve probabilities to 2 or 3 digits, cut off at 700 points difference or at 450, or whether it should use more modern algorithms than pure Elo, such as Glicko.

Probably best if someone just made a firm proposal, notification a few months before AGM, vote on it. Keep it simple.

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Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Jul 26, 2012 5:47 pm

Paul McKeown wrote: Probably best if someone just made a firm proposal, notification a few months before AGM, vote on it. Keep it simple.
I think you would want to see a parallel run or two, possibly to test parameters. So go back a few years, do a quick and dirty conversion from ECF grades, FIDE ratings or a hybrid. Then run the system forwards using whatever rules are proposed. You've then got a ranking order based on Elo or equivalent calculations which you can compare for sense or nonsense against the current system. You've also got a bit of history to show how you got to where you are. Elo style systems have more inertia at remembering old performances. That won't matter so much for adults but might mean the ranking positions for junior players were total nonsense. But then if enough results are included, a high K factor might keep up. Many national rating systems resort to assorted hacks to overcome this problem. I think the Scots will treat you as a new player if you manage a performance rating 200 points above your published rating over enough games.

You could run Elo style calculations with three figure numbers if you really wanted. FIDE did that briefly around 10 years ago with a rapid play list.

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Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Paolo Casaschi » Thu Jul 26, 2012 6:18 pm

Paul McKeown wrote:FIDE only seems dangerous, you end up hostage to whatever T&C's they decide to impose.
Like it or not, you are already hostage anyway. Unless you are plotting some major revolution in the near future, you'll have the top end of the English players on both the FIDE rating and the ECF grading. So the question comes natural: why wasting resources maintaining two separate systems rather than getting everybody on the FIDE rating? You hear very often that resources for chess are scarce, but then a number of volunteers are kept doing duplicated work.

If England ever decides to split from FIDE, setting up a new rating list will only be one of a long list of things to do (and even then it's very unlikely the split would be done by England in isolation, so you'd have to setup an Alternative World Chess Organization Rating List anyway).

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Re: July 2012 grading list now live

Post by Paul McKeown » Thu Jul 26, 2012 6:26 pm

Paolo Casaschi wrote:So the question comes natural: why wasting resources maintaining two separate systems rather than getting everybody on the FIDE rating?
You would have to drop the rating floor to 200 or so, rather than 1200, just to begin with.

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