The plans for the Grading System

[David Gilbert]

I'll be especially interested to see if John Upham tenders, given the Manchester & London leagues amongst others both use his system

I think that's an excellent system, but how will he feel about losing ownership of the source code ( which I presume he has )? It will be a shame if that requirement means that someone has to reinvent this wheel.

If I were to design a League Management System - which of course I'm not - I'm sure it would end up looking suspiciously like John's. Would that lead to trouble?

Well there's Roger Thetford’s Oxford fusion collaborative website used by leagues and competitions in London, the Midlands and Oxford, and currently hosts the results for the national stages of the County Championships. It looks different but essentially does the same thing.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

There is an existing thread on League Management Software:

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7676

[Ian Thompson]

It would make sandbagging, a topic in vogue on several other threads, much more difficult. If you have to get your rating "back in line" in the same month that you win a couple of weekenders with 5/5 that's going to be a lot trickier than if you've got 6 months to do it.

On the other hand you could win a couple of Minor tournaments (say) one month; the next month, with your higher grade, you play in a couple of Majors and have two terrible performances, which you justify because Major tournament players are so much stronger; in the next month you're back in the Minor winning it, and you have a convenient two monthly cycle set up with a ready-made excuse for your good and bad performances.

[Ian Thompson]

I'll be especially interested to see if John Upham tenders, given the Manchester & London leagues amongst others both use his system

Of course he could, but I think the back-end would need a major rewrite to accommodate the ECF''s requirements, so it would be a substantial amount of work.

[Michael Flatt]

What happens when Council refuses to allocate any money for this project?

Those individuals or companies who tender will undoubtedly be rather miffed if none of them is awarded a contract. Would they then be justified in suing the ECF for their costs?

[Brian Towers]

What happens when Council refuses to allocate any money for this project?

Those individuals or companies who tender will undoubtedly be rather miffed if none of them is awarded a contract. Would they then be justified in suing the ECF for their costs?

Surely the ECF would then offer them free platinum membership, a place on the board and then ask them to do it for free?

[John Upham]

, a place on the board

That should put off most sensible persons from tendering!

[Carl Hibbard]

A tender with ownership of the actual source code is going to be rather expensive.

It's now up on the main ECF site.

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/league-m ... evelopment

It shouldn't have been put out to tender yet. Currently, the Home Director has no authority to do this as he has not obtained the agreement of Council.

As Carl pointed out this could turn out to be an expensive exercise. The Budget is normally presented to Council in April.

I assumed it has already gone Yorkshire way?

[Mick Norris]

I assumed it has already gone Yorkshire way?

It is a bit of a pointless exercise if Alex has already decided who he wants to use

It can't be compulsory, though, as the forward thinking leagues that already have systems, of which there are many I guess, won't want to change - I know in Manchester it took a lot of work (from John Upham as well as MCF officials) to get us up and running, so the appetite for a further change will be non existent

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Kevin Thurlow wrote:
What is the point of a monthly ECF grade?

It would make sandbagging, a topic in vogue on several other threads, much more difficult. If you have to get your rating "back in line" in the same month that you win a couple of weekenders with 5/5 that's going to be a lot trickier than if you've got 6 months to do it."

I realise that some low-life cheats lose deliberately to fix their grades. Nobody seems to have mentioned that most people enter tournaments well in advance, especially where transport and hotels have to be arranged. Having a grade going all over the place is going to upset their plans somewhat and make life even more difficult for tournament organisers.

"Kevin Thurlow wrote:
Leagues which insist on board orders being related to grading will just say the August list applies throughout the season, otherwise players will suddenly become ineligible for their usual team and there will be more defaults.

Bwahahahahaha!
I think you'll find clubs and league secretaries are a lot more intelligent than that."

Really?

" If a player is fast improving, either because he is a junior or perhaps hasn't played for a while and starts off ungraded, then rules which impose a maximum amount by which a lower board may outgrade a higher board will lead to the naturally just result of such a player moving up through the boards as the season progresses and their improvement is reflected in their monthly grades. "

This is just not practical - where teams have to nominate players for specific teams, it will cause chaos. (Even the second list of the season caused difficulties this season.) Grades will be more volatile of course, and they won't necessarily go in one direction.

"Kevin Thurlow wrote:
We have a kind-hearted individual who arranges for the internal club events to be graded - if we tell him he has to do it on a monthly basis, he might be less kind-hearted.

I'm curious. What does "arranges for the internal club events to be graded" mean?"

No idea - he happily enters the results twice a year, once over Christmas, once at the end of the season - why should he have extra work when he has plenty of other things to do? Giving a volunteer 12 deadlines a year instead of 2 might displease him (I haven't asked).

"How long does a typical internal club event take? Is it typically over and done with in a month or does it drag on through half the season or maybe even the whole season? The proposal is that the new system should be loosely based on the FIDE system. I see you're a newly qualified FA. Do you have the faintest idea how the FIDE system works? Suppose the internal club championships were FIDE rated (something which is common in other countries, by the way) how would FIDE handle it? The standard FIDE approach is that competitions lasting longer than 90 days should, for reporting purposes, be split into sub 90 day segments. The season long club championship would have to report results quarterly rather than monthly. Of course the ECF doesn't have to slavishly copy every dot and comma. They could say that long running competitions have to report results once every 6 months or even once a year."

Internal club games go from September to May and are the main reason for having a club. Of course I know how FIDE rating works but that is irrelevant. Your last sentence is relevant though. Why not just do that?

I see nobody has said why monthly grades are a good thing. I am (unlike Brian Valentine!") not an expert on statistics. It seems to me that having monthly grades based on only a few games, or using the same games repeatedly, is not as reliable as taking a larger sample of games once or twice a year.

I know I am not alone in finding that monthly FIDE ratings leave me never knowing what my FIDE rating is. I only look it up if I am entering a tournament. Still, the new plan might stop people greeting you with "What's your grade?"

[MartinCarpenter]

The big plug for monthly grades is simple to state - it is claimed to get people more interested, and maybe playing more.

I find that baffling myself, but then the mass behaviour of people often is baffling

As for existing league systems, whatever happens there will be some change to get the backends linked up. Hopefully the ECF can do something like fixing a data format and letting people submit in it over a web service to keep the pain fairly limited.

[NickFaulks]

It seems to me that having monthly grades based on only a few games, or using the same games repeatedly, is not as reliable as taking a larger sample of games once or twice a year.

That cannot be true. The accuracy of a grade based on old information should only be improved by augmenting it with more recent information.

[Roger de Coverly]

As for existing league systems, whatever happens there will be some change to get the backends linked up. Hopefully the ECF can do something like fixing a data format and letting people submit in it over a web service to keep the pain fairly limited.

I don't know that the ECF should be investing in all singing all dancing league management systems when many if not most leagues already have something in place. What they should do to facilitate monthly reporting is to fine tune the grading system to accept more file formats. If it could accept data in a spreadsheet style format laid out as match cards, or in pgn format, that ought to reduce the work involved in preparing monthly result reports. Even a simple minded list would make the work of submission much easier.

Assuming that the chess-results software is capable of delivering data in a format suitable for incorporation into the ECF grading data, why not propose as an alternative that all leagues and club championships use this?

[Stewart Reuben]

The reason for going to monthly gradings is, as I have previously said, it would lead to about 10-20% more competitive chess being played.
I realise that is an unsubstantiated assertion. But we have evidence with the US and FIDE systems. Tell a 10 year old that they will get a grade in 6 months time is a real turn-off.
The live ratings for the top players attracts considerable interest, although it has no official FIDE status.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"That cannot be true. The accuracy of a grade based on old information should only be improved by augmenting it with more recent information."

No - not if it's only one game. My best result this season is (depressingly) beating a 180 and worst, losing to a 164, so 230 points or 114 for one game, could be a 4 point swing (assuming 30 games). Back in 1992, I beat a 226 then lost to a 140 the next game, so that was a massive difference...

We are not talking about conducting scientific analysis where 10 determinations of sugar in food should give you a better result than 6 determinations. Chess results are inconsistent.