A Modest Proposal (which doesn't involve eating children)

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

I believe the UK Chess Challenge has roughly 60,000 entries every year, very few of whom ever appear in the ECF grading lists. I don't know how many games this equates to if you include the Megafinal, Gigafinal and Terafinal stages, but it must be getting on for half a million. It seems that hardly any of these games are graded and so the ECF gets virtually no money from all this chess being played.

If the ECF could offer some sort of cheap membership / game fee deal then I'm sure it wouldn't be very difficult to persuade the parents of all those players to pay an extra pound or two if their children are guaranteed to get a grade at the end of the tournament, even if it's just one based on the six or seven games played against their school friends.

Not only would this generate income for the ECF, but in my experience children who manage to get a grade are much more likely to enter other tournaments.

[Sabrina Chevannes]

I have wondered this before! I think at least the last couple of stages should be graded

[Adam Raoof]

[like]

We're in discussion with Michael Basman over a number of ideas, but this is one I would personally favour. However there are limitations (which Alex H will probably go into more detail regarding) - the conditions that the games are played in, and the number of ungraded players, which make grading events tricky. I guess that most of the organisers won't have a clue what to submit to the grader, and may not use software to do pairings. The final stages are already graded.

However a £10 junior membership would be a great start, for anyone who participated in the UK Chess Challenge.

I couldn't eat a whole child anyway.

[John Upham]

Would somebody like to calculate the game fee payment that UKCC would be liable for if Mega, Giga and Terra finals were graded?

[Adam Raoof]

Would somebody like to calculate the game fee payment that UKCC would be liable for if Mega, Giga and Terra finals were graded?

I think an arrangement could be made, if membership was either a condition of entry or heavily promoted with the tournament.

[Roger de Coverly]

Would somebody like to calculate the game fee payment that UKCC would be liable for if Mega, Giga and Terra finals were graded?

From http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=217

Junior Events
Standard Play – 27p per result
Rapidplay – 14p per result

Mega and Giga are Rapidplay I presume and Tera is Standard. I believe Tera is already graded. So if you can count the number of players at the two lower levels, you know the hypothetical Game Fee bill. At 14p per person per game, you have to play a lot of games to make £ 10 a head cheaper.

(edit) ECF Game Fee is always expressed per half game, so the calculation (assuming everyone plays every round) is
(Game Fee amount) * (no of players) * (no of rounds) (/edit)

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

Would somebody like to calculate the game fee payment that UKCC would be liable for if Mega, Giga and Terra finals were graded?

These numbers are just rough calculations.

School tournaments: 60,000 players. Seven rounds in theory, call it five to allow for children who don't manage to play all their games. Game fee of 5p per result = 60000 * 5 * 0.5 * 0.05 = £7500.

Megafinals: 41 Megafinals of, say, 100 entries each = 4100 players. Six rounds, game fee of 14p per result = 4100 * 6 * 0.5 * 0.14 = £1722.

Gigafinals: Maybe 1500 players? Same number of rounds and game fee as Megafinals = 1500 * 6 * 0.5 * 0.14 = £630.

Terafinal: About 170 players. Six rounds, game fee of 27p per result = 170 * 6 * 0.5 * 0.27 = £138

(I've assumed that "per result" means just that, if it's per person per result then all the totals need to be doubled!)

[Paul Sanders]

Why not FIDE rate them?

[Adam Raoof]

Why not FIDE rate them?

That would mean devoting a long time to each round on the schedule, when the games would be very much shorter!

[Adam Raoof]

Would somebody like to calculate the game fee payment that UKCC would be liable for if Mega, Giga and Terra finals were graded?

These numbers are just rough calculations.

School tournaments: 60,000 players. Seven rounds in theory, call it five to allow for children who don't manage to play all their games. Game fee of 5p per result = 60000 * 5 * 0.5 * 0.05 = £7500.

Megafinals: 41 Megafinals of, say, 100 entries each = 4100 players. Six rounds, game fee of 14p per result = 4100 * 6 * 0.5 * 0.14 = £1722.

Gigafinals: Maybe 1500 players? Same number of rounds and game fee as Megafinals = 1500 * 6 * 0.5 * 0.14 = £630.

Terafinal: About 170 players. Six rounds, game fee of 27p per result = 170 * 6 * 0.5 * 0.27 = £138

(I've assumed that "per result" means just that, if it's per person per result then all the totals need to be doubled!)

Why not just build it into the entry fee (with a discount) - an extra £X per player would go to the ECF for grading, or just offer everyone the chance to join as junior members for a tenner with their entry.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

... you have to play a lot of games to make £ 10 a head cheaper.

Yes, it's crazy to expect the parents to pay an extra £10 to join the ECF, that would seriously affect the number of entries to the UKCC. I was suggesting some sort of very cheap scheme where the ECF might get 60,000 lots of 50p or £1.

[Peter Turner]

Now about this for an idea, it's not new. I have proposed it several times over the years both as Junior Director & Officer in charge of the Certificate of Excellence.
The idea:-
A benefit of becoming a junior member of the ECF could be that the youngster is immediately given a temporary grade based on age. Could be given a 'T' code in order for organisers to know the source and there would be no compulsion for school teams etc to do the board order in 'T' terms. Since all the analysis done recently on grades it must easy to assign an age appropriate grade thus the player would be bringing the correct grading points into the grading system. Thus the youngster feels a proper chess player with a grade.
The current system for a youngster to get a grade must sometimes take upto 2 years (or more). It's like telling a youngster wanting to play foodball that they can come and watch from the sideline, perhaps occasionally kick a ball but must wait 2 years to have a shirt, shorts etc and play in a proper match.

There is probably a very good reason why this cannot be done!! Be gentle with me

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

However there are limitations (which Alex H will probably go into more detail regarding) - the conditions that the games are played in, and the number of ungraded players, which make grading events tricky.

Indeed the grades might not be very accurate, but just basing it on the child's age would be a good start. Perhaps a separate category could be created, i.e. you'd have longplay, rapidplay and UKCC grades. The UKCC grade would be the one created at the school stage and would only be used at the Megafinal and later stages if the child had no rapidplay grade.

I guess that most of the organisers won't have a clue what to submit to the grader, and may not use software to do pairings.

The organisers are usually teachers and so quite used to filling in forms. If the results could be submitted online then so much the better.

[Alex Holowczak]

At the risk of being a damp squib about this, there are problems:
(1) Not all sections - even at Gigafinals - have clocks, so they can't be graded.
(2) How do the organisers forward each and every result for UKCC to grade? Remember they have to forward all results to Mike, the name and date of birth of every entrant needs to go to him.
(3) If the only chess the juniors play is in the UK Chess Challenge, they'd only get grades based on games against those players. This screws up the grading system. For example, CCF had a Warwickshire section of the English Chess Challenge, and they graded a tournament where only about 1% of the players had grades. The result was that several Warwickshire junior players had totally inaccurate and inappropriate grades. There were Under 10s I'd never even heard of who had grades comparable with the current British Under 10 Champion! Really, if about half of the players in the tournament you're grading don't have grades, grading it does more harm than good.
(4) The amount of work to do this would be ridiculous. The Terafinal is about 1,000 halfresults. The Gigafinals would be 9,000 halfresults. Megafinals would be 24,000. In the Birmingham League, it takes the grader a week or two to grade 6,000 results. OK, it could be quicker if it were an automated system, but the UKCC would have to do it vaguely manually themselves. Grading 31,000 results would be a full-time job!

[Alan Burke]

I am sure you will agree that many children who qualify for the Megafinals are not total enthusiasts of chess but just play it as one of many fun activities they participate in at school. It is only when you get to the Gigafinal stage that the 'true' chess players usually evolve from the event - and even then there are some who can qualify without having to show any great prowess, depending on the standard or how many opponents are in their particular section.

Therefore, to ask parents to pay for a membership of something they may well never use again seems a bit much and would probably stop some from entering the event.

The early stages of the UK Challenge should just be used as a 'first step' for many children to get to know and enjoy the game of chess. I think it is right that the Terafinal stage is OK for grading purposes, but many who compete in the earlier rounds are probably not even aware of such a rating scheme.