English Chess Forum

About historical comparisons of strength, how does this event compare to recent European Individual Championships and the Russian Championship Superfinals. The latter are closed round-robins (not an Open Swiss). And I thought the Aeroflot Opens were meant to be very strong. What criteria are used to...

Just to be clear, Roger has started this thread as a grading debate. I thought he was referring to a subsidiary tournament running on the Isle of Man. Maybe Roger could list the players in this event who already have ECF gradings and those who don't. Assuming it is actually being graded for ECF grad...

Back to the chess in the Isle of Man... The Chessbase round two report tells me that Brandon Clarke got his place because his father is from the Isle of Man (which I did not know). What are the rules about who qualifies in various ways for this event? The miniature Safarli-Rodshtein is well worth pl...

Thank you David. Good luck in your event (I thought you were arbiting, not playing!).

Five players on 100%, not four. Carlsen playing Kasimdzhanov. Lots of GMs [well, OK, only ten], including Tal Baron and Gawain Jones and Keith Arkell, have started with 0/2, which must be a shock to the system for some. Worth repeating: of the 154 players: 133 GMs, 2 WGMs, 16 IMs. Three non-titled p...

Oh, 37...Rb5 in one of the lines does seem to save the day, as taking the g5 pawn with check wins the knight.

Angus French wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 11, 2019 3:48 pm

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 11, 2019 3:37 pm

After little more than half an hour, the top board game has reached move 28

Now at move 29 and I think Sarana has a draw if he wants it.

Looks winning for Sarana (who has White), maybe?

Heh. I just noticed Carl's using the same avatar as me (the dragon one)!

Justin, may I suggest you ask those who oversaw the appointment process about the dates. You may, but my counter-suggestion would be that if somebody says "the explanation is perfectly simple", the simplest thing would be to give that explanation, rather than write more than six hundred words of wa...

Carlsen was lucky to win. Wonder if he will be able to beat Ding's unbeaten streak - I think it unlikely. This is a strong tournament (but then Carlsen is a strong player!).

The explanation is perfectly simple And it is.... Justin, may I suggest you ask those who oversaw the appointment process about the dates. Putting pressure on Carl himself is not going to help matters here. The implication I think is that the ECF will at some point explain this, but that it is not ...

Questions relating to the appointment process (and what happened when) should, in my opinion, be directed at the ECF officials who oversaw that process, not at those who applied for the position. Questions about Carl's document should be directed to him (there is quite a lot in there to digest and t...

I think what might be happening is that at least four of the players are "50 points below" the grade that the system is trying to assign to your player, so the performance there is recalculated. Take the initial estimate of 176 and redo the calculation with those four grades redone as "126" grades ...

From the help page: "If an opponent (or the player himself) is ungraded, a "starting grade" is estimated, using all available information. See Estimating a starting grade for an ungraded player below." Estimating a starting Grade for an ungraded player (or a junior) A Rapid grade, where available, w...

One of your player's games was against a junior (the one graded 118), that is what the asterisk (*) indicates. If you click through to that junior's grading page, their actual grade (calculated using the junior grading thingy method) is 124. I think this will account for some of the difference. OK, ...