English Chess Forum

I like tournaments that offer boxes of chocolates or bottles of wine as prizes. (This is what happens in go tournaments where entry fees are proportionately lower as a result). I accept prize money is important and a motivator at the top level but at amateur level I am playing for the entertainment ...

Grading lists update on what they have received. If organisers submit late then the results are in the next update. This happens now with the six monthly update where sometimes congresses are late or even on occasion missed entirely. It is not an issue that arises soll for monthly updates. But that ...

If I am entering a rapid play event with several grade limited sections it seems entirely reasonable to me that players who have shown improvement during the season such that their grade has moved upwards during the season should be moved to a higher section Of course if the chess world moved away f...

I am another member in favour of monthly grades. I am well into middle age and definitely not a junior although I do run a junior chess club. My juniors find it odd that chess grades are only updated twice a year. It does not help chess' image. While I am not hugely vocal on this forum I have been c...

Martin I don't buy this concept of perfect grades because individual performance does vary over time for all sorts of reasons. There will never be perfect games where people play every time exactly to predicted grades. They are distracted by all sorts of life events and changes in motivation and fro...

Nick, You say: "Your opponents are entitled to expect that your published grade is a fair estimate of the strength of play they might expect from you, since it affects their own grade." I agree. Far better to have more current information influenced by recent play available to see, rather than an ou...

Martin Carpenter: I suspect we have different views of what a grade should be. I think the current grade should be a result of the most recent information about a player's current playing strength. I would not expect it to be 'certificate of strength', statistically based, unless the person has play...

It is disappointing reading the replies to date to see how stuck in the past the ECF is. Thirty years ago I played a lot of competitive chess in leagues and in weekend tournaments. I found the grading system frustrating then due to its annual nature but assumed that was how it was. Since that time I...

I run a junior club in Letchworth Garden City which has two sections, the older of which caters for juniors in the 12 -19 age bracket. The older age group came about once the early club members grew older and wanted to be separate from the 8 year olds. Sometimes it is annoying that we cannot enter j...

[quote Andrew Zigmond" I've generally been in pretty rotten form this season but the one exception was Hull Congress where I somehow managed to score 4/5 despite being the third lowest rated player in the section. My point was that if the tournament was run on the McMahon system I would have remaine...

So what I am really suggesting for chess (in a rather long winded way - sorry) would be to start people all in the same tournament but in potentially 7 McMahon bands as follows: 181-200+ 161-180 141-160 121-140 101-120 81-100 under80 So the 145 player who aspires to be more could potentially play so...

"Alex Holowczak" post The other question I'd have is - how would you suggest a chess-based McMahon system handle draws? Given you can't draw in Go due to the komi, this isn't currently catered for by the McMahon system. [/quote] Alex McMahon can handle draws. The McMahon score just goes up half a po...

NickFaulks So would open tournaments with players of all strengths and no handicap work? I am not sure if this question is addressed at chess or go tournaments. For chess it sounds like a disaster or mismatched pairings in early rounds. In go it only works if you use the McMahon system as previously...

Eric wrote Thanks for the information about Go Alison. I looked quickly at the Britgo site and couldn't see any mention of cash prizes. Do players generally just play for trophies? Also, do players of widely differing standards mix much or do they tend to stick with others of similar ability? Eric, ...

Andrew wrote: Alison - have you run junior tournaments on a McHahon system and how did they compare? Junior tournaments don't have to be swiss systems (it's just the convention that most of them are) and many parents would need the format explaining to them. I have run a local ungraded chess tournam...