English Chess Forum

I share Richard Bates concerns about acceptance of a radical change to Elo. However the ECF current approach to new entrants/juniors tends to breakdown with the smaller samples generated by monthly lists. The approach can be very volatile and explaining the inner working is far harder than Elo. The...

Also what do the grading team consider a more suitable grading system to be?

"The present method of calculating grades was devised to handle batch processing of results, with each batch containing a significant number of results for each active player. This method of calculation is statistically unsound once the frequency of calculation is such that the number of results in ...

If it was a normal Swiss now wouldn't Gonzaga be playing 3Cs 2? (I am not complaining - Shropshire 1 would have almost certainly had to play Gonzaga in one of the remaining rounds.) All I will say is that it is just as well that no-one is in contention for a norm because I don't see how anyone could...

Looks like a 4 team race for the 2 promotion spots I wonder if we will see Gonzaga v Shrops 1 and Bradford A at weekend 4, with 3Cs 2 playing both too, leaving Gonzaga v 3Cs 2 to the final weekend I have tried and failed to predict the pairings so far but I'll have another go. I don't think we will...

When I was a junior in Scotland attending a SJCA training event the late Danny Kopec assessed the strength of a group of us by seeing how many tactical puzzles we could correctly solve. There are plenty of books out there which use this approach. (What one knows about chess is not necessarily the sa...

So which teams are in which groups for the purposes of the pairing system?

@ Christopher Kreuzer

I have sent you a pm.

Why not? Isn't it obvious? If one of them wins, the loser gets pairings against players who have faired less well, thus easier. If they draw, both get easier pairings than their opposition. A Swiss system is a hybrid between an all play all and a knockout. That might be a fair point for your averag...

Having thought about it, personally I would have stuck with the old grade and allocated the ranking order randomly instead of disclosing the 3 digit numbers, particularly for a tournament with the number of rounds that the British Championship has. You would accept a pairing of the number 1 seed wi...

Having thought about it, personally I would have stuck with the old grade and allocated the ranking order randomly instead of disclosing the 3 digit numbers, particularly for a tournament with the number of rounds that the British Championship has. You would accept a pairing of the number 1 seed wi...

The old Clarke system would only require 8 digits at the present time because of the way you, or the person you are following, has chosen to extend the system. Clarke choose the numbering system. Raaphi Persitz is the only player I remember around 1958 to be graded in 1aa. His grade may have been a...

I would have thought that having fewer distinct grades and multiple players with the same grade would increase the number of possible pairings. Given the possibility of arbiter bias it is considered important that one and only one set of pairings is possible. The practical methods of doing this rev...

@ Roger de Coverly

Thanks for the background information.

@ E Michael White Agreement with Elo also has its drawbacks. (I understand there was an online competition to see who could come up with the best system for predicting results from grades and it was won by a modified Glicko system. I don't have time however to look it up at the moment.) The old Clar...