English Chess Forum

Matt, the contention that I have said, or believe, that "the data is more spread out because players are more likely to objectively perform 600 points above their rating online" is a fictional product of your imagination and I do not intend to keep on rebutting it here ad nauseam. These accusations ...

Matt I can't actually work out how you arrive at that conclusion which is neither what I've said nor what I believe. The gist of Alex's article was that a number of online players cheat and thereby get much better online results than appears plausible from their over-the-board performances, whether ...

No, just to be clear, that's definitely not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the displayed distribution for online players [some of whom we all agree must be cheating] shows just 58% of values in the range 1>z>-1. If the distribution for online players [without cheating] possessed the same mean and ...

Matt Yes, broadly - but only broadly - agreed. One is left to speculate what the distribution for the online participants would have been, in the event that none had cheated. Let's leave aside the complication of different people [OTB participants versus online participants] and I think there are em...

"... whether a Normal distribution is likely to give a reliable result when it is most unlikely that the data actually conforms to a Normal distribution." I believe whether or not a data set conforms to a Normal distribution can be tested for. The extract reproduced by John was intended as a maxim ...

Alex Holowczak's recent article, published in CHESS and elsewhere, was well written and has rightly attracted near-universal praise on this forum so I hope no-one, least of all Alex, will mind if I point out something of a small problem. Alex uses a graph which overlays performances in over-the-boar...

Incidentally, I rather liked this

"4NCL Online Format Regulations

"4. Organisation of the Divisions 1. Divisions 1, 2, 3 and 4 will each compromise four groups of eight teams …"

I take it that further compromising arose over the proof-reading budget rather than this being intended as an omen!

Curiously, exactly the opposite outcome to the Junior 4NCL where the organisers seem to have expected an increase but actual entries were well down. I find the contrast puzzling, as I suspect do the organisers. Any theories? For what it's worth, from our point of view as a club that has teams in bo...

A 17% increase. My central prediction was a 20% drop. I understand that the organisers thought that it might be greater. Those of us, including me, who campaigned hard behind the scenes for a change in the ECF and the 4NCl Rules and Regulations can take a quiet satisfaction from the outcome of our ...

Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 12, 2020 2:10 pm

Indeed, an observation that does not only apply to elections in the chess world

LOL, the temptation to point that out was yet another which I found hard to resist.

Yes juniors can vote in these elections. I have some reservations about this but discovered I was in a minority when the point was discussed on the governance committee or board. Thanks for the clarification, Mike. Yes, the subject of juniors voting on anything tends to divide opinion. I've heard i...

Sorry to digress but, to save me [and perhaps others] having to go through ECF documents, can someone answer a simple question? Are junior members of the ECF eligible to vote ? If in general not, is the situation any different for someone born 1 July 2002 who is a junior member but now aged 18 ?

Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 04, 2020 1:03 pm

Nick Grey wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 03, 2020 8:13 pm

uk minimise bubbles. So 8-12 months?

What does this term even mean?

Something to do with West Ham losing, perhaps?

Hopefully these regulations are buried so deep that Matthew Carr and Brian Valentine will be unable to find them, or at least not feel like searching for them. But Michael we've been forewarned because of the request to alter the k-factor for those with short arms. Joking apart, I did suggest to Ad...

ECF home director Adrian Elwin doesn't, as far as I can see, post here so I trust he won't mind my passing on a piece of news. One of the problems with the "two boards" solution [see Upper Franconia example last month] to the problem posed by Covid-19 is that, in England, this approach is inconsiste...