Board order rules

[David Buckley]

It strikes me that there are quite a few young players in the 4NCL who are grotesquely under-rated because when players are improving rapidply, FIDE ratings take a long time to catch up. With this in mind, I think it would be a major improvement to the rules if when players are registered, captains are able to request that they should be assigned a 4NCL rating based on their converted ECF rating rather than their FIDE rating. Perhaps this could be applied to any player for whom a captain considers it appropriate. Perhaps it could be applied at the discretion of Neville and co. Perhaps it could be restricted to players who satisfy certain objective criteria. Either way it would be nice if we could play rapidly improving players in a position that better reflects their current playing strength. What do others think about this?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

It strikes me that there are quite a few young players in the 4NCL who are grotesquely under-rated because when players are improving rapidply, FIDE ratings take a long time to catch up. With this in mind, I think it would be a major improvement to the rules if when players are registered, captains are able to request that they should be assigned a 4NCL rating based on their converted ECF rating rather than their FIDE rating. Perhaps this could be applied to any player for whom a captain considers it appropriate. Perhaps it could be applied at the discretion of Neville and co. Perhaps it could be restricted to players who satisfy certain objective criteria. Either way it would be nice if we could play rapidly improving players in a position that better reflects their current playing strength. What do others think about this?

Anything that avoids rapidly improving juniors beating ordinary non-juniors and gets them playing stronger players (allowing the juniors to improve even faster) must be a good thing. Not that I mind losing to strong juniors...

[Mick Norris]

This was discussed at the Northern league captains meeting, with a suggestion that you could perhaps play 1 player per team higher than the 80 point rule would normally allow

It seems to be a particular problem with teams that have a mix of players with and without FIDE ratings (which may suggest that the ECF/FIDE conversion formula is wrong, or maybe just that the grading systems are incompatible or 1 of them is wrong)

[Roger de Coverly]

This was discussed at the Northern league captains meeting, with a suggestion that you could perhaps play 1 player per team higher than the 80 point rule would normally allow

Past 4NCL convention was that you can break the 80 point rule provided that both teams and the arbiters agree. Usually this was applied to enable a norm-seeker to play someone of the necessary title or rating.

What the attitude of match captains and arbiters would be to applying the same conventions to juniors and other rapidly improving players remains to be seen.

[LozCooper]

It strikes me that there are quite a few young players in the 4NCL who are grotesquely under-rated because when players are improving rapidply, FIDE ratings take a long time to catch up. With this in mind, I think it would be a major improvement to the rules if when players are registered, captains are able to request that they should be assigned a 4NCL rating based on their converted ECF rating rather than their FIDE rating. Perhaps this could be applied to any player for whom a captain considers it appropriate. Perhaps it could be applied at the discretion of Neville and co. Perhaps it could be restricted to players who satisfy certain objective criteria. Either way it would be nice if we could play rapidly improving players in a position that better reflects their current playing strength. What do others think about this?

I think the only realistic option is have a rule allowing juniors to play above players 120 or 160 points higher rather than 80 but even then I'm not sure how practical it would be. As ECF grades are only published once a year and cover May-May they are effectively six months out of date when the 4NCL season starts.

Whilst I think there is an issue with juniors having low ratings and I like to see them playing on as high a board as possible I think the danger is that it will cause a lot of confusion and extra admin for the arbiters.

[David Buckley]

It strikes me that there are quite a few young players in the 4NCL who are grotesquely under-rated because when players are improving rapidply, FIDE ratings take a long time to catch up. With this in mind, I think it would be a major improvement to the rules if when players are registered, captains are able to request that they should be assigned a 4NCL rating based on their converted ECF rating rather than their FIDE rating. Perhaps this could be applied to any player for whom a captain considers it appropriate. Perhaps it could be applied at the discretion of Neville and co. Perhaps it could be restricted to players who satisfy certain objective criteria. Either way it would be nice if we could play rapidly improving players in a position that better reflects their current playing strength. What do others think about this?

I think the only realistic option is have a rule allowing juniors to play above players 120 or 160 points higher rather than 80 but even then I'm not sure how practical it would be. As ECF grades are only published once a year and cover May-May they are effectively six months out of date when the 4NCL season starts.

Whilst I think there is an issue with juniors having low ratings and I like to see them playing on as high a board as possible I think the danger is that it will cause a lot of confusion and extra admin for the arbiters.

I take your point about ECF grades being 6 months out of date by the start of season but at least they are based entirely upon games that were played in the last year (I am not aware of any rapidly improving juniors who play less than 30 games a season) The same can not be said for FIDE ratings which is why typically underestimate the strength of such players far more severely than ECF ratings do. If confusion and extra admin is the issue how about a system whereby ECF conversions are used for players who still have a k factor >15 or are aged under a specified age, say 21 and FIDE ratings are used for everyone else?

[David Buckley]

This was discussed at the Northern league captains meeting, with a suggestion that you could perhaps play 1 player per team higher than the 80 point rule would normally allow

Past 4NCL convention was that you can break the 80 point rule provided that both teams and the arbiters agree. Usually this was applied to enable a norm-seeker to play someone of the necessary title or rating.

What the attitude of match captains and arbiters would be to applying the same conventions to juniors and other rapidly improving players remains to be seen.

I'm sure most captains would have no problem with an underrated junior playing on a higher board for the same team. The problem would come when one wants to play a junior in the first team because they are clearly better than the alternative board 7/ board 8 but have a lower FIDE rating.

[Roger de Coverly]

The same can not be said for FIDE ratings which is why typically underestimate the strength of such players far more severely than ECF ratings do.

I'd agree that the typical inertia factor with the FIDE ratings can make it stick at around the first rating. You could still get a player coming into the list at a far higher rating than their ECF. That might be if they played their first internationally rated events in the summer after the end of the ECF season and established an international rating for 1st September well above their ECF rating.

[Matt Harrison]

My son would love this to happen. His ECF grade would convert to about 150 points above his actual FIDE rating, which isn't improving because he isn't playing many FIDE-rated opponents on board 4/5 in Div3. Mind you, he'd only move up at best 2 boards, probably only 1.

[Sean Hewitt]

There are 102 English juniors who have a grade and a FIDE rating (which is pitiful, but that's another story).

5 have a FIDE rating higher than their converted ECF grade (FIDE = ECF * 8 + 650). Of the remainder, their FIDE rating under-rates them by between 14 and 418 rating points if their ECF grade is accurate.

The solution therefore is to simply use ECF conversions for all juniors for the purposes of board order.

[Jonathan Rogers]

This is a good idea, at least in its intentions. I had wondered about something similar a while ago, but then came the frankly bizarre 2009 grading list and I rather abandoned it. Perhaps that list was a one-off; the 2010 list already looks more balanced.

The debate should perhaps be whether the junior should be forced to use converted ECF or whether he can insist on his FIDE for one reason or another (perhaps it is is, unusually, higher, or perhaps he actually likes to play low down his team order). Having the choice seems better, since the idea is to help the juniors, but would amount to an extra administrative task. (Suppose the junior opts at the start of the season for a converted ECF but then gains elo points from other events during the course of the 4NCL season - could he then change his mind?)

[Rob Thompson]

I can't see why you wouldn't be able to change your mind, given that ratings change mid-season anyway.

On a personal note, i would much prefer to be able to use my ECF rating (173, converts to 2034) instead of my Fide rating (1916, iirc)

[David Buckley]

I can't see why you wouldn't be able to change your mind, given that ratings change mid-season anyway.

Presumably because players could then switch between grades for tactical purposes, being converted ECF most of the time but changing to FIDE when the second team has a couple of important matches coming up.

On a personal note, i would much prefer to be able to use my ECF rating (173, converts to 2034) instead of my Fide rating (1916, iirc)

[Rob Thompson]

David, you may want to fix your quote tags.

[Richard Bates]

Either way it would be nice if we could play rapidly improving players in a position that better reflects their current playing strength. What do others think about this?

As long as there's no chance of me playing one of them...

One small step for mankind would be for 4NCL to revert to rating the games as and when they happen.