Playing with ECF ratings data at chessratinganalytics.com

[jholyhead]

One of things I love most about chess is the quantitative feedback you get on performance - primarily in the form of ratings. And that has led me to spend a lot of time playing with the ratings data the ECF provide us with - I once calculated which players were most severely affected by the 4NCL Saturday night extracurriculars, but mostly I just liked to find different ways of slicing and visualising my own rating data. But I've recently embedded some of those efforts into a new website that I'd like to invite you all to have a play with.

https://chessratinganalytics.com

The initial release includes:

- Player Search: Easily search for any ECF-rated player using their name or ECF code.
- Live Ratings: View your "live" rating using all games submitted for rating.
- Rating Charts: Visualize rating changes over time for Standard, Rapid, and Blitz game types.
- Performance Analysis: Calculate performance ratings based on recent games, with customisable game count.
- Common Opponents: View statistics for most frequently played opponents, including win/loss/draw ratios.
- Event-based Analysis: Group games by events and view performance in each event, with expandable details.
- Time Range Filtering: Filter rating data and statistics based on different time ranges (3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, all-time).


This is not intended as (nor would it function as) a replacement for ecfrating.org.uk - indeed it relies entirely on the data that the rating team generously provide through that site, but I've had a lot of fun over the last few days clicking through the site.

I've got loads of ideas for fun data visualisations and analysis tools that I plan to add to the site, but if there are any particular features you would like to see added, stick them in a reply below and I'll see what I can do.

As this is a bright and shiny new toy, it probably has a few defects (for example I know there is currently something wrong with Rapid and Blitz live ratings where the ECF doesn't strictly report the games in the order they were played), so if you spot something that doesn't look right, let me know.

[John Upham]

James,

This looks most interesting and thanks for your huge efforts.

Are you amenable to functionality and GUI suggestions?

ECF Officials are barred from commenting on your work no matter how useful it is.

[jholyhead]

Thanks John, I'd welcome any and all suggestions. Can't promise they'll all get actioned, but I promise to take them all seriously.

[David Lettington]

This is a really great resource, thank you!

[jholyhead]

This is a really great resource, thank you!

Thank you David, I hope people find it has some useful, or at least some interesting information held within.

I hope to be able to include some of the old 3 digit monthly rating system data too at some point, but it's a bit tricky.

[jholyhead]

Now includes your top 3 results in the selected time period (wins are counted as opponent rating + 400, draws are counted as opponent rating for comparison purposes)

[Brian Beattie]

Thanks for this. I think is a quite interesting and useful tool. One (selfish) request would be to have on option to filter out underrated juniors when calculating performance. Crudely this can be done by discarding results versus junior opponents who have less than 60 games per year in that particular time control. Another potential feature would be to have a graph displaying performance over time based on a rolling 20 or rolling 30 basis (or both). The idea is that between those two features one can get a pretty good handle at one's current level of performance in an easy to read graph.

[Ian Thompson]

One (selfish) request would be to have on option to filter out underrated juniors when calculating performance. Crudely this can be done by discarding results versus junior opponents who have less than 60 games per year in that particular time control.

Something in a similar vein that would be interesting would be filtering results based on either my opponent's absolute rating, or relative difference in rating between them and me, e.g. what is my performance rating against players rated within +/- 100 points of me compared to my performance against players rated 100 - 300 points lower than me, 100 - 300 points higher than me, etc..

[Kevin Thurlow]

"This is a really great resource, thank you!"

Agreed!

[jholyhead]

Thanks folks, I'll have a think about how best to offer some advanced filtering options - will largely depend on what info is available to me.

I did experiment with a rolling performance rating chart, but the first attempt wasn't pretty. I'll have another look at it.

[Neill Cooper]

I agree that is a great resource. I found being able to visually look at how some of the 'under rated' juniors I know have progressed interesting. In the two cases I looked at a rapid rise of 500 points in a year and then a more gradual rise afterwards.

[jholyhead]

I've managed to wrangle some of the pre-4 digit data into the site. So now your games, events and common opponents are computed and shown all the way back to 2002 (or to a max of 2000 games if you've been that active). I'll work on getting the rating data for those pre-2021 games incorporated at some point.

The most games played between two opponents that I have found so far over that time span is 45 games. Let me know if you can beat it.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I am struggling to get the features to work for my rating data. Maybe because I am on a phone. Is it best to use a desktop to access some features?

When I switch to "last 50 games" it doesn't reload. Also, if you have hundreds of games, how does "last 50" work versus "all-time"? The chart only seems to go back to 2021?

Not being critical, just wondering if I am selecting the wrong filters. It is good to know that I have played one player 19 times!

[jholyhead]

I am struggling to get the features to work for my rating data. Maybe because I am on a phone. Is it best to use a desktop to access some features?

When I switch to "last 50 games" it doesn't reload. Also, if you have hundreds of games, how does "last 50" work versus "all-time"? The chart only seems to go back to 2021?

Not being critical, just wondering if I am selecting the wrong filters. It is good to know that I have played one player 19 times!

There should be very little difference using the site on mobile - a couple of the tooltips don't work well at the moment, but other than that...

Looking at your profile, it looks like you have only played 5 rated games under the "4 figure" rating system that started in 2021 (if you think this is wrong, let me know and I'll dig into the ECF's data further). I'm currently unable to process rating data for the games that took place under the old 3 digit system pre 2021 (I'm working on it). That means your performance rating is only going to be calculated on those 5 new system games. And similarly the chart can currently only go back as far as the start of the new system.

As soon as I get the legacy rating data working, I'll let you know.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

That number of 5 rated games is correct.

You said:

"I've managed to wrangle some of the pre-4 digit data into the site. So now your games, events and common opponents are computed and shown all the way back to 2002 (or to a max of 2000 games if you've been that active)."

I couldn't quite square that with:

"I'll work on getting the rating data for those pre-2021 games incorporated at some point."

You have some of the pre-2021 data there but not all of it?

Or the data is all there but only partially integrated with the functionality?