Grade please?

[Jonathan Bryant]

We used to have a guy at our club who used to ask "what's your grade?" on being offered a draw. If the other chap was higher rated than him he would almost always agree. If lower, he would mostly refuse.

Evidently he refined his technique over time. During one away match I heard somebody offer him a draw and I saw him get out a grading book and look his opponent up.

- sadly this chap no longer seems to play chess.



One of the interesting things about grades is how big the gap has to be before a difference in strength becomes significant.

10 grading points feels like a big difference to me, although, as someone once pointed out to me, that only means that if you both play to your grading strength out of 5 games the better player will only end up +1 ahead.


Similarly, i "expect" of myself that I should be able to win ever time against opponents graded 25 points less than me. Of course, if I could do that I'd be 50 points higher rated

[Alex Holowczak]

The Birmingham League website lists all the players and their grades on its registrations page. So often, I know both exactly who I'm playing and their grade beforehand. I usually inform my team-mates of the array of players they could be playing. Sometimes, they still ask if they have a grade, and their opponents never know. I often know their grade, but they don't!

I find using scoresheets with a "Grade" field to be filled in increases the chance of a junior asking what it is.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Reading Loz's post reminds me of a Winter's Trophy match (a sort of London League Cup, which anyone could enter) in the 1990s. I was playing for Barbican, defending champions, in a first round match against Metropolitan 3. Yes, Metropolitan 3. I was playing a 120, an elderly someone I would normally have played only in a simul, and I beat him probably in exactly the same way I would have done had I played him in a simul.

I was a bit surprised that he played on until mate, and I thought that perhaps he was making a bit much of his (presumably very rare) opportunity to play someone so much stronger. But then he asked me my grade at the end (221, I think) and he exclaimed "you're joking"! Apparently his captain had not told him anything about the match (other than the start time) and he had assumed he was playing an ordinary league match, perhaps against some one of his own strength, and that was why he played on until mate!

[Carol Williams]

I've taken to asking my opponents this question before a league match simply to save me time looking them up when inputting the game when I get home. The last game I played was slightly amusing as my opponent was too embarrassed to tell me his rating. It wasn’t until I got home and realised there was 500+ (Elo) rating points between us that I fully understood why.

Do people mind being asked? To be fair I rarely get a sensible answer. Many people claim to not know their grade and just play for fun yet in my experience most people have a pretty good idea what it is, certainly when the new lists are published at the very least.

I think its a fair question to ask but I know what you mean by "getting a sensible answer". It always amazes me how many people claim not to practice, play on the internet, buy books or dvds yet seem to be rather good at the noble game :

[David Williams]

Having read this thread I think I must be something of an oddity. If someone asks my grade I just tell them.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Having read this thread I think I must be something of an oddity. If someone asks my grade I just tell them.

That would be too simple a course of action for mixed up old me, that's for sure (although when I claim not to practice, study or play DVDs, I am straightforwardly telling the truth)

[Gavin Strachan]

That would be too simple a course of action for mixed up old me, that's for sure (although when I claim not to practice, study or play DVDs, I am straightforwardly telling the truth)

explains the dip in grade!

On the matter of grade, has anybody worked out a performance grade over a season when they play as white and one as black. Most people may have a preference to one shade or other but from a training point of view I suppose it kind of gives you an idea as to the style of chess you prefer (go for it, or come and get a slap). Furthermore, in I think chess for tigers this is developed into analysing openings that you play and the result, though at this macro level can be a little statistically misleading due the lack of range.

[Alex Holowczak]

That would be too simple a course of action for mixed up old me, that's for sure (although when I claim not to practice, study or play DVDs, I am straightforwardly telling the truth)

explains the dip in grade!

On the matter of grade, has anybody worked out a performance grade over a season when they play as white and one as black. Most people may have a preference to one shade or other but from a training point of view I suppose it kind of gives you an idea as to the style of chess you prefer (go for it, or come and get a slap). Furthermore, in I think chess for tigers this is developed into analysing openings that you play and the result, though at this macro level can be a little statistically misleading due the lack of range.

At the end of the season, thanks to Carl's upgrades to the grading website, it should be possible for you to make the appropriate calculations yourself from the information provided there.

[Mick Norris]

That would be too simple a course of action for mixed up old me, that's for sure (although when I claim not to practice, study or play DVDs, I am straightforwardly telling the truth)

explains the dip in grade!

On the matter of grade, has anybody worked out a performance grade over a season when they play as white and one as black. Most people may have a preference to one shade or other but from a training point of view I suppose it kind of gives you an idea as to the style of chess you prefer (go for it, or come and get a slap). Furthermore, in I think chess for tigers this is developed into analysing openings that you play and the result, though at this macro level can be a little statistically misleading due the lack of range.

I track results for white and black, and for different openings, however I don't play enough to make this statistically significant

[Geoff Marchant]

Once during a post mortem my opponent said "I was going to offer a draw here but I got up, walked around and saw your grade on the wall, so I decided to play on a bit". He won both the game and, with that comment, the post mortem.

[Joey Stewart]

It is quite amusing seeing everyone pretending their grades are not of the slightest importence when, we all know, they are the one and only thing we will ever get out of chess and are far more precious to be dismissed.

N.B. I never bother asking peoples ratings, as I usually know them before the match, and will look them up afterwards to add them to my season grading list.

[Ian Thompson]

At the end of the season, thanks to Carl's upgrades to the grading website, it should be possible for you to make the appropriate calculations yourself from the information provided there.

Unlikely, as that will require all graders to specify the players' colours (which will require the event organiser to tell the grader). Only about 3/4 of my graded games in the last 3 years have included colours and some of those were wrong.

[Richard Bates]

On the matter of grade, has anybody worked out a performance grade over a season when they play as white and one as black. Most people may have a preference to one shade or other but from a training point of view I suppose it kind of gives you an idea as to the style of chess you prefer (go for it, or come and get a slap). Furthermore, in I think chess for tigers this is developed into analysing openings that you play and the result, though at this macro level can be a little statistically misleading due the lack of range.

I am currently performing 28pts higher with white. Last season i performed at 18pts higher, the season before 15pts higher. Not sure if that means i'm getting better with white, or worse with black...

[Christopher Kreuzer]

One problem with asking someone what their grade is, is if they are ungraded (by which I mean new to British chess, not new to chess). I recently turned up to a match after making the mistake of not checking the opposing team's results beforehand. If I had, I would have spotted that they had an ungraded player (the name may be of Eastern European origin) who had been beating people graded around 140-150 in their previous matches. I played relatively badly, but he still more than deserved his win against me, and I'm now secretly hoping that he will get a good grade when the new list comes out!

Has anyone else had that experience of losing to an ungraded player who is actually about the same strength as you, or maybe even better? I did that twice at Hastings, both times losing. One (from Germany) was estimated at 200 strength, but the other (from Indonesia) was harder to estimate. Both times I tried to work out from their moves how strong they were, but it backfired badly in one case. I though an early ...h5 in the Sicilian was bad (I should have played the position and not made such assumptions), but got trounced and was told afterwards it was actually a very strong move. Well, you live and learn.

[Kevin Thurlow]

One of my team-mates used to reply (on being asked his grade), "I used to be 130". After he had demolished one opponent, he got a comment that he had played rather better than 130, and he said, "Well, I'm 170 now..."

I did play in one league where we had a GM on top board, and his precocious junior opponent asked his grade. The GM didn't know (only being interested, if at all, in the ELO), but the captain said it was 235 and the junior went a funny colour.