English Chess Forum

I see that RdC is rapidly approaching the 15,000 posts milestone. Has the Board Admin arranged for a suitable presentation - is the ECF aware and preparing a statement? The Academy Awards take place on February 26th - is there a possibility of shoehorning something in there? We need to be told!

I had the pleasure of meeting RdC at the London Chess Classic & commented positively on this forum on one of his games. His views are consistent in real life too. When asked before the start of a round by someone who had not played for 5 or so years why his grade was so low he replied losing to under-rated juniors.

It is appropriate that English Chess Forum makes some acknowledgement or even some of us that post.

But I cannot expect that the English Chess Federation would (e.g. via Presidents Award for Services to Chess). Unless there is an active campaign. There are 1000s that play a large organisation role, or have recently retired from an organisational role to play a bit more chess.

I thought this had already been done and he'd been awarded the title "The Sage of Bourne End". It's just that he is so modest that he prefers to be called plain "Roger".

Nick, I suspect that Neil was not suggesting this seriously or to be complimentary to Roger (whose posts I also find mostly illuminating and useful). The other people who have posted a lot here are Alex Holowczak, me and Mick Norris:

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/memberlist.ph ... memberlist

However, Mick arrived here first, followed by Roger, Alex and me.

I seem to average about 1000 posts a year, but I post a bit less now. Goodness knows how often I was posting a few years ago!

The highest quality quotient per post would undoubtedly go to Leonard Barden.

NB. Some of these stats are distorted by the deletion of several accounts over the years (along with the associated posts) as various people stormed off in various directions and states of high dudgeon.

By the time most of you read this Roger will have reached 15,000 posts (currently 14,999).

As Christopher points out my tongue was firmly in my cheek when I made the original post. Of course like many others I got terribly fed up about Roger's posts on Membership. On the other hand Christopher quite rightly points out that many of Roger's posts have been useful, illuminating and indeed informative.

Recently we had a Mr Fegan who referred to this forum as

it is actually an ill informed talking shop of the self appointed.

. Thankfully we have plenty of contributors who make this exactly the opposite - so maybe an award is due to Roger!

Happy 15th Roger.

The award should be for those who've read them all

David Robertson wrote:The award should be for those who've read them all

I've read them all... says many a bibliography writing student.

seriously though I like Roger's posts and its great he puts so much time in for free.

Joshua Gibbs wrote:
seriously though I like Roger's posts and its great he puts so much time in for free.

Not true. Carl pays him a fee as he attracts many people to the site.

David Robertson wrote:The award should be for those who've read them all

This forumite wrote a book on it

Nick Grey wrote:When asked before the start of a round by someone who had not played for 5 or so years why his grade was so low he replied losing to under-rated juniors.

Is this not a feature of the grading system that affects us all equally? Unless you only play tournaments with an atypically higher proportion of juniors, we all lose points to 'underrated' players.

Nick Burrows wrote: Unless you only play tournaments with an atypically higher proportion of juniors, we all lose points to 'underrated' players.

Had I not qualified for the British Championships, I might have played in one or both of the Senior Championships. Had I done so, I suspect my FIDE rating would be somewhat higher than it is now. I doubt I would have played that much lower rated a field either, assuming a decent start. The (k=40) rule can give on form active juniors a ratings boost over the summer. The British Championships usually take place before this effect kicks in.

Nick Burrows wrote:

Nick Grey wrote:When asked before the start of a round by someone who had not played for 5 or so years why his grade was so low he replied losing to under-rated juniors.

Is this not a feature of the grading system that affects us all equally? Unless you only play tournaments with an atypically higher proportion of juniors, we all lose points to 'underrated' players.

Your argument assumes that juniors are spread equally throughout the country. My guess is that this is not true. I assume this because whilst I hear all the time of the 'junior drought' affecting chess in this country there seems to be absolutely no shortage of them at the tournaments at which I play. invariably there is a large discrepancy between their elo ratings and their ECF grades.

Discussing this sort of thing before I was told that the number of people over elo-rated and the number of people under elo rated roughly balances out. This is simply not true in the tournaments that I play. I counted once and found that the proportion was something like 15 to 1 in favour of the latter.

Of course all this has a knock on effect to the ratings of adults that you play too. As such, I very much doubt that all chessers are equally impacted as might appear to be the case at first site.

I suspect there’s a hefty crossover between my tournaments and Rogers as we are in a similar geographical area - i.e. London and the South-East in general and I have absolutely no doubt his assessment of the reason by his low rating is as he says it is.

(I have the additional reason of not being very good at chess, but that’s another matter entirely).

Jonathan Bryant wrote:

Nick Burrows wrote:

Nick Grey wrote:When asked before the start of a round by someone who had not played for 5 or so years why his grade was so low he replied losing to under-rated juniors.

Is this not a feature of the grading system that affects us all equally? Unless you only play tournaments with an atypically higher proportion of juniors, we all lose points to 'underrated' players.

Your argument assumes that juniors are spread equally throughout the country. My guess is that this is not true. I assume this because whilst I hear all the time of the 'junior drought' affecting chess in this country there seems to be absolutely no shortage of them at the tournaments at which I play. invariably there is a large discrepancy between their elo ratings and their ECF grades.

Discussing this sort of thing before I was told that the number of people over elo-rated and the number of people under elo rated roughly balances out. This is simply not true in the tournaments that I play. I counted once and found that the proportion was something like 15 to 1 in favour of the latter.

Of course all this has a knock on effect to the ratings of adults that you play too. As such, I very much doubt that all chessers are equally impacted as might appear to be the case at first site.

I suspect there’s a hefty crossover between my tournaments and Rogers as we are in a similar geographical area - i.e. London and the South-East in general and I have absolutely no doubt his assessment of the reason by his low rating is as he says it is.

(I have the additional reason of not being very good at chess, but that’s another matter entirely).

Might be better discussed in its own thread, but I agree with Jonathan and Roger here.

In my case, there are two effects in operation. Those who can look at my FIDE rating history (I can't as I haven't got round to creating the necessary login yet) will see that over the years I have played mostly in the 4NCL (though less now than in previous years) and in deaf chess events abroad. Whether or not the people I play against in either of those pools are over-rated or under-rated, the overall trend is that I do better rating-wise in the latter events than the former. I tend to gain rating points abroad against deaf chess players, and lose them (or stay about the same) in 4NCL events. At least I think that is what happens. Someone will probably look at my results and tell me that my memory is misleading me and these trends are not really there.

Others who play abroad might be able to say whether they generally tend to gain rating points there.

(PS. Is anyone willing to get my rating information out of the FIDE system and email it to me? I will create a login if necessary, it just irks me that you have to do that now to access the data, unless the downloads are possible without an ID?)

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: Might be better discussed in its own thread, but I agree with Jonathan and Roger here.

Or restart one of the old ones, perhaps.


In the meantime, in answer to your question, I lose elo points in Prague last summer by playing badly. In past years at home I lost points when playing well.

Only fair to point out I did that not just by playing under-rated juniors. Playing a lot of non-elo rated opposition had a big impact on my elo rating (which plummeted 200+ points whilst may ECF stayed more or less constant).

Here’s my record of +14 =5 -1 against non-elo rated opponents over 2.5 to 3 years period.

http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.c ... o-dwp.html



Incidentally, I’m quite sure my original elo was in part caused by half the qualifying games for my first rating being played in Benasque.