ECF rating of North Wales Congresses

[Roger de Coverly]

I have discovered that notwithstanding previous practice, Congresses in the Cheshire and North Wales County Association are not being automatically rated by the ECF. That's despite what the Rhyl Congress says on the ECF calendar about being FIDE, Welsh and ECF rated.

I suspect the organisers didn't want to pay ECF Game Fee for WCU only members, but I thought North Wales had some concession on that.

I believe ECF members were expected to register their participation as "playing in a foreign tournament". This was however buried in the small print and as a serious change of practice should have been highlighted. It's not actually the same since games against players without a FIDE rating would not have been included in the ECF calculations, nor would the calculations have included the ECF rating rather than the FIDE one.

[NigelCollins]

I had followed the ECF GPA process https://www.englishchess.org.uk/ecf-rat ... ed-abroad/ but I see that my games have not been rated yet either.

Rhyl Congress was registered as WLS on the FIDE website (see eg https://ratings.fide.com/tournament_inf ... ent=497833).

The Rhyl Congress website https://www.rhylchesscongress.co.uk/ could have been slightly clearer on the home page but the terms and conditions page https://www.rhylchesscongress.co.uk/con ... conditions was pretty clear:

“ECF : Gold or above members can have their games rated for free by the ECF by notifying the GPA administrator, via the online form on the ECF site under "Rating". Please give a week's notice. The GPA administrator's email address is: [email protected]”

I cannot see the relevance of the Cheshire and North Wales County Association to a congress (as opposed to a league).

As an aside, all of the pairings at Rhyl were based on FIDE ratings (only) despite the website stating “As the Congress is a welsh event, the precedent order of applied ratings in all sections will be: FIDE, WCU, ECF, other National Federations”. All players without FIDE ratings were treated as having a rating of zero which yielded unexpected pairings (eg see the Minor). All of the pairings were done in Swiss Manager but it was not possible to load those for the Open and Major to Chess Results until after the end of the congress. So for those sections there was no way to find the next round pairings online.

Another difference from an English Congress was that Rhyl Congress allowed non-players (spectators) into the playing venue and allowed them to use mobile devices throughout. It was odd to look up from the board and see half a dozen spectators using their phones.

[Roger de Coverly]

I cannot see the relevance of the Cheshire and North Wales County Association to a congress (as opposed to a league).

It's a long standing convention that the domicile of a Congress is that of the local county association. As far as I can establish the Rhyl Congress has always been ECF graded or rated. I think the same applied to the Congress in Llandudno when that ran pre Covid.