2013 Final Stage

[Roger de Coverly]

I did expect there to be problems in Yorkshire, and this was reflected when their U120/100 teams didn't accept nomination.

Well that's an admission. Membership requirements can discourage a team from entering a competition. I can see their point, they would have to find a minimum of £ 12 multiplied by the number of non-members as an additional entry fee, very possibly for one match only.

[John Hodgson]

Alex's description of events seems comprehensive, and given that the rules were drafted as they were, I don't think he is to be blamed for enforcing them.

I don't see any mention of why match captains had to submit results for players without a grade in the July/August 2012 list, but who had one in the January 2013 list. As far as I can see this was not necessary under the rules (as I argued above, somewhere). That caused addition work for no additional benefit.

[Alex McFarlane]

I am genuinely confused by ECF membership.

A league player can apply for Bronze membership at any point in the season and it applies retrospectively. However, if the same situation occurs in a County match the retrospective nature of the membership does not apply. Am I correct in this assumption?

If I am correct can any of the Board members explain why this apparent anomaly was allowed to happen?

I have also asked this before but still await an answer. A player has Silver membership. This allows him to take part in FIDE rated Blitz games. Has FIDE agreed to publish his Blitz rating but not his standard play rating which would require GOLD membership? Or is it the case that the ECF will only ask FIDE to remove players if they have no membership or Bronze membership?

I look forward to Mike, Sean, Alex H or Jack giving an answer.

[John Hodgson]

That being the case, discussions of the rules might be a rather academic exercise as Alex has already announced there will be no County Championships next year without a controller!

If someone does volunteer I would think he or she would want all these issues discussed (and resolved) rather than left over to argue about next season.

[Roger de Coverly]

As far as I can see this was not necessary under the rules (as I argued above, somewhere).

There is some convoluted reasoning that tries to justify this with an appeal to a moral principle that the player should be of a suitable strength for the competition. That's not a qualification applied to those with a published grade in a July list, so it shouldn't have been needed for a published grade in a January list. For that matter, a July 2011 grade should have been accepted without quibble as an appropriate test for board order in an Open team.

[David Sedgwick]

I am genuinely confused by ECF membership.

A league player can apply for Bronze membership at any point in the season and it applies retrospectively. However, if the same situation occurs in a County match the retrospective nature of the membership does not apply. Am I correct in this assumption?

If I am correct can any of the Board members explain why this apparent anomaly was allowed to happen?

I'm not a Board member, but I don't have any problems in understanding or explaining that one.

In a league, you don't have to be a member in order to play. The league is liable for £2 Game Fee per game if you are not a member and don't become one subsequently, with the effect being retrospective if you do.

In the National Stages of the Counties Championships you have to be a member in order to play and you can't join retrospectively. One of the suggestions made up thread is that you should be allowed to do so.

[Roger de Coverly]

In the National Stages of the Counties Championships you have to be a member in order to play and you can't join retrospectively. One of the suggestions made up thread is that you should be allowed to do so.

That's only because the ECF says so. In the case of the Union competitions, it works the same way as Leagues, in the SCCU at any rate. Didn't someone propose compulsory membership for the SCCU competitions?

http://www.sccu.ndo.co.uk/sccu.htm

SCCU EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETING
Friday 5th October 2012
..
Another suggestion: that we insist on ECF Membership in the coming season's SCCU County matches. This seemed to be seriously meant. It was agreed that we couldn't do it, not this year, but we'd consider it for next year.

[John Hodgson]

Regarding the retrospective penalty applied to the Essex v Norfolk QF match:

This was applied after Essex had won the SF. Did we ever receive a reply to Richard Bates' question as to what would happen if the penalty had reversed the match result?

The penalty was not time-limited in the rules, but I'm not sure what a judge would make of it all. In the absence of clarity when they drew up the rules, did the legislators really wish the penalty to be applied after the next round of matches had been played (with the possibility of replaying the SF match with different teams?

[Alex McFarlane]

David,

I understand that. What I don't understand is why this difference exists in terms of retrospective membership. What is the reason that you can have it in one but not the other? Surely you are either a member or not? But it seems that you can become a retrospective member for some games but not others. Isn't this confusing? It certainly is to me.

[MartinCarpenter]

It is confusing to me too. And a bit odd because the way that it works in ECF graded leagues is surely much the sanest way to deal with this sort of thing. Its hardly like anyone loses anything that way - in practice it means that anyone playing any quantity of chess in graded events either joins the ECF or gives them more money than joining would have implied anyway

[Alex Holowczak]

I'm going to respond to the more constructive points.

The punishments are excessive and resulted in an unintended outcome

It wasn't an unintended outcome. I was fully aware that changing the scores after the matches were played could result in changing match results.

I take issue with Alex though on fines v game points as punishment. Firstly, to say that fines are ineffective because they don't stop teams from defaulting matches is not a very good comparison; after all what other punishment can you give a team that defaults? You can't very well dock them points; you could ban them for a year but that is hardly a way to encourage more participation in the competition.

The point is that the penalty can be ignored altogether simply by not accepting nomination because they don't think they could field a full team. Cumbria and Suffolk did this this season. The £50 fine was put in by Council 20 years ago now with the intention of preventing match defaults. The penalty should change captain behaviour to motivate them to avoid this fine. The £50 match default fine is not succeeding in this aim.

Secondly, Alex implies that punishments should be designed to stop offences altogether. I would argue that this is too strong an ambition in the case of an inadvertent ineligibility.

It should certainly be designed to give captains reason to try to avoid the penalty. As I say, not all of them bothered.

As Richard Bates has said, the result here is that both winners and losers are unhappy here, which is a big signal that something very wrong has happened. It should also be remembered that 15 of the Kent players are being punished for something they didn't do, and one Kent player + the captain will feel very guilty over what basically looks like a simple oversight or misunderstanding. In the end this is an entirely amateur competition played for fun (and glory!?), and should not be spoiled by administrative glitches.

I disagree with this.

Just because a competition is "amateur" doesn't mean it can run as a free-for-all. For example, local league cricket. This is grassroots and played by amateurs. Some of the rules of various leagues, from memory:
(1) If you field an ineligible player (or an unregistered player), you default any match(es) in which he played
(2) If you don't provide a scorer for the match, you have point deductions
(3) If you default two matches, you're withdrawn from the league, and the team isn't allowed to enter it the following season
(4) If your pitches are deemed unfit, then you have flexible penalty point deductions

I'm fairly sure that if a team wins the league because the opponents played an unregistered player, they'd have a hollow feeling about it, but they'd nevertheless be the winner. The losing club would accept that they'd breached a rule, and move on with life.

However, the numbers of people playing cricket in these leagues is far in excess of the numbers of people playing chess. They're not a barrier to participation.

The Kent captain was aware that he had to look for expiring memberships because of his own membership expiring, but overlooked it for Scholes. Scholes was aware that he wasn't a member. An e-mail was sent to him a month before it expired. He didn't act upon it.

I don't see any mention of why match captains had to submit results for players without a grade in the July/August 2012 list, but who had one in the January 2013 list. As far as I can see this was not necessary under the rules (as I argued above, somewhere). That caused addition work for no additional benefit.

This rule was unchanged from previous years. During consultation, there was no real support for using January grades as in the SCCU, so it didn't make the rules.

I come back to the question "what is the purpose of the rule requiring ECF membership"? You can see my suggestion previously in the thread for what would constitute a perfectly workable rule which i doubt would generate any serious protest and would have no impact on the competition in a sporting sense. Essentially, within the boundaries of what i imagine is the purpose of the rule, I can not see any reason why it would not be achieved adequately by permitting membership to be acquired retrospectively as is the case with the general workings of the scheme. The vast majority would get round to joining eventually and the ECF would not lose out financially. However there could remain a minor 'punitive' penalty for incidents where it was clear that individuals were making a deliberate decision to refuse to join (which obviously would be in breach of the purpose of the rule), and no doubt Counties would refuse to pick them in future, although if they did then the ECF would benefit financially. There is absolutely zero need for the rule to impact on the competition in a sporting sense.

The purpose is to motivate captains to avoid picking players who weren't ECF members. A penalty that perhaps changes the result should motivate captains to check. A penalty that results in a fine won't, because the county Treasurer would end up paying it anyway. E.g. in Warwickshire, the Treasurer will pay a £50 match default fine, and the captain will carry on next season as if nothing happened.

As I (and others) say, in other sports, penalties often "impact on the competition in a sporting sense". These are more of a deterrent than penalties that have a fine to pay. Such rules are common in other sports.

I do not particularly want the ECF to benefit financially from rule indiscretions. I don't want the infringements to occur in the first place.

[Alex Holowczak]

Regarding the retrospective penalty applied to the Essex v Norfolk QF match:

This was applied after Essex had won the SF. Did we ever receive a reply to Richard Bates' question as to what would happen if the penalty had reversed the match result?

The penalty was not time-limited in the rules, but I'm not sure what a judge would make of it all. In the absence of clarity when they drew up the rules, did the legislators really wish the penalty to be applied after the next round of matches had been played (with the possibility of replaying the SF match with different teams?

This is a simple one to explain.

There was a bug in the software which was overlooked until the Middlesex captain told me about Scholes. When fixed, the penalties were applied that should have been applied before.

It was a relief that the results of none of the matches were overturned.

[Roger de Coverly]

Or is it the case that the ECF will only ask FIDE to remove players if they have no membership or Bronze membership?

The ECF appear to be ignoring the concession that you can play one 4NCL weekend without Gold membership.

See http://www.ecfgrading.org.uk/?ref=11448 ... =543946487
and
http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=400190

I expect they would remove the player from the list. I imagine they will continue with player hostile activities unless and until the ECF Council very firmly instructs them to desist.

[John Hodgson]

I don't see any mention of why match captains had to submit results for players without a grade in the July/August 2012 list, but who had one in the January 2013 list. As far as I can see this was not necessary under the rules (as I argued above, somewhere). That caused addition work for no additional benefit.

This rule was unchanged from previous years. During consultation, there was no real support for using January grades as in the SCCU, so it didn't make the rules.

But the rule (quoted previously) referred to using results from the master list. Surely (for players without a July 2012 grade) the January 2013 grade reflects the master list and you could have used that and stayed within the existing rules?

By the way, in this and other issues, I think you are right to follow the rules as they are and not as others may wish them to have been. But I think in one or two cases you could have acted differently (within the rules).

[Roger de Coverly]

The purpose is to motivate captains to avoid picking players who weren't ECF members.

Write that in big letters. Despite denials of the membership lobby it has become the ECF's intention and purpose to discourage players from participation.