ECF Online County Championship

Discussion about all aspects of the ECF County Championships.
Kevin Thurlow
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:45 am

"Speaking as a captain I found it approximately ten times more stressful and time consuming than organising a team and playing in an OTB county match."

Except, you can be fairly confident that your players can navigate their way to their computer, maybe not on time, admittedly. And you don't get to the venue to be told it has been changed at the last minute!

Richard Bates
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by Richard Bates » Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:56 am

RobertStarley wrote:
Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:22 am
MartinCarpenter wrote:
Sun Jun 07, 2020 9:36 am
RobertStarley wrote:
Sat Jun 06, 2020 10:53 pm


chess.com does have a team match function which works very well but for some reason the ECF choose not to use it and instead make us do everything manually and as inefficiently as possible
My Brother thinks the teams matches are auto arranged in grading order? (By default at least.).

That's online grades of course, which would make it very much unusable for things like county chess. Might not be an entirely trivial programming modification to let people enter their 'real world' grades and use those instead.
Yes, chess.com team matches have board order auto set by online rating. That's not necessarily a bad thing though, online ratings are after all a better indicator of online performance than over the board ratings. You would just have to encourage those players who are new to the site to play enough games on there to get a representative rating.
I feel the word "theoretically" is missing here somewhere... ;)

Mike Gunn
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by Mike Gunn » Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:58 am

Kevin, it's much worse online. At least in the flesh you can count them and see them playing. You know the late ones are usually late and will probably turn up anyway. Online you wonder whether they all saw that last email or read the instructions properly ...

MartinCarpenter
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by MartinCarpenter » Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:59 am

Or lost their internet connection at the last minute or....

You could try marshalling everyone in a group chat (zoom or such like) 10 minutes before its due to start?

Mike Gunn
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by Mike Gunn » Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:03 am

A chat room is a good idea.

Kevin, it's a bit like having a team full of Fred Mannings (in his later years).

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John Upham
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by John Upham » Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:12 am

Kevin Thurlow wrote:
Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:45 am
"Speaking as a captain I found it approximately ten times more stressful and time consuming than organising a team and playing in an OTB county match."

Except, you can be fairly confident that your players can navigate their way to their computer, maybe not on time, admittedly. And you don't get to the venue to be told it has been changed at the last minute!
or that the home captain has forgotten the equipment. Was there an instance in a county match when players were asked to fashion boards out of paper ?
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Ian Thompson
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by Ian Thompson » Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:21 am

Mike Gunn wrote:
Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:58 am
Kevin, it's much worse online. At least in the flesh you can count them and see them playing. You know the late ones are usually late and will probably turn up anyway. Online you wonder whether they all saw that last email or read the instructions properly ...
MartinCarpenter wrote:
Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:59 am
You could try marshalling everyone in a group chat (zoom or such like) 10 minutes before its due to start?
... or send you a WhatsApp message to let you know what's going on. That'd have the advantage that everyone in the team would see it and know what was happening. It could also be used for players to report their results to the entire team and for someone to periodically report the current overall match score.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:31 am

Ian Thompson wrote:
Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:21 am
It could also be used for players to report their results to the entire team and for someone to periodically report the current overall match score.
In the absence of knowing what chess.com and other servers "detect" as violations of fair play, shouldn't players be advised to be cautious about having anything open on their computers other than the game itself?

Kevin Thurlow
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Sun Jun 07, 2020 12:20 pm

"Online you wonder whether they all saw that last email or read the instructions properly …"

Good point, you are dealing with chess players!

"Kevin, it's a bit like having a team full of Fred Mannings (in his later years)."

I really started to worry about him, when I was playing Steve Berry in the Surrey championship, and Fred spent about ten minutes peering at our scoresheets, trying to work out who we were.

And I agree with Roger, "In the absence of knowing what chess.com and other servers "detect" as violations of fair play, shouldn't players be advised to be cautious about having anything open on their computers other than the game itself?"

Of course chess.com etc could issue some guidance about what you can and can't do.

Phil Neatherway
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by Phil Neatherway » Sun Jun 07, 2020 2:29 pm

My window crashed a couple of times. Fortunately, when I restored the session, it picked up where it left off. Did anyone else have a similar experience?

Mick Norris
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by Mick Norris » Sun Jun 07, 2020 2:56 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:31 am
Ian Thompson wrote:
Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:21 am
It could also be used for players to report their results to the entire team and for someone to periodically report the current overall match score.
In the absence of knowing what chess.com and other servers "detect" as violations of fair play, shouldn't players be advised to be cautious about having anything open on their computers other than the game itself?
Yes, this is where some advice would be handy; I shut down everything on my computer, which meant I was cautious about opening Outlook to email my captain about the time control issue; I left my phone switched on but didn't use it at all

Anyway, that was why a test was a good idea to iron out the wrinkles
Any postings on here represent my personal views

MartinCarpenter
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by MartinCarpenter » Sun Jun 07, 2020 3:50 pm

I'm fairly confident that they can't do very much in terms of telling what is running on your computer - modern web browser tabs are sandboxed very strongly from the rest of the computer they're running on.

They certainly can't spy on what your phone is doing, unless you use it to contact their servers.

David Sedgwick
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by David Sedgwick » Sun Jun 07, 2020 3:53 pm

Mike Gunn wrote:
Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:58 am
Kevin, it's much worse online. At least in the flesh you can count them and see them playing. You know the late ones are usually late and will probably turn up anyway. Online you wonder whether they all saw that last email or read the instructions properly ...
At an OTB match. players will locate the correct opponent most of the time (not always admittedly).

And at an OTB match, players know how to start the game most of the time (again not always).

David Sedgwick
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by David Sedgwick » Sun Jun 07, 2020 3:55 pm

Phil Neatherway wrote:
Sun Jun 07, 2020 2:29 pm
My window crashed a couple of times. Fortunately, when I restored the session, it picked up where it left off. Did anyone else have a similar experience?
I still don't have an official result for my game. When that is decided, I shall come back to comment.

Mick Norris
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Re: ECF Online County Championship

Post by Mick Norris » Sun Jun 07, 2020 6:00 pm

Middlesex have started to enter the results for the Open preliminary and the u1825 prelim
Any postings on here represent my personal views

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