New 'New junior grades'

General discussions about ratings.
Neill Cooper
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New 'New junior grades'

Post by Neill Cooper » Wed Mar 04, 2009 6:51 am

See the excellent grading website.
Time for me to redo some calculations on new grading limits (e.g. SCCU 14/U90)

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John Upham
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Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by John Upham » Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:05 am

Neil,

I may propose (in the first week of April) that rating limited competitions adopt a limit that is a function of age to reflect a similar algorithm which has now infected the deflation busting Clarke system.

For example, the Surrey Border League Division Three has an upper ceiling of 135ECF.

This probably needs to rise to ECF145 for persons of 18 years or over and to ECF170 for persons down to 8 years old.

Between 8 an 18 we can have a sliding scale of rating limits.

If we take steps such as this then many of juniors in this division will be barred. Some may say that this is good thing of course.

Another option would be to ask Sir "Fred the Shred" Goodwin to use his huge intellect to solve this problem now that he has some time on his hands. He could of course fund Free Chess Sets for Schools...

J.
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Neill Cooper
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Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by Neill Cooper » Wed Mar 04, 2009 6:32 pm

Since my event is limited to players U14, I do not needt oworry about differential junior inflation.
All I needed to do was to decide what U90 (rapidplay) become.
So I've looked at all (about 20) players aged 11 to 13, graded 80 to 90.
Until yesterday it looked like U90 should become U130 but now I'd say more like U140, if not slightly higher.

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John Upham
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Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by John Upham » Wed Mar 04, 2009 6:46 pm

Neil,
Do you think it would be circumspect for the ECF Rating Team to provide guidelines on how best to modify the rating limits including an age dependency?

This might be handy methinks.
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Mar 05, 2009 12:22 am

So I've looked at all (about 20) players aged 11 to 13, graded 80 to 90.
Until yesterday it looked like U90 should become U130 but now I'd say more like U140, if not slightly higher.
Many of the new junior grades for the under 10's lack any credibility whatsoever. If you can take a player in the 70's and revalue them to the 150's based on 19 games, there's some serious problem with either the method or the rationale of the calculation. If the recalculations are to be believed, then there's a whole new generation of English Carlsens just waiting to establish themselves internationally.

Richard Bates
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Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by Richard Bates » Thu Mar 05, 2009 7:55 am

I can't see that these inflated junior grades will do anything but damage the long term health (sick as it is) of English chess. Unless you have a healthy supply of juniors playing chess, then in the long term you will run short of adults playing. Since juniors are probably more likely to give up the game than adults they need encouraging as much as possible. If that means they are undergraded some of the time and win more than their fair share of the money so be it.

Far better that than giving them ludicrously high grades, forcing them into competitions above their abilities (and or making them think they're better than they are) and demoralising them utterly when they lose game after game.

Sean Hewitt

Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by Sean Hewitt » Thu Mar 05, 2009 9:20 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:
So I've looked at all (about 20) players aged 11 to 13, graded 80 to 90.
Until yesterday it looked like U90 should become U130 but now I'd say more like U140, if not slightly higher.
Many of the new junior grades for the under 10's lack any credibility whatsoever. If you can take a player in the 70's and revalue them to the 150's based on 19 games, there's some serious problem with either the method or the rationale of the calculation. If the recalculations are to be believed, then there's a whole new generation of English Carlsens just waiting to establish themselves internationally.
Hi Roger,

I'm not involved in any of this, but am an interested observer as you might imagine. Your post is interesting and so I've looked at the grading database but can find no junior of any age who has gone from being graded in the 70's to being graded in the 150's. I can't even find a junior who has played 19 games who was graded in the 70's in the first place!

Am I looking at a different db to you?

Matthew Turner
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Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by Matthew Turner » Thu Mar 05, 2009 9:41 am

I have just looked up some top juniors, all of whom have played a lot of games and their rating have changed as follows

Age 8 86 to 152

Age 9 103 to 155

Age 10 90 to 154

Now I appreciate that this isn't very scientific, but I would give a number of thoughts

1. It is impossible to know where these new grades have come from, so it is difficult for players, parents and organisers to understand them.
2. The fact that the new grades are so similar and because there keeps having to be revisions leads to the impression that the grades are just made up.
3. Even taking account of the fact that other players will have gone up I would thought all these juniors (with the possible exception of the 9 year-old, whose grade has gone up least) would struggle in U160 events.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Mar 05, 2009 10:39 am

Your post is interesting and so I've looked at the grading database but can find no junior of any age who has gone from being graded in the 70's to being graded in the 150's. I can't even find a junior who has played 19 games who was graded in the 70's in the first place!
I'm comparing download version 5 (latest) with download version 3 (current) and checking data back against the on-line system. 19 games comes from the on line system and is the total over 2 years ( 13 in the current year).

Matthew Turner has already looked up a number of the junior squad players with similar results.

Some historical comparisons of well known players from the 1988 list

Richard Bates A 104 age 8
D Gormally E 116 age 12
Jovanka Houska A 93 (age not shown)
Miroslav Houska A 129 age 11
Harriet Hunt D 95 age 9
J Rudd A 109 ( shown as age 18 but should be 8 or 10 or thereabouts)
Matthew Turner C 138 age 12

Slightly more recently from the on line list, Gawain Jones was D 104 in 1995 and A 117 in 1996. David Howell was E 85 in 1997 and A 104 in 1998.

I don't really know what the junior increment should be. Over my chess playing lifetime, it didn't used to exist, then it was 5 , then 10, then age related. Changes were usually intended to correct deflation or inflation. I would have thought that the grading team now have the computer resources to test various different rules - so using the published grades as a benchmark, rerunning the years to 2008 with different models of junior increment but no other changes. They might establish that juniors previously published at 70 were now coming out at 90 and that adult grades in the 120s were up a point or two. If they started to get changes from 70 to 110, they might conclude they'd overdone it a bit.

Sean Hewitt

Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by Sean Hewitt » Thu Mar 05, 2009 10:51 am

Thanks Roger. I was looking at Rapidplay because that's what Neil Cooper specifically mentioned, but I think you're looking at Standard play. Hence why I couldn't find the chap you were referring to!

I don't think historical comparisons such as the one you have made have much value, because it's not a like for like comparison. ie you are comparing deflated grades with "fixed" grades.

Nevertheless, I stand by my view that the whole concept of a generic junior enhancement is fundamentally flawed. It's a pity that the ECF decided to mess around with them whilst trying to fix grade deflation because it has confused the matter entirely.

E Michael White
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Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by E Michael White » Thu Mar 05, 2009 11:23 am

I am inclined to agree with Sean that the junior increment is fundamentally flawed. It would be preferable to replace this with a new starter bonus reducing over say 3 years and a similar scale for returning players. Its a shame so much effort has been expended historically on junior increments in the expectation that this was the only or major source of deflation.

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David Shepherd
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Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by David Shepherd » Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:10 pm

It is my instinct that most of the revised junior grades appear to be about 15 points too high compared to the revised adult grades. Does anyone else have any feeling for how they compare to what they would expect?

Sean Hewitt

Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by Sean Hewitt » Thu Mar 05, 2009 2:15 pm

David Shepherd wrote:It is my instinct that most of the revised junior grades appear to be about 15 points too high compared to the revised adult grades. Does anyone else have any feeling for how they compare to what they would expect?
Being the anorak that I am, I have today graded the Leicestershire league games to date using the newly released grades. Looking at the performance of the [few] juniors that we have we get

Player Age Grade Games Performance
BC 12 173 8 212
LC 14 125 3 97
LF 13 117 7 116
DT 16 88 6 71
MK 12 118 4 69
BT 14 126 15 140

Which, if it shows anything at all, shows that you cannot treat all juniors the same!

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IM Jack Rudd
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Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by IM Jack Rudd » Thu Mar 05, 2009 2:38 pm

Age 8, by the way - I was in the same age-band as Bates.

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David Shepherd
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Re: New 'New junior grades'

Post by David Shepherd » Thu Mar 05, 2009 2:46 pm

The Leicestershire data is interesting but too small a sample to really tell. However I would argue that BC should be ignorned as clearly he is very talented and improving at an alarming rate, I believe the others are more typical. Taking their average performance it is approximately 16 points below their revised grades, but one can make statistics show whatever you like!