The plans for the Grading System

[Carl Hibbard]

Alex unfortunately cannot comment on his plan which is a shame.

[MartinCarpenter]

I can understand that local graders might be reluctant to commit to uploading results every month. The checking of results, eligibility of players, completion of adjourned games, submitting games for adjudication and a host of other things occupy their time.

Not totally sure but think in Yorkshire it works via one or two authorised people for each league doing the input. So ultimately notably less net load on the grader.

I think the correction then gets crowd sourced a bit. One good thing about a live grade is that if there is a mistake, it isn't that serious - you just correct it and recalculate. People will be looking to see what happened to their grade/in given matches etc.

[Roger de Coverly]

The checking of results, eligibility of players, completion of adjourned games, submitting games for adjudication and a host of other things occupy their time.

It depends how you organise locally. All those jobs would be handled by the League Controller in many Leagues, the Grader being responsible mostly only for the allocation of ECF codes for identified new players and the submission of results to the ECF.

If you don't have adjudications or adjournments, there's no work required in keeping track of them.

[Nick Grey]

£35 a congress including submittal.
So are we saying £35 a player in a league or £35 event?

Cannot see what benefits monthly as opposed to six monthly bring. Sports e.g. Football have year round competitions.

Surely offer of free league system also comes with allow ECF to push the button 12 times a year to get the inputs for grading.
The software ought to be able to pick up what was reported last time.

Still surprising that some clubs have no individuals reporting results. Or get the names & ref of their players correct.

LMS being sophisticated enough to find the culprits so treasurer to issue fines.

Anyway what sort of annual budget & set up costs are we talking about so we can inform our members & reps?

[Brian Towers]

Cannot see what benefits monthly as opposed to six monthly bring. Sports e.g. Football have year round competitions.

I don't know if you ever read a Sunday newspaper, Nick. I think you'll find they publish uptodate league tables for the football.
God knows why!
What possible benefits could there be?

[Nick Grey]

Its only at the end of the season that it matters. Go a bit further there is also fantasy footie, betting etc.

Makes sense to me if we all had the same system for ECF to just press the button 12 times a year to pick up the individual grading results which is what Alex is suggesting.

May just cost a lot What we do not want is anything that may prevent teams or clubs falling out of a competition because players may win a game or two & the become ineligible.

Not sure why that's a problem, I get a change rating on lets play chess every win, draw or loss.

[Michael Farthing]

Not sure why that's a problem, I get a change rating on lets play chess every win, draw or loss.

Which has the very simple rule that you can enter a competition if your grade at the time of entry meets the criteria of the competition and that your grade is recalculated on completion of the game using you grade at the time of completition of the game. Some grade manipulation is possible, mainly because as a correspondence site games may take months, but the rules are simple and clear and once you are in a competition then you are in it whatever your grade does.

[Kevin Thurlow]

Roger - the crosstable is left in the club's equipment cupboard and players fill in the results as they happen. (You play when convenient.) Our grader takes the crosstable away when necessary to do the grading, having sorted out the mistakes made in filling in the chart!

[David Pardoe]

I tend to agree with those who believe that monthly grading (for most players) is probably a waste of time, and fairly irrelevant.
However, I can see a logic in having an additional figure in the grading statistics called `moving average`..
This figure might reflect the most recent 6 or 12 months figures on a moving average basis, and might be recalculated monthly.
Apart from (perhaps), our top 200 most active tournament players, I suspect these figures will be of little practical use or value.
If you look at the disparities between FIDE grades and ECF grades, apart from the higher graded players rated over say 2200, the grades are quite contradictory anyway. Almost like the same player in playing in a different zone.

I also agree with those who think the `Home Directorate`covers too big an area, and should be split down to 2 or 3 separate functions...with separate managers/directors.

[Roger de Coverly]

Roger - the crosstable is left in the club's equipment cupboard and players fill in the results as they happen.

I'd be inclined to suggest that you modernise the system from the 1890s to the 1990s, that players report results by email to a controller.

[Malcolm Peacock]

I made the suggestion of using the API route some 3-4 years ago. At that time it fell on deaf ears. I am pleased that Malcolm P. has made a similar (in principle) suggestion.

The email states:

Alex proposed that the ECF should provide League Management Software as a free service to member organisations. Many leagues already have such software at various levels of functionality. The software is not intended to replace these existing systems, but enable those with no or limited functionality the opportunity to get something better.

If the existing systems are not replaced then an API would be needed for them to submit results.

It looks to me like the tender document implies an API

A data transmission format for sending chess Match results between computers.

It also says

If you believe areas of this specification can be improved in some way, then you are welcome to state this in your tender application.

Perhaps the specification could be improved by not developing a new LMS at all, but just using the existing ones ?

[MartinCarpenter]

Well, they will need a backend suitable for live acceptance/grading/presentation of all of these results. That's going to be specalised because of the grading stuff, and is probably going to amount to a lightweight LMS anyway?

Certainly how it works in Yorkshire - chessnuts doesn't do anything fancy, but does do league tables, lists of players in each league, their performance etc.
(And fixtures, but that might be more work to arrange to get into an ECF wide system.).

[Michael Flatt]

The emphasis should be on developing the ECF side of the interface but the ECF appear to have no in-house expertise to develop their own systems.

On the public side of the interface the LMS developers have proven expertise and ability to deliver.

Thus, the ECF should really recruit a knowledgeable and competent computer professional to oversee the development of the ECF Grading system and co-ordinate the efforts of the independent LMS developers.

If nothing else the ECF invitation to tender has generated a serious debate on how live gradings might be made available to avid congress players. I suspect that live grades are less relevant to leagues since those competitions span the whole season.

[NickFaulks]

Roger - the crosstable is left in the club's equipment cupboard and players fill in the results as they happen.

I'd be inclined to suggest that you modernise the system from the 1890s to the 1990s, that players report results by email to a controller.

Kevin's solution may be old technology, but it seems ideal and not in need of improvement. In the modern world email would be useful as a backup if the players forgot.

[Angus French]

Roger - the crosstable is left in the club's equipment cupboard and players fill in the results as they happen.

I'd be inclined to suggest that you modernise the system from the 1890s to the 1990s, that players report results by email to a controller.

Kevin's solution may be old technology, but it seems ideal and not in need of improvement. In the modern world email would be useful as a backup if the players forgot.

Maybe Roger's comment was sarcastic and with reference to an earlier comment about his being stuck in the 20th Century.