London Junior oddity

National developments, strategies and ideas.
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David Shepherd
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Re: London Junior oddity

Post by David Shepherd » Fri Jan 04, 2019 5:58 pm

If you look at the results in round 6 she drew with Tarini Jayawarna, who has a similar FIDE rating which would suggest that it was not unreasonable for her to be in that section based on FIDE rating given that she had not qualified for the major. There was possibly an issue with seeding but these thing happen sometimes.

E Michael White
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Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2007 6:31 pm

Re: London Junior oddity

Post by E Michael White » Fri Jan 18, 2019 1:10 pm

Roger Lancaster wrote:
Fri Jan 04, 2019 5:05 pm
For the avoidance of doubt, nothing here is intended as a criticism of the junior in question. But either the LJCC organisers were aware of her rating or they weren't. If no, why was she permitted to compete? If yes, why wasn't she seeded sensibly?
Agreed, I guess you could take it that the organisers were aware of her FIDE rating of 1371 as the entry form requires that to be stated and also her FIDE rating has been entered on Chess-results by the controllers. If they didn't have her latest FIDE due to early entry they should check on the FIDE site.
David Shepherd wrote:
Fri Jan 04, 2019 5:58 pm
If you look at the results in round 6 she drew with Tarini Jayawarna, who has a similar FIDE rating which would suggest that it was not unreasonable for her to be in that section based on FIDE rating given that she had not qualified for the major. There was possibly an issue with seeding but these thing happen sometimes.
Absolutely. Her entry to that section was completely valid. If her FIDE rating had been used for ranking and the normal FIDE to ECF conversion applied she would have been rated ECF equivalent of about 90 and still been eligible, ranking as 12th rather than the 52nd used in the event. I don't know what caught my interest but I decided to look at the effect of incorrect ranking.

Ignoring her FIDE rating gave her a harder draw in the event as can be seen from the cross table, based on final scores, on Chess-results. This arose as her deemed ranking of 52 put her in the 4 quartile whereas 12th would have put her in the 1st quartile. This resulted in her being paired against a 2nd quartile player instead of a 3rd quartile player in the 1st round with similar effects in other early rounds.

After the early rounds, tournament score is more relevant and resulted in her playing a total of only 2 opponents outside the top 10 players based on final ranking. This is remarkable and will probably result in a high initial ECF grading when those come out shortly due to the high percentage score and all opponents being juniors who high scored. The ECF Markov iterative process does the rest. I'm expecting her grading to be approx 140 but might be 125-155 so we should wait and see. Fortunately if she wishes to play in the U14s next year, and I hope she does, there are no qualifying conditions to test out the controllers.

Roger Lancaster
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Re: London Junior oddity

Post by Roger Lancaster » Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:19 pm

What first caught my eye here was the spectacle of a lowly-rated player making a near-100% score which I originally thought, wrongly, might have something to do with an incorrect age but proves to be due to an incorrect seeding - certainly less serious although it doesn't say much for the competence of the LJCC organisers. As Michael rightly says, this didn't work in her favour since it gave harder-than-expected early pairings. And it certainly didn't favour her early opponents who would, in view of the seeding, very likely have under-estimated her. I don't know whether the girl in question is resident here or merely visiting but - if the former - she would probably have a decent claim to being the top-ranked girl of her age in the ECF rankings.

NickFaulks
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Re: London Junior oddity

Post by NickFaulks » Fri Jan 18, 2019 6:05 pm

Roger Lancaster wrote:
Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:19 pm
And it certainly didn't favour her early opponents who would, in view of the seeding, very likely have under-estimated her.
In which case they will have learned a valuable lesson, that playing according to your opponent's grade is a very silly thing to do.
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Alex Holowczak
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Re: London Junior oddity

Post by Alex Holowczak » Sat Jan 19, 2019 12:06 am

Roger Lancaster wrote:
Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:19 pm
What first caught my eye here was the spectacle of a lowly-rated player making a near-100% score which I originally thought, wrongly, might have something to do with an incorrect age but proves to be due to an incorrect seeding - certainly less serious although it doesn't say much for the competence of the LJCC organisers.
I think it's reasonable to identify it as a mistake, but it's a bit harsh to describe it in the terms that you have.

The nature of the LJCC is that there are hundreds and hundreds of players playing at each of the two weekends, and It's really easy to miss the grades and ratings of certain players. After all, an ungraded player who you gather might be good isn't an unusual phenomenon, so if you can't find a grade for them, you don't immediately think to check their FIDE rating.

I'm sure I miss some grades for the UK Chess Challenge Gigafinals, but I do the best I can with the information provided. The size and difficulty of the task means that you have to be realistic and expect that despite your best endeavours, some are going to slip through the net. It's an opportunity cost issue to a certain extent; I could spend another x hours finding the two graded players I haven't correctly identified out of the 1000 entries, or I can move on to the next crisis in my inbox...

Roger Lancaster
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Re: London Junior oddity

Post by Roger Lancaster » Sat Jan 19, 2019 2:05 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Sat Jan 19, 2019 12:06 am
Roger Lancaster wrote:
Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:19 pm
What first caught my eye here was the spectacle of a lowly-rated player making a near-100% score which I originally thought, wrongly, might have something to do with an incorrect age but proves to be due to an incorrect seeding - certainly less serious although it doesn't say much for the competence of the LJCC organisers.
I think it's reasonable to identify it as a mistake, but it's a bit harsh to describe it in the terms that you have.

The nature of the LJCC is that there are hundreds and hundreds of players playing at each of the two weekends, and It's really easy to miss the grades and ratings of certain players. After all, an ungraded player who you gather might be good isn't an unusual phenomenon, so if you can't find a grade for them, you don't immediately think to check their FIDE rating.
Well, maybe I was a bit hard. But in this case, since the junior in question hadn't gone through the qualifying tournament process, the LJCC organisers had to verify either an ECF grade (which didn't exist) or a FIDE rating to determine whether she was eligible to take part. Then, having established the existence of a FIDE rating, they disregarded it for seeding purposes! However, I propose to let the matter rest there.