Ungraded Juniors In A Tournament

[Ray Sayers]

I want to hold some junior ECF rated tournaments to allow unrated juniors to get a grade and all juniors to get practice.

I notice at some junior tournaments, juniors get a 'default' grade assigned to them, such as 10 or 20.

So my questions are:

1. Should ungraded juniors be assigned such default grades and if so what is the default? or
2. Should ungraded juniors simply have no grade assigned and leave it at that? or
3. Should an estimate of their playing strength be made by the organiser?

Thanks in advance for any advice from anyone who has experience of this

(PS I wasn't sure whether this was a 'grading debate' or 'Junior Chess' question)

[IM Jack Rudd]

It won't make any difference for grading purposes; they will be treated as ungraded juniors whatever. The only reason to choose one of the three options over any of the others is for improving the working of the seeded Swiss system, so I'd probably go for (3). (It's very marginal, though - seeded Swisses are not particularly sensitive to poor estimates of initial strength.)

[Roger de Coverly]

(It's very marginal, though - seeded Swisses are not particularly sensitive to poor estimates of initial strength.)

Seeded Swisses only need to know a ranking order, relative and absolute grades don't come into it.

Whilst the ECF grading method can always give a ranking even if all the players have no grade, you will need to ensure that at least one of the entrants plays someone with an established grade during the grading six months. The standard cross table has a column for grading performance. It's to enable this to have any sort of values in it that (arbitrary) starting grades are assigned. If you do this, it may be better for them to be 50 or above so as not to get a negative outcome.

The actual published grade will be calculated by the ECF's central grading system which ignores local estimates.

[Ray Sayers]

Thank you, Jack

And many of the players will have established grades; I have just seen 'default' grades on cross tables at events such as at the London Junior Championships and wondered if they were a standard practice or had any bearing on the ratings achieved in the tournament. Jack has enlightened me. Thank you for your comments too, Roger.