I would expect the answer to be something of the form - The top X% of players have grades over 175 and X% seems a reasonable cut off point for most competitions.Nick Burrows wrote: ↑Fri Aug 17, 2018 1:17 pmWhat do you base that on?Roger de Coverly wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 4:47 pmArguably though, players with ECF grades above 175 shouldn't be allowed in the second section of weekend tournaments unless it's expected that the top section will be exceptionally strong and well supported by titled players.
The question is what is X? I dare say Roger has all the data at his finger tips or else knows which section of which website to find exactly what he wants. For the rest of us it's a bit more tricky.
The ECF grading website will let me see who are the top 106 English players in the ECF list (7 players are tied on 214, hence the strange number) but it won't easily let me see how many players have a grading above 175. One solution is to download the latest ECF grading file, find someone (English) with a grading of 175, then back on the ECF grading website look at their profile to see their "Rank, excluding FIDE registered foreign player".
Doing that gives me 883 English players graded above 175.
Next step, find out how many English players have a grade using the same technique.
Doing that gives me 8960 players with a grade higher than the grade of the lowest graded players.
So, X looks like 10% almost spot on because a lot more than 13 (896-883) players have a grading of 175.
The top 10% of players should be in the Open? Sounds reasonable to me.
Coincidence? Or is RdC a lot cleverer than he lets on?