ECF Grading Proposals

General discussions about ratings.
Roger de Coverly
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Mar 13, 2019 7:02 pm

Alison Bexfield wrote:
Wed Mar 13, 2019 6:30 pm
For those that do not see the point of monthly grades I cannot see why the proposal bothers you.
In order to make monthly grading work, Congress, League and club organisers are going to have to extract digit and report results on a more timely basis. It's many of the people you are volunteering extra work onto, that don't see the point.

NickFaulks
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by NickFaulks » Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:19 pm

Alison Bexfield wrote:
Wed Mar 13, 2019 6:30 pm
For those that do not see the point of monthly grades I cannot see why the proposal bothers you. You don't have to look each month.
As a point of fact, that is untrue. If you do not check your monthly grade, you will find that your entry to events may be rejected. Last season I set aside a day to play in a rapid event limited to 170 and under, but it emerged that I could not take part because I had somehow obtained a rapid grade of 171. This was entirely carelessness on my part and I have no complaint against anyone, but it was still an annoyance. You really will have to keep on top of what your monthly grade is.

You can keep a personal tab on how your grade is progressing, so why is that not equally good? Do you really need the gratification of seeing the number by your name on a website? Of course, you can say this is impossible because of the "black box" element in the ECF system, but that is the area where I find the greatest disagreement with them. Perhaps this is what you should be saying needs to be fixed.
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Alex Holowczak
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Alex Holowczak » Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:25 pm

NickFaulks wrote:
Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:19 pm
You can keep a personal tab on how your grade is progressing, so why is that not equally good? Do you really need the gratification of seeing the number by your name on a website?
Yes, of course people do. There's huge excitement whenever a grading list is published, both for club players and children. It wasn't uncommon in the olden days - OK, 5 years ago! - for the ECF grading website to crash on the day that new grades were published, such was the web traffic. People are interested in seeing their grade change. Younger players in particular are keen to see their improvement reflected quickly. As a junior team organiser, I'm also keen to pick teams and board orders using up-to-date information, and I'd rather not have to do all the gruntwork myself when it already exists and could be published if there was a will to do so.

Alison Bexfield
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Alison Bexfield » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:03 am

If I am entering a rapid play event with several grade limited sections it seems entirely reasonable to me that players who have shown improvement during the season such that their grade has moved upwards during the season should be moved to a higher section

Of course if the chess world moved away from the rigid grade bound sections that are such a feature of tournaments this would not be an issue. I have written before about different tournament systems and how the McMahon one makes for a really inclusive system in the go world so won't repeat it here. I will say I dislike the chess grade bounded sections as if at the top of a grading band one must choose whether to play a section one is in theory near the top of and may not have overly testing games, or choose a section where one is at the bottom in order to test yourself against stronger opponents. There is no middle ground.

On the question of submitting league games, I would suggest it is entirely at the discretion of the league administrator as to whether a season of games are submitted in batches every so often or not. I don't think anyone would be advocating submission every week.

Alison

Roger de Coverly
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:17 am

Alison Bexfield wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:03 am
I don't think anyone would be advocating submission every week.
It's a natural consequence of monthly grading that you aren't expected to wait a month for the result. Thus a grading list published for April should be available on the 1st April and should have all results up to and including the previous week. So that makes a cut off of say the Friday 29th March, including all league results up to and including Thursday 28th. That's more or less how the FIDE list operates.

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Adam Raoof
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Adam Raoof » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:30 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:17 am
Alison Bexfield wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:03 am
I don't think anyone would be advocating submission every week.
It's a natural consequence of monthly grading that you aren't expected to wait a month for the result. Thus a grading list published for April should be available on the 1st April and should have all results up to and including the previous week. So that makes a cut off of say the Friday 29th March, including all league results up to and including Thursday 28th. That's more or less how the FIDE list operates.
The cutoff for FIDE is the 26th of the month (with a little leeway) - any event that finishes after that goes into the next month's list.
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Ian Thompson
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Ian Thompson » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:36 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:17 am
Alison Bexfield wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:03 am
I don't think anyone would be advocating submission every week.
It's a natural consequence of monthly grading that you aren't expected to wait a month for the result. Thus a grading list published for April should be available on the 1st April and should have all results up to and including the previous week. So that makes a cut off of say the Friday 29th March, including all league results up to and including Thursday 28th. That's more or less how the FIDE list operates.
I don't think the ECF's plans for this have been published. You might, for example, have deadlines of:

1. Games played by 15th of month in next month's grading list
2. Deadline for submitting results to ECF - 22nd of month
3. Monthly list published on 1st of month
Alison Bexfield wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:03 am
I would suggest it is entirely at the discretion of the league administrator as to whether a season of games are submitted in batches every so often or not.
I think it would be inadvisable for the ECF to say to leagues that they can do whatever they like. A monthly grading list is only going to work if it includes the results of all games played in each reporting period. So the ECF needs to lay down some rules which leagues have to follow. Those rules need to be agreed by leagues if monthly is to be successful. I'm not aware of any discussion yet between leagues and the ECF on what leagues are able and willing to do.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:43 am

Ian Thompson wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:36 am
So the ECF needs to lay down some rules which leagues have to follow.
The rules which would create minimum disturbance to current reporting patterns would be to require Congresses to follow FIDE timetable deadlines and for leagues and clubs to continue to report six-monthly. That's with the caveat that they had to report, say, by December 21st and June 20th. The ECF grading team themselves would have to streamline the process to shorten the time period between last result submitted and publication.

Alison Bexfield
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Alison Bexfield » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:51 am

Grading lists update on what they have received. If organisers submit late then the results are in the next update. This happens now with the six monthly update where sometimes congresses are late or even on occasion missed entirely. It is not an issue that arises soll for monthly updates. But that is a local issue not a grading administrator issue if local organisers cannot make suggested deadlines. I cannot see a reason for congresses to submit more than a week or so after an event unless there are data issues to be resolved and the uploading interface,of which i have absolutely no knowledge, is not up to scratch.
Leagues may be different. and some pragmatic solution mightn't be sensible as to expectations of organisers such as allowing six monthly or quarterly updates.

Ultimately whatever system you use there will be issues because of local organisers own priorities on their time. But this is so whatever time limits you put on submission dates.

Neil Graham
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Neil Graham » Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:07 am

An utter waste of time. There is no ground swell opinion for either changing to monthly updates or a system that is incomprehensible to the majority of players.

Brian Valentine
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Brian Valentine » Thu Mar 14, 2019 11:27 am

Neil Graham wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:07 am
.......There is no ground swell opinion for either changing to monthly updates or a system that is incomprehensible to the majority of players.
You don't see the correspondence I deal with on the current approach! The junior algorithm is particularly difficult.

The timetable for submission is not settled. However the January Board agreed on a voluntary approach at least in the initial months.

Brian Valentine
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E Michael White
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by E Michael White » Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:10 pm

Hello Brian

I've only just started reading this stuff.

If you are going ELO type, how do you plan to ensure consistency across junior grades where some play a high proportion of adults and others play a much smaller proportion of adults?

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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Thu Mar 14, 2019 1:01 pm

David Robertson wrote:
Sat Mar 09, 2019 4:16 pm
Brian Valentine wrote:
Sat Mar 09, 2019 3:58 pm
The February update was published on 5th February.
LOL. He means the update due on Feb 29th
And when is it appearing, please? If ever.......
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Richard Bates
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Richard Bates » Thu Mar 14, 2019 6:49 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:43 am
Ian Thompson wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:36 am
So the ECF needs to lay down some rules which leagues have to follow.
The rules which would create minimum disturbance to current reporting patterns would be to require Congresses to follow FIDE timetable deadlines and for leagues and clubs to continue to report six-monthly. That's with the caveat that they had to report, say, by December 21st and June 20th. The ECF grading team themselves would have to streamline the process to shorten the time period between last result submitted and publication.
You really can’t have 6 monthly submissions under an ELO system IMO. Just makes the thing farcical. Different if the current methodology is maintained since late results do little to corrupt the list, and don’t really undermine the need for fixed annual points for year long competitions. There’s also the issue of what grades are used when submitting results late or en masse - those at competition start, or those at time games were played.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: ECF Grading Proposals

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Mar 14, 2019 6:59 pm

Richard Bates wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 6:49 pm
There’s also the issue of what grades are used when submitting results late or en masse - those at competition start, or those at time games were played.
If there were no leagues submitting monthly, that's rather less of a problem, since it would only be Congress and 4NCL players whose ECF grades/ratings changed.