Handicap Team Chess

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Stephen Westmoreland
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Handicap Team Chess

Post by Stephen Westmoreland » Fri Jul 30, 2021 9:47 pm

Hello. With Leagues starting to commence again, we have a handicap league where the total rating of players affects how many points are needed to win for the team. This is based on the overall grading of teams of 5 but I am going to push a return to 6 per team come the new year.

With the move in gradings to a more ELO style, does anyone have a good way to calculate points needed to win based please? (Edit) Especially with Excel!
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Matthew Turner
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Re: Handicap Team Chess

Post by Matthew Turner » Fri Jul 30, 2021 9:54 pm

When you are thinking about ELOs there are two good numbers to have in mind, 100 points difference equates to an expected score of 64% and 200 points difference 76%. The vast majority of thing you need to do can be estimated using these numbers.

So if you had if you have a 5 board match and there are 1000 points difference between the teams then the higher team is expecting to score a bit less than 4 points.

Hope that helps.

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Stephen Westmoreland
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Re: Handicap Team Chess

Post by Stephen Westmoreland » Fri Jul 30, 2021 10:01 pm

Great thanks. Will have a play with Excel when back from rugby camp with the youngest.
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Matthew Turner
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Re: Handicap Team Chess

Post by Matthew Turner » Fri Jul 30, 2021 10:01 pm

So by this logic (over 5 boards)
Total rating - 0-200 no handicap
200-400 0.5 head start to lower rated team
400-600 1 point
600-800 1.5 points
800-1000 2 points
Over 1000 2.5 points

Obciously you can fiddle about with this in lots of ways

Ian Thompson
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Re: Handicap Team Chess

Post by Ian Thompson » Fri Jul 30, 2021 10:02 pm

Stephen Westmoreland wrote:
Fri Jul 30, 2021 9:47 pm
Hello. With Leagues starting to commence again, we have a handicap league where the total rating of players affects how many points are needed to win for the team. This is based on the overall grading of teams of 5 but I am going to push a return to 6 per team come the new year.

With the move in gradings to a more ELO style, does anyone have a good way to calculate points needed to win based please? (Edit) Especially with Excel!
The initial conversion of grades to ratings was done using the formula:

rating = 7.5 * grade + 700

So whatever your differences were in grading points should be multiplied by 7.5 to give the equivalent difference in rating points.

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Stephen Westmoreland
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Re: Handicap Team Chess

Post by Stephen Westmoreland » Wed Dec 29, 2021 3:28 pm

I am just resurrecting this post as I am looking at present local league rules on handicap teams and working out what is needed to win and I think these need to change.

Does anyone else have recommendations for 6 board matches and handicap differences. Also what other leagues do in this space please? We are about to re-launch a handicap rated league in a couple of weeks.
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: Handicap Team Chess

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Dec 29, 2021 4:11 pm

Stephen Westmoreland wrote:
Wed Dec 29, 2021 3:28 pm
Does anyone else have recommendations for 6 board matches and handicap differences. Also what other leagues do in this space please?
The Berks League rules are shown below. These are rules for a knock out competition rather than a league. The weightings are deliberately biased in favour of the higher rated team. To remove the bias, you could make the first cut off 1 to 375. You might also require wins of 5.5 - 0.5 or 6-0 for extreme rating differences.

.
Matches shall be settled based on the total rating difference between the two teams. For
matches taking place before 1st February, the ratings of the previous August are used.
Otherwise the January ratings apply, provided they are available..
Players without ratings are presumed to have the rating of the second highest of the rest of
team unless prior agreement has been reached with the Controller to use an alternative
figure.
If the difference is between 1 – 750 the stronger side must win 3.5 – 2.5 (or more )
751 – 1125 , 4-2
1126 – 1500 , 4.5-1.5
1501 + 5-1
If total grades are identical 3.5 – 2.5 or better wins
If total grades are identical and result is 3 – 3, rules (C)(e) , (D) and (E) apply.
Additionally
- Where the highest grade in a team exceeds the lowest by more than 750, the lowest grade
is the highest minus 750
Where a default is known before the start of the match, the missing player(s) are assumed to
have the same grade as the second highest of the rest of the team.
- If a lower rated substitute is made after play starts, no alteration to the target score is made
- If a higher rated sub is used , the target score is adjusted if necessary
- If defaulting player(s) are higher rated than the team average, no adjustment to the target
score is made
- If defaulting player(s) are lower rated than the team average, the target score is recalculated
assuming the default(ers) to be the team average
(D

John Reyes
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Re: Handicap Team Chess

Post by John Reyes » Wed Dec 29, 2021 4:56 pm

Check out the Warrington league as we have one with teams in different division as our b team beat Winwick A team one year and they had to beat us 4.5-1.5 ( i won in 12 moves on board 2 when my opponent drop his queen lol
Any postings on here represent my personal views only and also Dyslexia as well

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Stephen Westmoreland
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Re: Handicap Team Chess

Post by Stephen Westmoreland » Wed Dec 29, 2021 5:23 pm

Thank you. I cannot see many 1800+'s playing and we want to encourage new players in, so something favouring the weaker side. This is brilliant and thank you.
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: Handicap Team Chess

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Dec 29, 2021 5:43 pm

Stephen Westmoreland wrote:
Wed Dec 29, 2021 5:23 pm
Thank you. I cannot see many 1800+'s playing and we want to encourage new players in, so something favouring the weaker side.

If you don't have reliable ratings, a handicap system doesn't really work. Simply perhaps to impose a rule which says that players must either be below some threshold, not have a rating or just a provisional one.

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IM Jack Rudd
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Re: Handicap Team Chess

Post by IM Jack Rudd » Wed Dec 29, 2021 5:50 pm

One simple way is just to calculate the expected score board-by-board and say "to win the match, you must exceed your aggregate expected score".

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Stephen Westmoreland
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Re: Handicap Team Chess

Post by Stephen Westmoreland » Wed Dec 29, 2021 6:08 pm

Thanks Roger. We have had a lot of fun with Handicap's before and some tense games. It is fun trying to balance games and whether you go high rated or low. We just need to revisit our boundaries though to factor in the grading change and the volume of new players. Some juniors are also starting to come through.
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