English Chess Forum

Would this be a useful utility for event organisers?

Let us assume an event treasurer does not wish to pay fines from the ECF for players in their rated event not having the correct ECF membership.

Instead of checking each entry manually and tediously perhaps the organiser could export their entry list into a utility that sucked in the whole lot and then spat out a report that said

Dear Organiser,

The following players in your entry list currently as this moment in time do not have the correct ECF membership for your event and will be subject to fines from the ECF membership department:

I'd certainly find this to be most handy as I have a personal mission to have every player in my rated events to have the correct ECF membership for that event. Currently manual checking is somewhat tiresome and time wasting.

Your thoughts?

I'm guessing that nobody thinks this would be a useful utility?

Perhaps nobody in this place has a need to check ECF membership status of an entry list?

It would be a useful thing, of course.

I would like to be able to check for
a) ECF Membership Category = Bronze
b) ECF Membership Category = Gold/Platinum/Life
c) ECF Membership = none
d) ECF Membership No
e) ECF Membership Expiry Date

Query by ECF Rating Id, or by Family Name, Given Names, supplemented optionally by DOB, with a choice given with locale to select if several returned.

Able to check against a file of these keys.

All with one search, preferably from Swiss Manager, Vega or LMS, otherwise with a query that can be run directly from Excel or an open source SQL Database.

Secured, of course, so that it can only be accessed by authorised Organisers, Arbiters, ECF Staff, perhaps other recognised categories with a clearly identifiable and legitimate.

As it is, I currently download the ECF Rating List monthly, clean it up a little, then do queries using VLookup() from Excel, treating the rating list as a large table.

Excel is not, however, the most pleasant way to import and query a large table, and the process is a bit clunky.

So if there was a better way of doing this, then I would be delighted. I would be particularly delighted if it was simple to integrate with existing tools.

I would be even more delighted if the ECF Membership and Rating Systems were properly integrated into Swiss Manager instead of the kludge, bodge, gaffer tape, brown paper and parcel string solution that currently exists.

ECF Membership details as separate fields in player record, downloaded into SM only by entry of secure authentication details.

These details reportable, but not listable, nor uploadable, i.e. GDPR secure.

ECF rating Club Code placed in the actual SM Club Code field and not overloading (FFS!) the Group field.

ECF rating Status (i.e. P, K, A) placed in a new SM field and not overloading the Type field.

ECF rating Club Code and Club Name table integrated and maintained, so that one could press a button and substitute any existing club code and name into the SM record, rather than have to look them up one at a time.

ECF rating Event Code and Treasurer stored in the tournament settings and automatically inserted into the rating file when it is generated.

The correct time control entered into MinutesForGame, SecondsPerMove, etc. in the rating file, instead of some fixed bodge quantity used to make the tournament pass the criteria for Standard, Rapid or Blitz.

SubmissionIndex maintained and incremented with the generation of a rating file, with the ability to update the index manually if necessary.

Automatic submission of the generated rating file direct to the ECF rating system from within Swiss Manager.

This would save a considerable amount of work for every tournament, if implemented.

Where it says Swiss Manager, Vega and other systems in common use meant also.

John, your views on my proposals?

Paul McKeown wrote: ↑

Wed May 06, 2026 5:46 pm

John, your views on my proposals?

Yes, thanks for the positive feedback. I have been mulling this over with Rob Hammond and Rob has made excellent progress.

We will get back to you.