English Chess Forum

There has been discussion before about the number of unrated players with very little data or in some cases nothing at all. Studying the Harrogate rating list throws up a lot of player names who don't mean anything to me.

However there are a few players where only an initial is given and I can provide a forename which would at least provide some protection against excessive duplication. I obviously appreciate this is hardly a priority for the rating team but if there was an easy way of doing this myself I would be happy to.

Andrew Zigmond wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 08, 2025 6:07 pm

However there are a few players where only an initial is given and I can provide a forename which would at least provide some protection against excessive duplication. I obviously appreciate this is hardly a priority for the rating team but if there was an easy way of doing this myself I would be happy to.

You can do this by submitting a rating report that specifies the player's forename. That definitely works if they've played any games in the report. I don't know if it would work if you included their name in the list of players but didn't record any games against their name.

You'd see things like this in the rating report:

Bloggs, Joseph: Forename supplied - thanks!.
Cobley, Thomas R: New initial supplied - thanks!.

I think it is the latter case the OP was thinking of - players who haven't competed for some time (quite often since the 1990s) and are known by their initial(s) only. Giving a fuller name could still be helpful, especially if you are looking up someone maybe returning to the game after many years out.

Ian Thompson wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 08, 2025 7:32 pm

Andrew Zigmond wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 08, 2025 6:07 pm

However there are a few players where only an initial is given and I can provide a forename which would at least provide some protection against excessive duplication. I obviously appreciate this is hardly a priority for the rating team but if there was an easy way of doing this myself I would be happy to.

You can do this by submitting a rating report that specifies the player's forename. That definitely works if they've played any games in the report. I don't know if it would work if you included their name in the list of players but didn't record any games against their name.

You'd see things like this in the rating report:

Bloggs, Joseph: Forename supplied - thanks!.
Cobley, Thomas R: New initial supplied - thanks!.

I did manage to find one long inactive player in a Harrogate list on LMS (I'm not entirely sure how he got there as he hasn't played a rated game since he was in his early teens in the late nineties) and updated his forename from the initial C to the full name and will see if this cuts across. It's no big deal if it doesn't. The issue is that rating database and the LMS handle data separately so the only way I can find to do it would be to search and add these players piecemeal (and then possibly create a non tournament full of double defaults against each other). Which would be a pointless exercise but marginally involves the quality of the data.