English Chess Forum

Hello all,
This might not be the correct or official place to ask, but anyway:

I am the author of "TournamentService" (TS), a recently FIDE-endorsed piece of software for managing chess tournaments (http://tournamentservice.com). I am now playing with the idea of adapting it to the ECF grading system by making an export function, enabling the creation of ECF report files from TS.

However, I cannot find any specifications of the ECF-defined file format. Perhaps someone here could help me on that? An example perhaps? I've been working with other federations until now, so I'm not familiar with the ECF routines, sorry. The way I understand it, in the UK (or is it England only?) you have:

- Event organiser's, reporting their tournaments to ...
- local graders (reporting officers), who checks the data and report to...
- union graders, who actually creates the file and send it by email to...
- The ECF Grading administrator who actually processes the data and updates the national database

Is the system still like this? Or can an event organiser send the file directly to ECF (or local/union graders) if his software can produce it?

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. What I need is primarily the file format, and the appropriate mail address(es?) for reporting. I think....

Harald,

It's England only. Chess Scotland and the Welsh Chess Union have their own systems.

ECF grading doesn't have quite as many steps as you suggest. Steps 2 and 3 are both performed by the local grader, who makes an input file - perhaps with an ECF-supplied program, perhaps with a program of his own, perhaps by hand! - and emails it straight to the ECF Grading Administrator (me) who processes it onto the central database. Of course steps 1 and 2 can also be combined by means of a program such as you describe. Checking, especially of players' identities, is done at all three stages.

But you ask for a filespec and some specimen input files. I can provide these easily if you'd care to give me your email address. (I foresee that it might lead to detailed correspondence which would be out of place in a forum.) Drop me a line. I'm [email protected]

Richard Haddrell
Grading Administrator, ECF