English Chess Forum

David Sedgwick wrote: I can only repeat my long standing suggestion, which was admittedly originally made for different reasons...

David, you appear to have achieved a feat unique in Forum history and come up with an idea about which everybody agrees.

Hats off to you sir.

I was certainly nervous about creating some bizarre behaviours to make sure you play 30 games to get rid of ome bad results - but actually I think there is more incentive with the current arrangement ot try and manage the number of games that you carry forward?

My own new grade exists in part because of one bad result from January 2013 dropping out of the count. This is hardly satisfactory, but like others I can see the value in January grades, but perhaps the system could be tweaked a little.

Jonathan Bryant wrote:

David Sedgwick wrote: I can only repeat my long standing suggestion, which was admittedly originally made for different reasons...

David, you appear to have achieved a feat unique in Forum history and come up with an idea about which everybody agrees.

Hats off to you sir.

Thank you for your comment and thank you to everyone who has made supportive remarks.

It's a pity that I couldn't persuade anyone who mattered when I raised this issue three or four years ago. Of course the intended 2011 trial of January grades, which would have identified precisely the sort of anomalies we've been discussing, never happened.

MartinCarpenter wrote:In fact Jon Griffith (who does the Yorkshire live grades) doesn't really agree with the idea that grades should be as close/stable an estimator of strength as is possible. He thinks the benefits from driving people to take more interest in their grades etc from them changing outweight the extra randomness of the live grades.

I'm afraid I find that bizarre.

When I had a new FIDE Rating once every six months, I was interested in it.

Now I have three FIDE Ratings, each of which is likely to change every month if I play in a relevant event, I have little or no interest in them. My memory is not good enough to cope - and what's the point of being interested in something which you can't remember.

Some interesting points. I also agree with David's suggestion, though I am currently in the position of waiting patiently for my results over this grading period to push my results from the previous grading period out of the calculations so I can forget they ever happened (they were that bad). So there are some advantages to having a (hopefully) good grading period following a poor one over six-month cycles rather than twelve. I kind of wrote off the last six months and decided to start afresh in January (it seemed to work, I promptly won five games in row after only winning six in the previous 30 - go figure). If I'd had to struggle through until June, it might have been a different story. (Of course, starting afresh can be done at any time, it shouldn't depend on grading periods!)

Well the thing that everyone does in Yorkshire is look at the yearly (probably slightly more stable than the ECF) grades as the vaguely serious ones and the live ones as a bit of fun

My impression is that the players like January grades but are confused about how they are applied - we spent some time on this at last night's MCF Council meeting

Clearly, the ECF needs to get to the point that the vast majority have confidence in the calculation of the grades - we aren't currently in that position

I agree with David Sedgwick too

Mick,

Are you talking about confidence in:
1) the arithmetic of an individual calculation
or
2) the method of calculation?

I'm responsible for 1), but only have influence in 2)!

Brian
Manager of ECF Grading

Brian Valentine wrote:Mick,

Are you talking about confidence in:
1) the arithmetic of an individual calculation
or
2) the method of calculation?

I'm responsible for 1), but only have influence in 2)!

Brian
Manager of ECF Grading

Brian

I'm sure it can be demonstrated that 1) is satisfied

However, 2) is where it falls down

Mick,
Thank you for clarifying.

I'm glad that there is one union satisfied with 1), since my e-mail box this week testifies to something else elsewhere!

The Grading Team are discussing a number of ideas at present; there's nothing on this thread that has surprised us (yet). There is a need to look at these "isolated points" with the bigger picture in mind. I need to talk to my boss before I elaborate further (and that will be in a little while as the discussion is on-going).

Brian

Are there plans to have games submitted faster than currently? At the moment, some games seem to go up early in the current cycle, and then everything else comes in at the end. It would be nice to get to a point where you can see all your games there, check them, and then the new grades come out a week or so after that.

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:Are there plans to have games submitted faster than currently? At the moment, some games seem to go up early in the current cycle, and then everything else comes in at the end. It would be nice to get to a point where you can see all your games there, check them, and then the new grades come out a week or so after that.

Congresses are expected to be submitted within a month, and need to be for inclusion in the Grand Prix calculations. I believe it's a fairly painless process when the Congress is using one of the standard pairing and results management systems, although identification and correct coding of new players could be a difficulty. Leagues still run on a six monthly cycle for the most part and the integration of league management systems with grading data may not be smooth as might be necessary for more frequent submissions.

Brian Valentine wrote:Mick,
Thank you for clarifying.

I'm glad that there is one union satisfied with 1), since my e-mail box this week testifies to something else elsewhere!

The Grading Team are discussing a number of ideas at present; there's nothing on this thread that has surprised us (yet). There is a need to look at these "isolated points" with the bigger picture in mind. I need to talk to my boss before I elaborate further (and that will be in a little while as the discussion is on-going).

Brian

Brian

Thanks for that, look forward to hearing more in due course

Nick Thomas wrote:

David Blower wrote:My best ever grade of 101! (Finally over 100!)

Made my day, well done mate!

Thanks. But you know very well the mind of a competitive chess player, the feeling lasted for about a minute, before I started thinking: "hhhhhhmmmmmm I can still do better than that."

I have written an article for my local chess clubs website about our members January 2014 grades. The link is here: http://brewoodchess.webs.com/apps/blog/ ... 014-grades

David Sedgwick wrote: When I had a new FIDE Rating once every six months, I was interested in it.

Now I have three FIDE Ratings, each of which is likely to change every month if I play in a relevant event, I have little or no interest in them. My memory is not good enough to cope - and what's the point of being interested in something which you can't remember.

David has a very valid point here. I'm finding the incremental updates from 4NCL weekends a bit pointless:

http://ratings.fide.com/individual_calc ... -02-01&t=0
http://ratings.fide.com/individual_calc ... -03-01&t=0

Does anyone else agree that unless you play a full tournament, having your rating updated monthly after one or two games feels a bit too much like updating for the sake of updating?

I quite agree.