World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

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Brian Valentine
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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by Brian Valentine » Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:12 pm

Hi David,

I was there to applaud his achievement! I'm sure at the least, photographs will appear in due course. I suspect that the criteria for board 5 awards included something lower than seven games.

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:41 pm

Some photos (I was prompted to go looking) are here:

https://www.englishchess.org.uk/Seniors ... ior-teams/

I'll leave people to pick out individual photos, as I'm not sure I would recognise everyone.

David Sedgwick
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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by David Sedgwick » Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:09 pm

Brian Valentine wrote:
Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:12 pm
Hi David,

I was there to applaud his achievement! I'm sure at the least, photographs will appear in due course. I suspect that the criteria for board 5 awards included something lower than seven games.
Brian V, thank you for the explanation.

Congratulations and apologies to Brian H.

Revised score: England Seniors 6 - ECF Chief Executive 0 :lol:

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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by Alex Holowczak » Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:11 pm

David Sedgwick wrote:
Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:09 pm
Brian Valentine wrote:
Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:12 pm
Hi David,

I was there to applaud his achievement! I'm sure at the least, photographs will appear in due course. I suspect that the criteria for board 5 awards included something lower than seven games.
Brian V, thank you for the explanation.

Congratulations and apologies to Brian H.

Revised score: England Seniors 6 - ECF Chief Executive 0 :lol:
Not sure I agree with that scoring. I'd go for England Seniors 6, ECF Chief Executive 0, David Sedgwick -1 :wink:

-1 since you were trying to take a medal off us, whereas Mike didn't think we'd win any. :lol:

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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by David Sedgwick » Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:20 pm

David Sedgwick wrote:
Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:09 pm

Revised score: England Seniors 6 - ECF Chief Executive 0 :lol:
Alex Holowczak wrote:
Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:11 pm

Not sure I agree with that scoring. I'd go for England Seniors 6, ECF Chief Executive 0, David Sedgwick -1 :wink:

-1 since you were trying to take a medal off us, whereas Mike didn't think we'd win any. :lol:
I know that ECF Board members find bizarre ways of sticking together, but that one really does take the proverbial biscuit.

Ian Thompson
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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by Ian Thompson » Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:50 pm

David Sedgwick wrote:
Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:20 pm
David Sedgwick wrote:
Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:09 pm

Revised score: England Seniors 6 - ECF Chief Executive 0 :lol:
Alex Holowczak wrote:
Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:11 pm

Not sure I agree with that scoring. I'd go for England Seniors 6, ECF Chief Executive 0, David Sedgwick -1 :wink:

-1 since you were trying to take a medal off us, whereas Mike didn't think we'd win any. :lol:
I know that ECF Board members find bizarre ways of sticking together, but that one really does take the proverbial biscuit.
I'd disqualify both of you for misquoting because it seems clear to me that the ECF Chief Executive's comment was referring to the chances of the over 50 team finishing in the top three.

NickFaulks
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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by NickFaulks » Fri Apr 26, 2019 11:24 am

Keith Arkell wrote:
Tue Apr 23, 2019 11:51 pm
We knew before the match that our Greek opponents were vastly under-rated just by looking at their games. Someone gave the typical explanation that there are lots of ludicrously under-rated kids in Athens stealing all their points!
We see these stories all the time, and it takes a bit of work to investigate them, but occasionally I decide to make the effort.

Keith's opponent has dropped 190 rating points since July 2016, over the course of 227 rated games. These include a total of two games in which he lost to a Greek junior rated below himself.

As is generally the case, the claims of the Greek players collapse when subjected to actual analysis.
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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by Ian Thompson » Fri Apr 26, 2019 11:35 am

NickFaulks wrote:
Fri Apr 26, 2019 11:24 am
These include a total of two games in which he lost to a Greek junior rated below himself.

As is generally the case, the claims of the Greek players collapse when subjected to actual analysis.
But not this analysis. He might only have lost a few points due to losses against juniors, but how do you know that many of his opponents hadn't lost significant numbers of points to juniors, meaning he was playing under-rated adults, with his rating suffering accordingly?

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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by NickFaulks » Fri Apr 26, 2019 12:25 pm

Ian Thompson wrote:
Fri Apr 26, 2019 11:35 am
But not this analysis. He might only have lost a few points due to losses against juniors, but how do you know that many of his opponents hadn't lost significant numbers of points to juniors, meaning he was playing under-rated adults, with his rating suffering accordingly?
Yes, you can always go round in circles like that, eventually concluding that everyone in the world must be underrated.

If the Greek population were generally underrated, then you would expect them to outperform when playing abroad, of which there is no evidence. In particular, Keith's opponent lost 74 of his points against foreigners, with an almost identical performance to that against Greeks
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IM Jack Rudd
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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by IM Jack Rudd » Fri Apr 26, 2019 1:03 pm

NickFaulks wrote:
Fri Apr 26, 2019 12:25 pm
Yes, you can always go round in circles like that, eventually concluding that everyone in the world must be underrated.
That's the conclusion that we always seem to reach, yes. Or, perhaps less circularly, that the playing standard indicated by any given FIDE rating tends to rise over time.

Alex Holowczak
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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by Alex Holowczak » Fri Apr 26, 2019 4:18 pm

NickFaulks wrote:
Fri Apr 26, 2019 12:25 pm
If the Greek population were generally underrated, then you would expect them to outperform when playing abroad, of which there is no evidence. In particular, Keith's opponent lost 74 of his points against foreigners, with an almost identical performance to that against Greeks
Indeed, the English juniors - who I'm told are always "underrated" and that their ECF grade is a better idea of how good they are - shed 487.6 points between 17 of them who were rated at the World Schools: http://chess-results.com/tnr427500.aspx ... NG&flag=30

This isn't the first time this happened. There's no evidence at all that English juniors are "underrated" compared to their foreign counterparts, based on the evidence of this tournament and other similar junior tournaments.

The player who lost the most points had a FIDE-rating that people thought was the most realistic using the ECF conversion formula, and he acquired that from a tournament in Spain - a country where all of their competitive chess is FIDE-rated. So if there is an issue, the issue is that not enough competitive chess is being FIDE-rated. In a country without much competitive chess going on, that's fair enough, but a country like England has much less of an excuse.

Leonard Barden
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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by Leonard Barden » Fri Apr 26, 2019 5:34 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Fri Apr 26, 2019 4:18 pm


Indeed, the English juniors - who I'm told are always "underrated" and that their ECF grade is a better idea of how good they are - shed 487.6 points between 17 of them who were rated at the World Schools: http://chess-results.com/tnr427500.aspx ... NG&flag=30

This isn't the first time this happened. There's no evidence at all that English juniors are "underrated" compared to their foreign counterparts, based on the evidence of this tournament and other similar junior tournaments.
Grim reading. In former and better times the England groups were smaller and the criteria for selection were more stringent.

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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by Alex Holowczak » Fri Apr 26, 2019 6:45 pm

Leonard Barden wrote:
Fri Apr 26, 2019 5:34 pm
Alex Holowczak wrote:
Fri Apr 26, 2019 4:18 pm


Indeed, the English juniors - who I'm told are always "underrated" and that their ECF grade is a better idea of how good they are - shed 487.6 points between 17 of them who were rated at the World Schools: http://chess-results.com/tnr427500.aspx ... NG&flag=30

This isn't the first time this happened. There's no evidence at all that English juniors are "underrated" compared to their foreign counterparts, based on the evidence of this tournament and other similar junior tournaments.
Grim reading. In former and better times the England groups were smaller and the criteria for selection were more stringent.
My selection criteria were more stringent; there are legacy qualifications via the Academy where the rating thresholds to qualify were lower for Academy members than non-Academy members. They can be sorted in time for 2020.

Leonard Barden
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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by Leonard Barden » Fri Apr 26, 2019 8:29 pm

Given the many low quality performances, maybe you need more stringent qualification rules for the Academy, perhaps comparable to the level for the Acceleration Programme. Or maybe a merger of the two with concentration of resources on the small numbers who show real promise by current international standards and by English standards of decades ago.

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David Shepherd
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Re: World Senior Team Championships Rhodes 2019

Post by David Shepherd » Fri Apr 26, 2019 9:18 pm

I think the above posts are in the wrong thread.

It is worth pointing out that with a K of 40 a few under rated juniors can cause huge points loss (so for example Botswana lost 416.40 between 5 of them, Ukraine had only 2 players who lost a total of 114 points (they were seeds 1 and 4) . The pattern of beating an unrated player and then losing to a rated player can be common in some of the age groups and leads to large points loss.

In evaluating the performance overall I believe it is at least as important to look at the points scores (the average points score was 4/9).

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