Could everyone lose their grade

[Nick Grey]

I think my new rating goes down and grading will not exist. In county changes I'm not sure whether I will be at top or bottom of a team so makes that fun. SOME take it too seriously and then suggest players are cheats.

[Mike Gunn]

Also, how much longer will the grading history under the old system be made available (I have a note somewhere to download the personal data from that) and is there an easy way to download or request that data (i.e. one's own personal grading history)?

Try the following:
1. Go to your personal rating page
2. Click on "Games" (top right hand corner)
3. Click on "All seasons" (under the list of years).
4. You have now got a screen which shows all your individual game resultsa going back to 2002.
5. Scrolling down, copy the entire contents e.g. using CTRL/C
6. Paste the results into a suitable file, e.g. the Excel spreadsheet.

This is a bit of a kludge, but it works (I have just done it).

[Brian Valentine]

The rules for grades will be changed in September to support monthly grading. We are still on track to deliver these on time.

Everyone who has had at least one grade (separately for standard and rapid) published since 2017 will have a 4-digit grade for January 2020 when our monthly calculations will kick off. At present we are discussing whether a player goes inactive after 3 years or 5 years and the actions to take place at that point. The issue of losing a grade, if one has had a recent one, will not arise until January 2021 at the earliest.

Brian Valentine
Manager of ECF grading

I was recently looking at this, and was wondering if there has been any update on the window of time in which people have to get "back" to playing graded chess to avoid "losing" their grade. Even if they do lose their grade, will the past grading history still be used.

Also, how much longer will the grading history under the old system be made available (I have a note somewhere to download the personal data from that) and is there an easy way to download or request that data (i.e. one's own personal grading history)?

I don't think we will be making downloads of personal data any easier that Mike outlines. We have not gathered permission to use data in this way.

The rating system calculation drops player's grades/ratings after 5 years of complete inactivity. This is an interim position until we can look forward post pandemic. After that "5 years", players will start rating calculations again as a new player would.

We have no plans to ditch history already available on the site. We will be turning off the old Grading website when hits drop to a low level.

Brian Valentine
Manager of ECF rating

[David Sedgwick]

We have no plans to ditch history already available on the site. We will be turning off the old Grading website when hits drop to a low level.

Brian Valentine
Manager of ECF rating

Those two sentences seem contradictory to me.

The old Grading website is an invaluable historical record. I urge the ECF to continue to make it available indefinitely.

However, members of this Forum, you have been warned. Please hit on the old ECF Grading website at least a couple of times a week. Otherwise you may find one day that it is no longer there.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Yep, surely no reason why the "old" grading site can't continue to exist in archive form for the foreseeable future?

[Brian Valentine]

We have no plans to ditch history already available on the site. We will be turning off the old Grading website when hits drop to a low level.

Brian Valentine
Manager of ECF rating

Those two sentences seem contradictory to me.

The old Grading website is an invaluable historical record. I urge the ECF to continue to make it available indefinitely.

However, members of this Forum, you have been warned. Please hit on the old ECF Grading website at least a couple of times a week. Otherwise you may find one day that it is no longer there.

The contradiction is clarified (I hope) by saying all the historical data on the old grading site was transferred en block to the new rating website.

The old website has just been transferred to a new server so it is unlikely to be chopped in the immediate future.