®

British Chess Federation

Grading Progress Statement, October 2001

BCF Council Meeting: A copy of the report on Grading presented to the BCF Council meeting in September can be found as a separate document. The following decisions were made at the Council:

• It was agreed that an additional deadline would be introduced for events played between 1^st June and 25^th December. Details are given on the Grading Instructions page.

• Publication of Grading information on the BCF Website will be considered at the BCF Finance Meeting next April (because of the budget implications).

• No consideration will be given to the production of six-monthly lists for juniors until next year. Similarly, no consideration will be given to moving to an ELO based Grading system (generating an ELO style Grade and/or using the ELO computation method) until the development of the central Grading software is complete.

Grading Instructions

A set of instructions for Graders has been produced and can be found here.

Grading CD-ROM

A Grading CD-ROM will be sent to all Graders during November. This will contain the following:

1. The new BCF Grading Master list;
2. General Instructions, etc;
3. Data-checking program for submission files;
4. Documentation defining the format for submission files;
5. Updated version of Congress program;
6. Updated version of League program;
7. Copy of a new Grading Browser program written by N Belinfante;
8. Skeleton .xls grading file;
9. Master list files for users of Tournament Director;
10. Copy of current FIDE rating list.

BCF Member Grading Printouts

Printouts showing the games graded by the BCF have been sent out to the appropriate BCF members.

Archiving of Master List and Issue of New Player Codes

Prior to issue of the Master list, an archiving exercise will be conducted. During this exercise, any players with no games against their name are wiped from the system. Consequently, it is not possible to issue new player codes for the current season until this exercise is complete, i.e. roughly mid-November.

For those interested in the technical details, the following activities have to be conducted prior to archiving of the Master List:

1. Corrections received on basis of published Grading List;
2. Corrections received from BCF Members based on their Grading Print-outs;
3. Grading of Events that missed the original deadline.

Compared to last year, we have pulled forward the issue date of the BCF Member printouts and will also issue the Master list earlier. It will be an objective to further improve on these dates next season.

C E Majer

Grading Director

19/10/01

Return to BCF Grading Main Page