Report on Grading & Rating

International Rating

Howard Grist after four years work has stepped down as International Rating Officer. He has done sterling work on rating in addition to his not inconsiderable work on grading and in particular grading anomalies. We are currently looking for a replacement.

The number of FIDE rated events has increased from 37 per year to 42 per year. Initiatives agreed by the Board to further increase the number of FIDE rated events are:

• Waiving the FIDE rating Fee in the first year.
  
• Giving a British Championship place to FIDE rated open Congresses.

Grading

In line with the April 2007 Council decision, grading lists are produced every year for standard-play but six-monthly for rapidplay. There are currently no plans to revise this.

We are looking into further improvements of the on-line grading site. We are investigating the possibility of implementing a members' only element that would allow them to look up their complete grading record as held on the grading database. This service is currently provided only by email and as a paper print-out.

Finally, some statistics on grading:

As can be seen there is not much difference between 2007 and 2008 in the level of chess activity in the country.

My thanks to the grading team of Richard Haddrell, Howard Grist, Carl Hibbard, David Welch, Roger Marsh and Neville Belinfante.

Dave Thomas
ECF Manager of Grading and Rating

APPENDIX 1

REPORT ON GRADING ANOMALIES

An open meeting has been arranged for the morning of Council (see calling notice) at which the grading team will explain the grading anomalies and the proposed solution. The team will be happy to take questions either at the meeting or in advance.

WHY ARE THEY NEEDED

Grading has been around for about half a century. The idea behind the BCF/ECF system is that a player graded (say) 10 points higher than his opponent would be expected to score 6/10 against that opponent. (Expected percentage score = 50 plus the difference in grades.)

The original lists were quite small, comprising only the strongest players in the country, but within a very few years it was noticed that grades, for no identifiable reason, were gradually slipping. Sir Richard Clarke, who introduced the system, realised that it should be monitored carefully and felt it ought to be corrected if necessary every 4 years. Unfortunately he had not today's means of analysing data. The number of players has increased enormously since his day, but the basic system has been largely untouched.

One difficulty was that results, even after the overhaul of the system in 1998-1999, were often submitted or stored in a "bundled" form (Player X, Games Y, Points Z) which did not lend itself to detailed analysis. By 2002 the incidence of bundles was much reduced in favour of actual game results (which are now the norm), and by 2005 we had sufficient information to permit analysis over a four-year period. It was then apparent that results did not match the theoretical expectations. Players who outgraded their opponents by 10 points were scoring approximately 58% rather than the expected 60%. The system had become "stretched".

There may be several separate reasons for grades to inflate, deflate or stretch out, but the main one is very simple: if we don't play lots of games against opponents who also play lots of games, the list is bound to become gradually stretched. This has been demonstrated by mathematical modelling, but the results cannot easily be summarised in a meaningful way. We are looking at ways of making this information available to those who are interested.

We have now been able to review the system and restore the old standard that a 10 point grade difference gives an expectation of 6/10 and so on. The review has covered much ground. Most grades have changed quite a lot, because the stretching goes back a long way. The effect of the review is the same as would have been achieved by gentle corrections every few years.

Old Grades remain official in 2008-9, with New Grades published only for reference. Starting with the 2009 list, Old Grades will no longer be produced. Old Grades (even 2008) will have no effect on future New Grades.

The process of review will continue so that any future drifting can be corrected. Some further work is needed to find out how Junior grades change. In the past, we have assumed that increasing age is the only factor; but this needs to be validated.

HOW HAVE THE NEW GRADES BEEN CALCULATED

The initial calculations were on games played from 2002 to 2006. They were not performed season by season, but on the whole four-year period in a single operation.

Standardplay

First it was necessary to establish a pool of sufficiently active players, and to eliminate distorting effects from improving juniors. So all games of players who were juniors in all or part of the period were removed. Players with less than 40 games remaining were then also removed.

The elimination process was repeated till no one had less than 40 games, leaving a core of players who were active enough to give reliable results.

Grades were then calculated iteratively for these players. Using the resulting grades as a starting point, calculations were done for all games in the four-year period to produce 2006 grades for everybody.

Rapidplay

Rapidplay grades were calculated in the same way, except that no player met the 40-game requirement so 30 games were used instead. The 2006 Rapidplay grades were then adjusted so that, on average, players with at least 30 games at both rates of play had the same grade in both.

2007 and 2008 grades

With the 2006 grades established, Standard and Rapid grades were calculated for 2007 and 2008 in the usual way.

2009 grades

Will simply continue the process, using as their starting point the 2008 New Grades already calculated.

Junior increments

The increments used have been suggested by an analysis of results, and they are different for Standard and Rapid. (But less so than appears, because the Rapid increments are applied twice a year on a compound basis.)

WHAT IS THE EFFECT

Standardplay grades around 210 - 219 will, on average, remain the same. Below this, grades will go up; and the lower the grade, the more it will go up. Rapidplay grades, on average, will go up more than Standard because they start from a lower base.

Changes can be roughly broken down as follows:

Standard

Adult New Grade = 0.79 x Old Grade + 45
Junior New Grade = 0.76 x Old Grade + 64

Rapid

Adult New Grade = 0.76 x Old Grade + 49
Junior New Grade = 0.93 x Old Grade + 40

Note that these "formulae" are true on average only, and cannot be applied to individual players. Different players are affected differently.

FIDE conversion: FIDE = New ECF x 8 + 650

Negative grades

A beneficial side-effect of the switch to New Grades is that it much reduces the number of negative grades (which are actually published as 0).

Negative grades 2008, A - E:

Distribution of grades

In these tables, the columns are cumulative. Thus in the first table:

40% of A grades are at least 136; of A and B grades together, 131; of A - C grades, 127 ... The bottom row thus represents all published grades.

STANDARDPLAY

Old Grades

New Grades

RAPIDPLAY

Old Grades

New Grades