January Grading List

The January grading list has now appeared. It can be found at http://www.ecfgrading.org.uk/new/menu.php.

There are some changes that have been introduced in this list. A new "F" grading category has been introduced which requires just 5 graded games in order to get a published grade, rather than the previous 9. Another change concerns the use of historic data to contribute to the current grade. If you have played less than 30 games during the latest halfyear period, the calculation looks back over previous grading periods up to a maximum of 3 years, to take account of up to (but not more than) 30 games. The change (actually a reversion to a previous practice) concerns the treatment of games where some, but not all, from a particular grading halfyear are used. For the last few lists, the calculation attempted to use the most recent games. For this latest list the ECF has reverted to using the average grade for the games throughout that halfyear. Using my grade to illustrate, I played 11 Games during the latest period (July - December 2014), 14 games between January and June 2014 and 17 games during July - December 2013. Hence, my grade has been calculated on the basis of my total scores for all of 2014, plus five-seventeenths of my total score from the second half of 2013. This has given me a new grade of 128, whereas I calculate that the old calculation method (which would have used the actual scores from my last 5 games from 2013) would have made my grade 121.

The ECF's explanation for these changes can be read on their grading website, as above. They argue that the previous calculation method relied upon accurate reporting of dates for individual games (which isn't always the case) and could cause an individual result to have a significant impact on the calculated grade. As you can see from my own example, there clearly is scope for a significant difference between the 2 calculation methods. I leave it to others to argue the merits of one over the other.