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The fee for tournament organizers advertising on ChessTalk is $20/event or $100/yearly unlimited for the year.
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You can etransfer to Henry Lam at chesstalkforum at gmail dot com
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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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I don't play rated chess, but if I did, I would want to see my new rating as soon as possible after an event. I know that several local juniors, and their parents, always eagerly await rating updates.
It seems to me that an important effect of delaying crosstables and ratings is to reduce the players' excitement about the event. Yeah-yeah, I know that in the good old days we had to wait two months till the magazine came out, but that was then.
I like the US and CMA system where ratings are automatically calculated as soon as a crosstable is submitted. When we spent $18,000 on updating the website 3-4 years ago, I think it a great shame that automatic updating wasn't included.
Hi John,
Well I appreciate the Kudos...and I really do!, I think the switch to Friday is to give organizers more time to submit...so the CFC does not have to re-rate. Human nature, as we both know: if you give folks more time to submit...those who wait until the last minute will do so regardless of the deadline :). In the shoes of the CFC, I would post no later than Thursday noon so that tournament organizers can do their thing in time. Maybe rating fees should increase for late submissions...
...
the switch to Friday is to give organizers more time to submit...so the CFC does not have to re-rate. Human nature, as we both know: if you give folks more time to submit...those who wait until the last minute will do so regardless of the deadline :).
...
Larry
The reports that an organizer submits to CFC take about 5 minutes to generate and submit by e-mail.
Accounting and writing a financial report for all the fees and memberships takes at most, for a big tournament, half hour. This task is still part of running a tournament, not to be encouraged to do whenever just because we have all the time in the world. Since long-weekends don't extent into Tuesdays, deadline for these reports could easily be Tuesdays 8am. That way we could have ratings update on Tuesday afternoons.
Updating ratings on Fridays will be a nightmare for organizers! Apart from the registration rush, we're going to have to be dealing with people complaining about their ratings not being up-to-date, they got the wrong pairing (d'oh, surely in R1 since the seedings are all wrong), how they belong in a different class section. And if 'old' ratings are used, why was Johnny allowed to win a prize for playing in the U2000 section when his rating jumped to 2001 since Friday (whatever time on Friday), etc...
I'm probably just ignorant, but I'm stunned that the process is so primitive. Rating is an easy formula and should be fully automated. Many a student at UofT would do it for free to have it on his resume.
In fact, rating should be live after each round, as soon as scores are entered.
I'm probably just ignorant, but I'm stunned that the process is so primitive. Rating is an easy formula and should be fully automated. Many a student at UofT would do it for free to have it on his resume.
In fact, rating should be live after each round, as soon as scores are entered.
While you are at it (for free) be sure to include provision for rerunning all the ratings when a late result comes in and has to be inserted in the proper time sequence with all the ratings you already processed. Also be sure to think about events like club round robins that take place over the course of months but each individual game should be rated chronologically on the date it occurred. Everything is so simple...
[edited later to add: I am not suggesting that the CFC ratings process does or doesn't do any of this; indeed, that would be a good question for whoever does the ratings. Last time I asked - several years ago - the answer seemed to be 'maybe' ratings are 'rerun' sometimes for such late submissions.]
Last edited by Kerry Liles; Wednesday, 9th October, 2013, 11:44 AM.
Reason: clarification or obfuscation; pick one
While you are at it (for free) be sure to include provision for rerunning all the ratings when a late result comes in and has to be inserted in the proper time sequence with all the ratings you already processed. Also be sure to think about events like club round robins that take place over the course of months but each individual game should be rated chronologically on the date it occurred. Everything is so simple...
[edited later to add: I am not suggesting that the CFC ratings process does or doesn't do any of this; indeed, that would be a good question for whoever does the ratings. Last time I asked - several years ago - the answer seemed to be 'maybe' ratings are 'rerun' sometimes for such late submissions.]
Love it. Ratings are like cheap wine (I like the Tuesday vintage much better than Monday's.) What is your rating exactly? Wait a day and I'll tell you, or two days if I don't like tomorrow's.
Yeah, this is "easy". The formula is arithmetic. The rest is credibility.
Steve
P.S. Kerry, I'm agreeing with you here. My sarcasm sometimes doesn't come off right....
I don't play rated chess, but if I did, I would want to see my new rating as soon as possible after an event. I know that several local juniors, and their parents, always eagerly await rating updates.
It seems to me that an important effect of delaying crosstables and ratings is to reduce the players' excitement about the event. Yeah-yeah, I know that in the good old days we had to wait two months till the magazine came out, but that was then.
I like the US and CMA system where ratings are automatically calculated as soon as a crosstable is submitted. When we spent $18,000 on updating the website 3-4 years ago, I think it a great shame that automatic updating wasn't included.
I agree with you John. I have not submitted USCF tournaments for rating, but at least once a month, when submitting a CMA tournament, I am pleasantly reminded that Larry's CMA rating system is tremendously more effective. I also recall that when we were discussing spending that much money on the new website, that some of us complained that the resulting system had to be at least as good as CMA's, or why not make Larry an offer?!
I think it's just a matter of staff. One person is definitely not enough to run everything at the CFC. The FQE also rate tournaments as soon as it receives them, but would never be able to do so if it only had one employee...
I once discussed automated ratings with two members of the USCF Rating Committee. They have a fairly sophisticated screening programme that does not let submissions go through to the ratings algorithm if there are errors such as incomplete information, insufficient time controls, impossible results, incorrect players' ID or name and so on. It keeps sending the submission back to the TD until the errors are fixed. Once that hurdle is overcome, the event is rated immediately. I wonder if Larry (or the FQE) have this kind of automated screening programme?
There are two ways to rate a tournament with the FQE :
1) Send the result to the office, and Louis Morin will rate it as soon as possible.
2) Rate it yourself on the website (can only work if you correctly entered all the results and the memberships). I believe that fewer organizers use this method, as it's more complicated (some organizers don't even have computers :) ). I'm not sure if Louis has to approve every submission though (but in any case that would be pretty quick).
I wonder if Larry (or the FQE) have this kind of automated screening programme?
I haven't rated a tournament with CMA for a while, but as far as I remember, you have to register as an organizer first, then you pick the players from a database, so there is no problem getting player numbers right. New players are registered by the organizer, and issued a player number right away. The program won't accept a crosstable with impossible results.
I've made a few errors over the years. Once I chose the wrong player (two players with the same name), once I entered a result wrong, and once I registered a new player, only to find out later he was already in the database. In each case an email to CMA brought swift resolution.
I haven't rated a tournament with CMA for a while, but as far as I remember, you have to register as an organizer first, then you pick the players from a database, so there is no problem getting player numbers right. New players are registered by the organizer, and issued a player number right away. The program won't accept a crosstable with impossible results.
I've made a few errors over the years. Once I chose the wrong player (two players with the same name), once I entered a result wrong, and once I registered a new player, only to find out later he was already in the database. In each case an email to CMA brought swift resolution.
John, your description is quite accurate. It's extremely rare that a mistake slips in using CMA online validation.
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