At the NCCU AGM on 12/08/2023, intentionally no Grading Officer was elected - should now be Rating Officer of course - because all NCCU events are entered into the ECF League Management System (LMS) whence data for rating is extracted automatically. Thus there is no rating work needing to be undertaken by the NCCU as such.

Nevertheless, there may arise situations where other organisations within the NCCU wish to get results submitted for ECF rating yet do not have the resources to do so themselves, and there are people within the NCCU who are able to help. (See below.)

Submitting results for ECF rating other than via LMS necessitates creation of a data-submission file and the services of an ECF Rating Officer if only to upload the file to the rating database. (The ECF now seems to prefer the term “Results Officer” which is arguably more appropriate, albeit grammatically questionable.)

An ECF Rating Officer is a freelance person who, as a minimum, has an ID and password enabling uploading a rating-data submission file to the ECF rating database. Note that inadequate information in the file may necessitate editing of the file after the organisers have replied to queries which have arisen. Note also that you should not just send a raw rating submission file to the ECF office or ECF Rating Manager to deal with, as they cannot take on the burden of everything thrown at them by any Tom, Dick or Harry; that’s why ECF Rating Officers were invented.

Crucially, some ECF Rating Officers also have the resources to create rating-data submission files from various sources, electronic or manual, usually using software written by themselves.

1) Leagues who wish to have their games ECF-rated will already have measures in place, almost certainly entry of data into LMS with automatic monthly data extraction.

2) Most Congresses will have in place appropriate measures. A congress can in fact have its results entered into LMS with automatic extraction of the rating data. Commoner is the practice of doing pairings using Swiss Manager, which can generate an ECF submission file which can then be uploaded to the ECF rating database. In this latter case

(a) one of the organisers is likely to be acting as the congress’s own ECF Rating Officer for the purpose of that uploading process;

(b) otherwise they would need to have access to the services of an independent ECF Rating Officer to upload the file, having first ironed out any problems.

3) Some Congresses

(a) use electronic pairing systems which do not generate an ECF rating-data submission file, or else

(b) do pairings manually with traditional Swiss pairing cards.

In both cases data needs to be converted into an ECF rating-data submission file by anyone with that ability, then the file needs uploading to the ECF rating database by an ECF Rating Officer.

4) Clubs may wish to have their internal club championship etc ECF-rated. As with congresses, these can be entered into LMS. The local chess association may well agree to do that job for its member clubs. If pairings were made using a program which generates a data submission file, then one should proceed as under “Most Congresses”. Otherwise, results would need to be processed as under “Some Congresses” from

(a) an electronic pairing system which do not generate an ECF rating-data submission file, or else

(b) manually produced result data.

So, who in the NCCU is likely to be able to help, where help is needed?

There is no publicly available list of ECF Rating Officers and what they are able to undertake. Your local league, congress or county may have someone who is able and willing to help, but I suspect there are very few who could and would take on creating data submission files from sources not tailored for the purpose.

I myself would have taken on the post of NCCU Rating Officer had one been necessary. I already do a certain amount of creation of submission file from various sources for congresses and clubs in Yorkshire and sometimes further afield.

Sources I use from time to time as source data for file creation and then submission are:

Chess-Results.com (final ranking cross-table after final round, for each section)

Sevilla pairing program (final .sev file containing all results)

Swiss pairing cards

Manually typed out results (preferably presented in table form, not raw linear text)

but other sources would be considered.

If you need assistance such as that described and have not identified a “local” person to do the job, then contact me via e-mail: sjmann@gmx.co.uk to see if I am able and willing to help. (No fee charged for the work!)

Any other ECF Rating Officers in the NCCU who are willing to assist people as above are welcome to contact me to have their contact details added here.

The ECF has a webpage (https://www.englishchess.org.uk/how-to-get-an-event-rated/) on how to get an event rated, which is a generalised version of the above, but also carries details of what information ECF Rating Officers need to carry out such work.

Steve Mann (Yorkshire)

15/08/2023