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01/03/2023 Yorkshire ECF March O-t-B Ratings
The number of Yorkshire players in the March ECF rating list with over-the-board ECF ratings, whether standard or rapid or both, is roughly as in February, but has in risen slightly, as might be expected. Month-by-month totals of players listed, with numbers having ratings for standard-rate play and numbers with ratings for rapid play, have been as in the following table:
The significant increase in February was mentioned last month.
The total number of players in the downloadable extract from the ECF Rating website was 26,617 in January, then 24,914 in February, and has experienced a more modest drop to 24,489 in March. Those figures include blitz and on-line players.
An analysis of the 1,893 ratings by rating category for standard-rate play in the Yorkshire list is as follows:
The first thing to note is that the H category seems to have been phased out as was intended. Some H-category players where changed to K category in the February list without a change of rating number, so it was evidently part of a tidying-up re-think of categories in the aftermath of the COVID break.
A-category players are those who notch up 30 or more games in their rolling 12-month rating records, and have ratings calculated by the ELO-type system (“K rating algorithm”) which uses the result of a game to calculate an increment/decrement to be applied to the players rating before the game.
P-category players are “new” players for whom the K rating algorithm cannot be used, and instead their ratings are calculated by a system (“P rating algorithm”) which is not based on using a previous rating. This results in a P-category rating. Then, as soon as they notch up 10 games, they get a K-category rating, which is thereafter recalculated using the K rating algorithm. P-category players are therefore recently “new” players finding their feet rating-wise.
K-category players are thus those who are neither “hyperactive” A-category players (30+ games in 12 months) nor “new” players (yet to clock up 10 games starting from scratch). They have at least 10 games in the system, not necessarily all in the last 12 months (a feature different from the old grading system), and their rating is recalculated by the K rating algorithm.
There are, however, two significantly distinct groups combined in the K category: a) those actively playing rated chess, but not frequently enough to get an A rating, b) those who are currently inactive, not having played rated chess since the COVID hiatus.
Very soon many K-rated players will have no rated games in the prior 36 months. It appears they will not drop out of the rating list, but it would seem expedient that K-rated players who reach the point of zero games in the last 36 months were re-categorised as, say, H rated, to show the extent of outdatedness. However, the above-mentioned apparent phasing out of the H category suggests no such re-categorisation will be adopted.
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