Be warned that at present, if you go onto the new ECF Rating website (https://www.ecfrating.org.uk/v2), the click on “Events”, and then select on a specific event, the content of the display may not bear any relation to what you expected, and be in fact total garbage. Sometimes a simple programming error can generate total garbage, and this appears to be what has happened here. I started looking at events whose results I had submitted, starting alphabetically with Bradford. The fact that many league results are not presented as inter-team matches was mentioned earlier (see here). When I started looking more closely it turned out that some of the event reports are total garbage.

It appears the Bradford & DCA League (with three divisions) has been renamed “Bradford & DCA Individual”, so duplicating use of that name, but there is a much greater problem.

The names (if we take one “Individual” to be the league) and start dates of the events with codes 1437075168, 1437075169 and 1437075172 correspond to Bradford result files submitted by me. Apart from the name-mangling, it further appears that in generating event reports the data presented bear no relation whatsoever to the events named, apart from plausible-sounding names. There are clearly wires getting crossed here.

Event code 1437075168:

https://www.ecfrating.org.uk/v2/new/list_games_swiss.php?event_code=1437075168&section_no=9999 represents what is described as the “Bradford and DCA Hepolite : Rapid, 22 Oct 2019”

The Hepolite is a 6-board team rapidplay competition played in “rounds”, all matches in a round being played on a single date. It started on 22/10/2019, and there were only two rounds played (on 22/10/2019 and 03/12/2019) with 59 players involved, producing 74 games.

The above webpage, though called “Bradford and DCA Hepolite”, shows 71 players (not 59). It lists 3 rounds (not 2). It shows player 1 Christopher Bak in round 3 playing Tony Slinger. Tony Slinger was not a participant in the Heppolite! So, what is this event dubbed “Heppolite”? Chris Bak is shown as playing 3 games, winning all three, and scoring 6 points. You might think the program may be internally scoring 2 for and a win, 1 for a draw, and 0 for a loss, then “forgetting” to divide by two at the end. (I have used such an approach in the past, for reasons I forget.) However, player 3, Chris Wright, is shown as winning 3 games, yet scores only 5 in total! Regardless of the true identity of this event, the cross-table is defective.

Event code 1437075169

https://www.ecfrating.org.uk/v2/new/list_games_swiss.php?event_code=1437075169&section_no=9999 represents what is described as Bradford and DCA Individual, starting 24 Sep 2019.

The individual events number 4, namely the Barnett, Parkinson, Hutchinson and Bak. There were 32 players in total, playing 16 games all on 1 evening (24/09/2019) – hence only one round was played. The above screen display shows 4 rounds of a 40-player event, possibly a mythical event.

Event code 1437075172

https://www.ecfrating.org.uk/v2/new/list_games_swiss.php?event_code=1437075172&section_no=9999 represents what is called Bradford and DCA Individual : Standard, 17 Sep 2019.

The start date here is that of the Bradford and DCA League (with three sections). The league featured 159 players and 389 games. The event shown on the above screen was of 163 players, which is close to 159.

I have not looked at other organisations’ results as yet, but I fear the worst. The problem might be due to a single easily-remedied programming error.

Steve Mann