Barking Chess Club

Half-Year Grades

For the first time since the grading system was introduced, a half-year standard play grading list has been produced.

This has a tendency to confuse, a) because it's new; b) because now players are not sure which to use. The intention of this short article is to explain how the website will be showing the new half-year grades.

For grading-limited competition, the grade that applies to the competition is normally set out in the Rules. For instance, the County Match programme uses, for eligibility purposes, each player's grade at 1st September. This applies for the whole competition, so that the introduction of the half-year list has no effect on player eligibility.

Results up to 31st December 2011 should have been submitted for inclusion in the half-year list as an "interim" submission. Any that were not (and we know for a fact that the London League and North Circular League results were not submitted) will be included in the July list, but will be graded with the latest grades available at the time, i.e. the January 2012 list.

Results given on this website, e.g. the Essex League and the County Match results, will follow this pattern:

• Latest grade shown against each member's name in stats;
• Grades in match tables are date-related;
• Grading Performance calculations shown in the County stats are date-related, so will use a mixture of July 2011 list and January 2012 list as appropriate for the match date.

As  the figures shown in accordance with the above criteria will appear at odds with the eligibility rules - you will see grading figures which apparently indicate that a player or players are over-graded for the section - it is repeated that we are showing the new grades on the basis that these will be used for the next grading calculation, but the player's grades at 1st September remain the eligibility criteria for the County Match competitions.