Rating Officer's Report, May 2012

Mark Orr


This article part of the series: Rating Officer Reports 2012 - 1, 2, 3, 4


This article part of the series: ICU Bulletins 2011-12 - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18


(Last Updated June 4th)

A further 53 tournaments were rated in May to bring the total for the 2011-12 season so far to 71. The list contains 873 members, 741 with full ratings and 132 with provisional.

FIDE Ratings

e2e4 Dublin Easter (Masters, Majors, Challengers), Gonzaga Masters, LCU League Div 1 and 2, Mallahide Millenium Senior, Munster League Div 1 and National Club Championship have all been submitted to FIDE for rating.

It had been intended to rate LCU Leagues Div 3-5 with FIDE, however whether this will actually happen is currently in the balance. The problem is clause 8.21 of FIDE's rating handbook which states: If an unrated player scores less than 1 point, or he plays fewer than 3 rated opponents in his first rated event, his score is disregarded. Since there are few FIDE rated players in the lower leagues it brings into question whether it's worth the cost to the ICU (€1 per player).

The ICU and LCU are currently (May 15) in discussion to decide on this matter. Unfortunately, the deadline for submitting the reports to FIDE is May 17 (2 months after the tournament end dates). We can still submit after this deadline, but the ICU will have to pay late submission fines. For those involved on both the LCU and ICU side, a quick decision would be good. (Update: the deadline passed without a decision being made.)

Status Report on New Rating System

The new ratings site is now routinely being used by tournament controllers to upload their reports. If you're a controller and you haven't yet read the guidelines, please do so.

All tournaments have been rated and players can login and see how their ratings are calculated. However, please note that:

We are still on target for having the new site ready by the beginning of next season, at which point it will take over completely from the old system. It's expected that the September list will be the last one calculated by the old system. During 2012-13 more information will be made available on how to use the new site, both for controllers and players.

Differences between the Rating Systems

Most players have the same or similar ratings (within one or two points) in the new and old systems. Most differences are caused by recently discovered problems that occurred before the January list. It's easy to correct problems, even ones that occurred months ago, in the new system but not always so easy in the old one. Here's a list of all currently known problems:

When the new system acquires the ability to generate rating lists we will retrospectively correct the January, May and September 2012 rating lists.


Created 2012-05-15 ◦ Last updated 2014-07-23 ◦ Editor MO


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