The rating list maintainer can also send a copy to the club
secretaries for checking.
- The club secretary can then send requests for manual changes if
some rating does not agree with actual strength (see below).
- Membership errors in the rating list can be reported to the treasurer by the club secretary after checking that the player name in game results properly matches the member name reported to the membership database.
It is important that players, organisers and club secretaries
report results for the rating system to work. We hope that players will
regularly check the rating list which contains also full detail of all their
games and will report mistakes. One of the specific features of the Belgian system is
that it allows to enter club games (i.e., results of less formal games between club members if they both agree in advance that the game is taken into account), this helps the ratings to evolve more smoothly with the changing rating of progressing players.
The ratings
How to submit results
Always write the name of players as LastName FirstName, e.g.
Bogaerts Jan
Accents (éèëü...) are discarded and the system
is case insensitive. Also the system makes no difference between Van Der
Steen and Vandersteen.
Ranks are represented by a number and k or d. e.g. 3k means 3 kyu and 2d
means 2 dan.
Tournaments
We recommend that you use MacMahon by Ch.Gerlach.
Just send the .TUR file and the "wall-list for the rating program" export
you can make with the program.
If you prefer to do things manually, follow this example:
1 Qi Chen 3D BE 15 9+ 2+ 4+ 3+ 5+ 5
2 Bogaerts Jan 3D BE 14 12+ 1- 6+ 7+ 4+ 4 66
3 Frehe Renee 3D NL 14 10+ 5+ 8+ 1- 9+ 4 64
4 Kok Rob 3D NL 13 6+ 15+ 1- 8+ 2- 3 65
5 Van der Kroght Harry 1D NL 13 16+ 3- 11+ 17+ 1- 3 63
6 Wong Chi-Yiu 2D BE 13 4- 12+ 2- 15+ 8+ 3 62
So there is one player per line. Each line consists of field separated by
spaces. The fields are:
- Place in the tournament
- LastName FirstName
- Rank
- Country (BE or BEL for Belgian players !)
- Info (in this case macmahon score)
- Results for every round. For handicap games write
2+/b4 if this player played black and received 4 stones.
His opponent will have 10-/w4
Club Games
Use a text file with one game per line.
Each line has 4 items seperated by ',':
<Black>,<White>,<Handicap>,<Result>
Handicap is one digit 0..9 and Result is B for Black wins and W for White
wins. Player names may be followed by (rank), which will be used when
the player is not a member. E.g.
Ramon Jan,Lazarev Alexei (6d),4,W
is a handicap game between a Belgian player and a Russian 6 dan, with 4
handicap, won by white.
How ratings are computed
Ratings
Up to May 2001, a rather complicated
formula was used to compute ratings.
In its meeting of May 2001, the rating commission decided to simplify
the formula to make it mathematically better and more understandable.
Since June 2001, a new formula is used.
It was originally based on the EGF ratings model at that time.
Since then, several modifications have been made, e.g., to avoid punishing white in handicap games against improving black players, to alloax games on smaller board sizes, etc. We may not have followed all EGF modifications made over that time.
Grades
Ratings between 100(d-1) and 100d (d>=1) correspond to a grade of d dan.
E.g. and average 3 dan has a rating of 250.
Ratings between -100k and -100(k-1) (k>=1) correspond to a grade of
k kyu. E.g. and average 10 kyu has a rating of -950.
As soon as a player obtains a rating above the maximum rating for his grade,
he is promoted. As soon as a player drops 100 below the minimum rating for
his grade, he is demoted. E.g. a player increasing from 95 to 101 points is
promoted to 2 dan. A 5 kyu player dropping from -490 to -510 remains 5 kyu.
If his rating decreases further to -601, he becomes 6 kyu.
Ratings are always computed for a complete event. A 1 dan
player with rating 99 winning first 2 games and losing then 3 games in a
tournament, ending up at 90, remains 1 dan even if he would have a 2 dan
rating after the first day of the tournament.
Corrections to grades are possible if new information is added.
E.g. suppose a player is -510.
He plays a tournament on May 1st and on May 10th.
Suppose the organiser of the first tournament reports the results late.
As a result of the tournament of May 10th, the player increases to -490,
becoming 5 kyu. If later the information of the first tournament is added,
both tournaments are recalculated.
If this player appears to have lost 50 rating points at May 1st, and ends up
at -525 after May 10th, he remains 6kyu.
Manual Changes
Players that didn't play or report results for some time can have a strength
significantly different from what is in the rating list.
Players stronger than 6kyu should motivate any request for manual change
of their strength (reporting results in recent tournaments etc.). The
request will be submitted to the rating commission.
For players weaker than 6 kyu, the club secretary can propose a new rank
if the new rank differs at least 2 grades from what is in the rating list.
If both the club secretary and the player fail to report deviations of
actual strength from the ratings, the rating commission may decide to
manually change ratings based on tournament results. This includes but is
not limited to cases where players perform 0/5, 4/5 or 5/5 or where kyu
players register for a tournament with a different rank than the official
one (which may be interpreted as a self-promotion) and score at least 3/5.
It should be noted however, that dan players are not allowed to register for
tournaments with a different rank, and that kyu players should be very
careful in doing so. In any case, requesting a change is preferred rather than
registering for a tournament with another rank.
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