The Good Old Days

reunion

checknraise wrote: »

Ehh no, the same logic that you use to say a chess player 100 years in the past would get destroyed is entirely applicable to golf but the truth is nobody has a clue and we wont know until someone has worked out how to travel back in time. Will gladly volunteer!

I didn't say destroyed, they could be better, the exact same or worse. The point was a chess rating doesn't equate to a specific measurable point.

checknraise wrote: »

The ELO rating system is probably the fairest indicator their is over any sport or game to measure ones skill. So much so that it used by other sports and organisations. No its not perfect but I think it is pretty clear the higher rated someone is the better at chess they are.

So like I said, the rating merely serves to indicate how likely someone is to perform against another rated opponent. I never said it was unfair, but pinning a rating requirement to an arbitrary number seems peculiar when rating certainly does not equate to a measurable point.

checknraise wrote: »

The purpose of the Irish chess championships is to determine the best player in Ireland for a given year. As there are only 9 rounds it is important the number of players that enter are over a certain standard so that all the games are as competitive as possible and the best players play each other.

I agree that this tournament has a maximum number of players (I'd say around the 60 mark) so there does need to be limits but in what way is a 1900 playing a 2590 (Baburin's FIDE rating Jan-2001) competitive? Someone who is 1899 produces the same competitive game. Which then begs the question:

Why is the rating set at 1900?


My two cents: I'd argue for the rating to be set at 2000 so it is in line with the Masters sections (where there are 4 sections) around the country. Then winners of the Challengers sections (1600 - 1999 sections) or 3.5/6 in sections where it is 1600+, provincial/national champions and an ICU executive nominee would be permitted to enter. 2100 at least aligns with a different K factor; 1900 to me doesn't seem to align to anything and I don't recall any discussion why it is set at this point.

sodacat11

reunion wrote: »

Y







I don't know a lot about golf (never said I did), but if someone was using the SAME equipment and had the SAME handicap 100 years ago and then was transported to play on the same course 100 years in the future with the SAME conditions they would perform at the SAME level. You can measure someone's handicap based on their play.

However, if a chess player rated 1500 100 years ago was to play 100 1500 players they would get 50/100 (because they are 1500 and that's what that indicates) transport 100 years in the future, they would not get 50/100 against 100 1500 players of today.

If I told you person A has a 1900 rating. What does that equate to? Knowing 1 opening trick? Mastering the end game? The answer is nothing, just how likely that person could beat someone else on the same rating system. There is no benchmark of what being 1900 actually means (and why they can be rated 2100 on the FIDE lists).

You only have to look at the vast majority of Junior players who shoot up in ratings every year to show how much even a year could make!

Answer me this:
What is the purpose of the Irish Championships?

For a start a golfer's handicap is based on how he performs against a golf course so obviously someone who could play to scratch on a course 100 years ago would obviously do far better on that same course today with all the improvements in equipment.
A 1900 rating shows that a player has achieved a certain playing strength. As you rightly point out juniors can gain a huge amount of points very quickly because of their huge k factor. It follows then that it is even easier for juniors to achieve a 1900 rating so what is the problem in insisting that they do so?
The purpose of the Irish Championship is to find an Irish Champion and as someone said this should ideally be the strongest player. In 2012 I was joint leader going into the last round due in no small measure to the fact that I had lost a couple of early games then got to play a few relative "weakies" . Had I not got black against Stephen Brady in the last round I could well have become Irish Champion but there is no way that I was among the strongest players in the tournament. Had the 1900 rating floor been observed it would have been very unlikely that someone like me could have won four games in a row and found myself in the position that I was in. Having underrated players in the championship dilutes the strength and integrity of it.

sodacat11

Mikail
Your post surprises me. My memory of all the earlier Irish Championships I played in is that I never played anyone rated under 1900. The table you show is particularly interesting, I can't understand how players like Kennefick, Mc Daid and some of the others mentioned didn't have ratings because they were very strong players.I can only assume it's a typo or that whoever complied the list just didn't know the ratings of all the players.

sodacat11

[QUOTE=reunion;100119520

Why is the rating set at 1900?


My two cents: I'd argue for the rating to be set at 2000 so it is in line with the Masters sections (where there are 4 sections) around the country. Then winners of the Challengers sections (1600 - 1999 sections) or 3.5/6 in sections where it is 1600+, provincial/national champions and an ICU executive nominee would be permitted to enter. 2100 at least aligns with a different K factor; 1900 to me doesn't seem to align to anything and I don't recall any discussion why it is set at this point.[/QUOTE]

No good reason for 1900, it does seem a strange benchmark.
2000 is generally accepted to be expert strength so that would be the best minimum requirement for an Irish Championship. 2000 and no exceptions unless one player was needed to even up the numbers.

mikhail

sodacat11 wrote: »

Mikail
Your post surprises me. My memory of all the earlier Irish Championships I played in is that I never played anyone rated under 1900. The table you show is particularly interesting, I can't understand how players like Kennefick, Mc Daid and some of the others mentioned didn't have ratings because they were very strong players.I can only assume it's a typo or that whoever complied the list just didn't know the ratings of all the players.

I expect that the 72 table is missing some information all right. Or, possibly that the rating system was still being established here and even some strong players were still unrated. The same site has some interesting records on that: http://www.irlchess.com/2013/06/16/the-early-days-of-icu-ratings/

I'd also guess that the floors were better observed in the late 70s and the 80s when chess was more popular here thanks to Fischer and so there was no shortage of strong players. (This is why I think the real solution to your problem is more juniors, not fewer!)

zeitnot

The ratings in the 1972 report are Leinster Chess Union ratings: see below the table on the Pairings & Results page. This explains why Munster and Ulster players have no rating listed. Paul Henry was a very strong player for example (later 2400 FIDE).

If anyone has the ICU ratings from the last list before this event, please send them. It's not that easy because lists were sporadic back then, and even when you have a list it's not obvious that it was the last one before the event.

On all these reports, on the "Information" page at the end of the first block, there's a "Sources and Notes" link that takes you to a separate page. In this case that page shows that the LCU ratings come mostly from John Gibson's notebooks for the 1971-72 Armstrong Cup.

I don't know exactly when the 1900 cutoff came in. It must have been sometime in the mid-70's. I have the impression it was in force by 1979, when I first played, but probably wasn't in place in 1972.

sodacat11

2000 seems the most logical cut off point to me and as it is an Irish Championship with supposedly ICU registered players I think that ICU ratings only should be used. FIDE ratings can be very misleading and often only based on one or two tournaments. Many people have FIDE ratings 100 points or more higher than their ICU rating.
If one was to list the players for this years Irish Championship using just ICU ratings it would soon become evident just how weak a field it is.

Lucena

Purely guesswork here, but the 1900 cut-off mark may have just been put at that level to juggle between having the better players participate and making sure enough players were eligible to have sufficient numbers playing.

zeitnot

From the Irish Times, June 15, 1972 p. 4: "Details of Irish Chess Championship" ... "All players with a national grading of 1,900 and over are eligible to compete".

On a quick search I can't find any such statement in relation to the 1971 championship, so the rule seems to date to 1972.

EnPassant

zeitnot wrote: »

From the Irish Times, June 15, 1972 p. 4: "Details of Irish Chess Championship" ... "All players with a national grading of 1,900 and over are eligible to compete".

On a quick search I can't find any such statement in relation to the 1971 championship, so the rule seems to date to 1972.

1979 was my first Irish Championship also. I was thrilled when my rating reached 1900 at the end of the season and immediately sent off my entry for the Irish. Looking back, you will see that that in the 1979 tournament I was one of four players with ratings of exactly 1900 .. which seems somewhat unlikely statistically. Perhaps there was some judicious "rounding-up" taking place ..

There was also a period in the late 1980s where you could qualify for the Irish Championship by achieving a certain result in qualification tournaments. Not sure how long this lasted but I think it was in effect for Derry in 1987.

Looking at this year's entrants, all but one have had an ICU rating of 1900+ at some point in 2016 and the one exception has a 2000+ FIDE.

So in reality there is not much difference between this year and the "good old days" ....

sodacat11

Having "had" a 1900+ rating at some point is hardly a recommendation as they could be 1600 now.
1900 used to be the benchmark for the Leinster Championship too when it was a stand alone event, and a very strong one at that, and not just something incorporated into the Malahide or City of Dublin tournaments.
As far as I remember the City of Dublin used to be for 2000+ players.
I think that there is room on the Irish chess calendar for every type of event, junior, intermediate, senior,over 60s, under 12s and also for tournaments with different rating bands, Opens, over 1600, 0ver 1800 , under 2200 etc etc something to give everyone a chance but above all this should be just one elite tournament, The Irish Championship, with a strict rating floor of something like 2000 ICU (not FIDE)

sodacat11

Good to see that ten boards from the Irish Ch will be broadcast live each day but with only fourteen entrants so far, and only three of them having any chance of winning it, it is not going to be the most exciting championship ever.
I have no doubt whatsoever that had all the 2100+ (ICU rated) players in the country been emailed by the ICU some months ago and told that this year's championship would be strictly for 2000+ (ICU rated) players and that the plan was to have one of the strongest Irish Championships ever then many of the better known players would have responded and made every effort to play.
I know from a personal point of view that were such a tournament promised for next year I would already be wiping the dust off my chess books and figuring out which tournaments I should play in during the year to get my rating back over 2000.
I predicted some time ago that ignoring the rating floor and the continued adoption of a "quantity not quality" approach would eventually backfire and destroy the Irish Championship and sadly now my prediction is coming true. I can see a situation in the coming years where the top placed Irish player in Bunratty or Kilkenny is awarded the title of Irish Champion much like what happens with the Malahide event and the Leinster Championship.

checknraise

The entries do seem a bit weaker than normal but there are a couple of days left to enter. I would be surprised if atleast 1 of Stephen or Philip do not try and defend their title.

reunion

sodacat11 wrote: »

I predicted some time ago that ignoring the rating floor and the continued adoption of a "quantity not quality" approach would eventually backfire and destroy the Irish Championship and sadly now my prediction is coming true.

Your version of destroy is different to everyone else. Personally, a low turnout and high cost tournament is a massive disaster for an exceptionally low budget organisation such as the ICU.

In the tournament 10 years ago in 2006, had 2 of the top 15 playing in it, 4 of the top 30 (Granted 1 or 2 players aren't on the May 2006 rating list). For your version of "quality" the championships this year has 3 of the top 15 in it already! Making your argument that this tournament is quantity not quality absolutely rubbish.

Personally I would envision the tournament either

A. Being limited to 8 players all play all - Highest Irish placed in the U18 Champion, Irish Open, Bunratty (or other) Masters, Women's Champion, Leinster Champion, Munster Champion, Connaught Champion and Ulster Champion.

B. The Olympiad team should be mandated to play in one of the 2 Irish Championships prior to an Olympiad to be qualified to play. Exactly like the Junior criteria. To qualify you either have a minimum rating of 2000 in the May rating list (strictly adhered to) OR If you score 4.5/6 in a weekender (such as 1600-2000 section, or 3/6 in a 1600+ section) OR you are the U18/U16 Champion, Women's champion, Veteran's champion, Provincial Champion you qualify to play irrespective of rating.


Personally I'd prefer option B.

sodacat11

B. The Olympiad team should be mandated to play in one of the 2 Irish Championships prior to an Olympiad to be qualified to play. Exactly like the Junior criteria. To qualify you either have a minimum rating of 2000 in the May rating list (strictly adhered to) OR If you score 4.5/6 in a weekender (such as 1600-2000 section, or 3/6 in a 1600+ section) OR you are the U18/U16 Champion, Women's champion, Veteran's champion, Provincial Champion you qualify to play irrespective of rating.


Personally I'd prefer option B.

Most adults have jobs and family commitments, juniors don't.

Your suggestion "A" is ludicrous

zeitnot

reunion wrote: »

Personally I would envision the tournament either

A. Being limited to 8 players all play all - Highest Irish placed in the U18 Champion, Irish Open, Bunratty (or other) Masters, Women's Champion, Leinster Champion, Munster Champion, Connaught Champion and Ulster Champion.

Complicated.

reunion wrote: »

B. The Olympiad team should be mandated to play in one of the 2 Irish Championships prior to an Olympiad to be qualified to play. Exactly like the Junior criteria. To qualify you either have a minimum rating of 2000 in the May rating list (strictly adhered to) OR If you score 4.5/6 in a weekender (such as 1600-2000 section, or 3/6 in a 1600+ section) OR you are the U18/U16 Champion, Women's champion, Veteran's champion, Provincial Champion you qualify to play irrespective of rating.

Very complicated.

sodacat11

For your version of "quality" the championships this year has 3 of the top 15 in it already! Making your argument that this tournament is quantity not quality absolutely rubbish.

Who was it that said something about lies, damn lies and statistics?
Reunion's 3/15 comment is very misleading, one could also say that 45 of the top 50 are NOT playing.

mikhail

reunion wrote: »

Personally I would envision the tournament either

A. Being limited to 8 players all play all - Highest Irish placed in the U18 Champion, Irish Open, Bunratty (or other) Masters, Women's Champion, Leinster Champion, Munster Champion, Connaught Champion and Ulster Champion.

While I appreciate what you're trying there, the U19 champion (there is no U18 champion unless things have changed recently) can be as weak as 1600, the Women's champion also. There isn't a Connaught championship to my knowledge, and there are relatively few players outside of Galway. You'd get a horribly unbalanced tournament, where three or four players would compete for the title while hammering some totally uncompetitive others. The draw for colours would probably determine the champion some years. I could see a small round robin tournament working, but it'd need to have less stuffing. Or you could qualify the women's and u19 champions, but in a bigger tournament like it currently looks.

B. The Olympiad team should be mandated to play in one of the 2 Irish Championships prior to an Olympiad to be qualified to play. Exactly like the Junior criteria.

The juniors have to play in a weekender. The Irish is not a weekender. And the Olympiad also requires substanial holiday time. I have no problem requiring reasonable domestic activity from Olympiad hopefuls (though surely some consideration should be made for active players who happen to live abroad), but this is too onerous.

Pete Morriss

mikhail wrote: »

There isn't a Connaught championship to my knowledge ... .

Whilst I don't want to get involved on the question of who should be eligible to play in the Irish Championship, I should point out that for the last four years the Connaught champion has been the highest-placed eligible player in the Galway Congress. As the current Connaught champion is also the current Irish champion, this is not a mickey-mouse title.

zeitnot

Entries for this year's championship close tomorrow, and so far there's an alarmingly small entry of just 12. There may be a last-minute rush, but if not, what are the reasons?

Some candidates:
A. Don't like the watering down of rating qualifications
B. Venue announced too late, couldn't arrange time off work / accommodation / whatever
C. Can't or don't want to (or are not allowed to) allocate 9 full days to the same tournament year in, year out
D. Other work or travel commitments this year at championship time
E. Other chess commitments this year at championship time

Might be interesting to see a survey of all players who might reasonably be expected to consider entering. 'A' has been suggested here already, 'B' must be a factor this year (the notice went out on April 28), but surely 'C' must be a limiting factor no matter what you do (short of switching to two games a day).

must have a jest

I count 14.

zeitnot

I'm not sure what the significance is of the last two names appearing with a different format. I had assumed they were in the under 1900 section, but that doesn't seem to be the reason. So yes, 14. Better, but still very poor, especially for a championship in Dublin.

brilliantboy

zeitnot wrote: »

I'm not sure what the significance is of the last two names appearing with a different format. I had assumed they were in the under 1900 section, but that doesn't seem to be the reason. So yes, 14. Better, but still very poor, especially for a championship in Dublin.

A Dublin venue can actually act as a deterrent to players based in other parts of the country. Still would expect a higher turnout from Dublin based players.

sodacat11

Players in the 1900- 2200 rating range are very unlikely to win any of the top prizes in an Irish Championship so the only reason we turn up is to get decent games against good players. Few of us are going to give up nine days of the summer to play guys rated 17-1900 on the ICU list.

sodacat11

OH WAIT...the Irish Championship has been saved,some guy I've never heard of with a 1776 ICU and a 1667 FIDE rating has been admitted now. Why not just drop the pretence and make the whole thing an Open because that's all it is?.

must have a jest

@zeitnot,

Agreed, 14 is not great. My guess is that it will get to 15 or 16 at most.

My opinion on your candidates:

A. Nobody other than sodacat ever mentions this. At most there are 2 or 3 others who half agree, but I don't believe many people really care about this.

B. I think the dates and venue were announced earlier than that (in advance of the later announcement of specific details). Perhaps the choice of venue itself was a bit of a risk.

C, D and E apply every year. Maybe some of these factors are more relevant than they used to be.

There is an element of randomness. It applies to all tournaments, and with the already small numbers in the Irish, a drop of 3 or 4 makes big difference. Contrast 2011 (26 players in the Green Isle Hotel) and 2012 (14 players in the Red Cow). And both were open to non-IRL players.

ComDubh

I usually view the Irish this way (approximate rating bands of course):
2200+: top seeds with a decent chance of winning it
2050-2200: the subtop, unlikely winners but robust opposition to the top seeds in every game
1900-2050: Also-rans in terms of winning the event, though will produce a few shock results of course.

Looking at entrant numbers this year, we have:
Top: 3
Subtop: 2
Also-rans: 10

It's very, very bottom heavy, and so many 'top' players are missing. I think a top Irish player looking at taking a week of work to play serious chess would be very tempted to play a strong European open instead.

I'm not sure what it would take to get more of the top players to play. Raising the lower rating band is a good suggestion, but practically it could also help enormously to appoint someone to the role of recruiting for the Irish. Sodacat, your time has come

sodacat11

Thank you for the endorsement Comdubh but I have had my stint as PRO for the ICU and a thankless task that was. I remember that I got RTE radio to do a piece on the Irish Championship on their sports programme (I forget its name).
A reporter turned up at the venue in O'Connell Street, I was brushed aside and didn't even get to talk while an ICU (and LCU) executive went on to bore the entire radio audience with some nonsense about how his son had beaten a GM or gotten a norm or whatever it was. The general public know nothing about norms, ratings or GMs yet this twit took a great chance to promote Irish chess and turned it into a party political broadcast on behalf of his son. Needless to say the item was clipped to about twenty seconds when it was eventually broadcast.
IF I was to try and revive the Irish Championship I would ensure that it was held in a hotel outside of Dublin city centre or somewhere like Cork or Galway. I would hold it in the winter as that is when most people are in "chess mode" and that is when hotels would be more willing to do cut price deals.
I would use only the ICU list for ratings and stick strictly to a 1900 or 2000 minimum requirement. I would contact every eligible Irish player months in advance telling them that we are making a huge effort to make this the best Irish Championship ever and would they please participate.
I would offer huge grading prizes so that the majority, who have no chance of actually winning the title, would have something to play for.
I would broadcast every game live online and I would guarantee the winner a place on the Irish team for the next Olympiad or European Championship depending on which was closer.
I don't know if these measures would restore the prestige that the championship once held but they would certainly help.
Any football fan will remember what a unique event the F.A Cup once was but one year Man U decided not to play in it and to go off to Japan or Brazil or some such place to play a couple of big money exhibition matches instead. This was unheard of and much criticized at the time but the damage was done. Other clubs thought that if Man U weren't even bothered to play in it then maybe it wasn't such a big deal after all so they began to put out second string teams in the early rounds which further diminished interest among the public. The TV rights then went to ITV whose football coverage is pathetic and before long the FA Cup was regarded by many people as being less important than the League Cup. As I am always banging on about, history, integrity and tradition are what makes tournaments great, just look at the All Ireland, The Open, The Masters, Wimbledon, Snooker at the Crucible, The Grand National, The Super Bowl, The Derby. In contrast look what happened to the world chess championship and boxing championships . Different factions broke away and tried to change things and even though they were eventually reunited the damage had been done.
I fear that it is almost too late to save the Irish Championship and this years fiasco is certainly not going to help.

checknraise

The Irish championships is just a reflection of Irish chess at the moment. As I mentioned earlier in the tread master level players are not playing tournaments in Ireland anymore outside of Bunratty and Kilkenny.

The main reason has to be that tournaments are not as strong as they used to be and the recent trend is to make the top sections practically opens. All this does is turn people off playing. The argument is that young players need to play stronger players to improve. I dont buy that now compared to 20 years ago when you can play plenty of titled players online. The result is is that when the young players are strong and need to play stronger players they are not playing in Irish tournaments and it has a knock on effect.

I may not agree with Sodcat11 on every point but I do believe he is right.

sodacat11

Young players are getting massively over inflated ratings because of playing "up" all the time where losses aren't going to cost them much. They would learn more by trying to beat their peers and earning their ratings the hard way like most of us had to do.
I think it is absurd that the Irish Championship now has an uneven number of participants just to accommodate a 1700 rated player. I would be hopping mad if I'd paid 70 euro to enter and then had to take a bye because of this nonsense. The same thing happened last year.