Gradings

There’s been a longer than usual gap between grading lists, because I was concerned that too many grades were based on too few results, and I wanted to use a longer base period for the new list. The new grades are based on 909 results reported between EP847 and EP864. As in the previous list, anyone with fewer than 15 results has a grade based partly on their previous (2005) results. All the quoted grades are based on a minimum of 5 results, but well over half the grades are based on more than 10 results from this period. Congratulations to Vivian Jones, replacing Peter Catt at the top of the heap after a very strong series of results.

I’m in the process of establishing a new system which will give a continuously updated grading, so there will be no need to wait for a whole new list to see how your results ae improving – or not! Once that is up and running we will probably print an annual list, but I hope to keep an up to date list on the website.

If anyone wants to know which results their grading is based on, and how the final figure is calculated, I can provide individual records by e-mail, or send me a SAE. This includes members not listed, who may have played too few games to produce a meaningful grade. I can also provide details of the system I’ve used to anyone who’s interested – though “system” might be stretching things a bit far!

Because the grades are based solely on games within the club, there is no guarantee that they are equivalent to any external grades. You shouldn’t quote them as evidence of playing strength for other competitions. As I wrote last time, I would like to benchmark our grades against other systems, postal or OTB, and to do this I would need as many members as possible who have “external” grades to let me know how those compare to Natcor grades. If 30 or so members were willing to do so, I think I could work out a reasonable reliable “exchange rate”. Contact me if you have a grade you are willing to disclose!

One final note of caution. Any grading is fairly arbitrary, depending on the strength of opponents you happen to play, as much as your results against them. Almost half the players listed have less than ten results during the period, further reducing accuracy. I would suggest that differences between grades of less than 50 points are fairly unhelpful as a guide to relative playing strength, and even larger differences will sometimes be misleading.

NAME	2006/2007	2004/2005	2003/2004	2002
Ackerley, Les	1634	1829	2171	2299
Ackley, Peter	1984	1999	1982	1904
Allport, Andy	1845	1751	1854	1859
Arney, Anthony	1811	1791	1956	1870
Ayres, Jim	1935	-	-	-
Bailey, Stephen	2076	2165	2033	1921
Banks, Geoff	1840	1929	1954	1924
Barrett, Gordon	2005	1974	1960	1960
Beresford, Alan	2195	-	-	-
Bickley, Charles	1592	1724	1730	1718
Birch, Owen	1883	1814	1676	1676
Blackwell, Eric	1662	-	-	-
Borg, Spiro	1956	-	-	-
Brown, Julian	1908	1716	-	-
Bush, Freddie	2008	1987	-	-
Butcher, Doug	2046	2083	-	-
Callow, Chris	2197	2215	1958	1860
Catt, Peter	2226	2236	2173	2173
Caulkett, Peter	2063	1781	1864	1906
Chamberlain, Andy	2193	2194	2081	2101
Clements, Michael	2101	-	-	-
Cope, Jerry	1828	1885	1894	1894
Coyne, Dave	2199	2145	2069	1994
Cranmer, Stan	1960	1958	1886	1822
Davey, Alan	2131	-	-	-
Davies, Barry	1875	1836	1865	1865
Dawkins, John	2126	2040	1986	1759
Donovan, John	1878	-	-	-
Douglas, Craig	1970	1816	1702	1661
Dowell, Chris	1738	1882	1837	1837
Drury, Phil	1918	2022	1891	1740
Elwood, David	1970	1758	1897	1867
Evans, David	1903	1872	1949	1949
Finch, John	1751	1766	1846	1956
Foran,Jim	2020	2103	2016	2016
Frith David	1678	-	-	-
Frith, Ron	1933	2057	1906	1889
Garvock, Jim	2134	1843	2008	1857
Goodwin, Brian	2115	2075	1994	1994
Hardy, David	2222	2048	1959	2009
Hipwell, Colin	1638	1681	1822	1863
Hurley, Karen	1632	-	-	-
Hutton, Harry	1661	1813	1750	1812
Iles, Stuart	1925	2017	1896	1812
Jones, Bryan	1794	1625	1757	1919
Jones, Chris	1786	1912	1829	1829
Jones, Vivian

Natcor Grading List 2006/2007