ACF ratings restoration

[Alex_Moiseyev]

I am glad to inform you that today ACF President Alan Millhone approved ACF rating processing restoration and assigned this unit of work to Mr. & Mrs. Strange. All information about ACF and International events played since last processing will be transfer to Eric and his wife in the next several days. In order to restart the process and make it faster and easy, Eric and his wife will use existing formula, but future changes and adjustments are likely.

In addition to previous procedure, ACF President Alan Millhone also requested from Eric and his wife to develop and utilize usage of two Rating lists: "A" - regular list which is up to date, "B" - list which contains inactive players who didn't participate in any processed events for more than 5 years.

I am very glad that one of our most valuable historical heritage, ACF Ratings, will be reanimated and keep alive. I believe that first time ACF started run ratings somewhere in 70's ... am I right with this assumption ?

Eric, I personally want to thank you and your wife for your energy, enthusiasm and intention to help and serve ACF ... as well as you served our country. Good luck with your new duties and ignore criticism It is always easy to say something rather than do things.

Respectfully,

Alex Moiseyev

[Eric Strange]

Thank you Alex. I am pleased that I can do this for the ACF. I remember after I played my first tournament in 07 I checked the website at least twice a week waiting for the ratings to be updated. I eventually gave up and was very disappointed with the ACF because rating has to be the most important thing to young players. On gaming sites people waste their time cheating to boost their ratings. Picking and choosing who they play to get their rating higher. All the work that goes into people getting their ratings... I'm sure that an official rating in the ACF means a lot. I actually have a friend of mine who is a VERY good checkers player who quit checkers because he didn't see a point in playing in a tournament because ratings don't even get updated.

Once again i am honored to be able to take care of this. i have a friend who is a programmer who programs all of my websites for me. I am going to have him write up a web based rating calculator using the formula so they can be updated easily and instantly online (I may even have a section for ACF members to input data and calculate their own ratings just to see what it is in case they are too curious to wait for the site to be updated. He took a look at the formula yesterday and said it would probably take him 30 minutes. He said he could have coded that pairing program you guys bought in about 5 minutes.

Thank you for the responsibility.

-Eric Strange

[Eric Strange]

Eh,

So my coder took a closer look at the formula and all the variables and the time he quoted me earlier has changed a bit. It will be a pretty extensive program to take in account all of the variables involved with the main formula. He said he can still do it but it will take a little more time. He still said he could have done the pairings program in 5 minutes though. I will have him start working on this for us. I am still waiting for all of the information I'm going to need to do the ratings. But rest assured this will be very nice. The beauty of this ACF rating calculator my coder is going to write will be that if I happen to die or something crazy any trained monkey could use the program and take over the job. He can't do the job for free so if anyone would like to donate a little money toward this program I would greatly appreciate it. Any little bit helps.
donations@bored-games.net is my paypal.

Thanks for your donation Josh. You're really showing how much you care.

Eric Strange

[Jason Solan]

Also, I would like to volunteer my time. The site's results are faulty and the php code is bad. I think if we want to be more professional, we should actually have updated results and an updated roster of champions. For example, it lists Elbert Lowder as the 11-man Ballot champion. What kind of impression do we give to outsiders about the leadership and efficiency of operations if we're listing individuals who have been dead, who haven't been state champions for years now. It's ludicrous quite frankly, and I would like to fix it, if given the chance.

Josh, I appreciate your enthusiasm.
I was actually working the background to update the php code for the tournaments to give us a better way to handle it until my server crashed several weeks ago. I'll gladly take some help in fixing the many things that need it. Tournament results are one of those things that we usually get volunteers for and after they report one or two it goes by the wayside again.
I'll contact you privately later today after I get home from work.

[Alex_Moiseyev]

Yea-a-a As professional computer programmer with more than 25 years experience I can confirm that regular maintenance and support on daily basis is as important and crucial as development and installation new things.

In our situation with ratings when everything will be done, tested and implemented - we still need someone to do routine job: enter manually tournament results and update list of inactive and/or passed away players.

Unfortunately educated and trained monkey can't do this ... unless it can read and understand certain things

It is not easy to do this in real time after end of each event. Thats why I think we may have two sets of ratings: official lists "A" and "B" which are upgraded every 3-6 months and "provisional list "A" which is upgraded after each event.

Someone maybe on vacation or have other family business / activities which may keep him/her away for some period of time.

I really like Eric and Josh enthusiasm, but just want to remind you that I am a "cautios optimist" in real life and across the board ! It would be great if Josh join with Jason and help him and Eric concentrate on rating things. Many good and nice things can be done for imporvement, but like in checkers game - just one move on time. (ohhh ... how old and boring I look ???)

To JR Smith and Dr. Richard Beckwith: Folks, did you have a chance and time to send Eric tournament/matches results and cross tables of International and domestic events accumulated since we processed ratings last time ? Without this information he and his friend don't have a chance to start testing and even coding.

Regards,

Alex Moiseyev

[JR Smith]

This is wonderful news... my site is open and nothing is encrypted so everything may be copied or downloaded. All tournament results and crosstables are linked by calendar date of that event. Look under Calendar or ScoreSheets. I was excited about Jonathan McDonald taking over the rating system, emailed him files I received from Dave Butler. I could never get Butler's program to run on my system and I tried both XP and Vista. I never got an email or phone call from McDonald.

I have always thought one central site for tournament and results would be ideal like ACF site. The only reason I started NC Checkers was so our players would have a site to see an updated current event calendar and tourney results on a timely basis. This is more work that I originally realized. Like Nationals now... I have other commitments that demanded priority over checkers. I can only imagine how Jason manages the ACF site and does his school and other work loads. BTY for free!

I want to help Eric any way possible. I will call him and find out how I can help + make a donation.

[Alex_Moiseyev]

I could never get Butler's program to run on my system

Wait a minute ... do you have Butler program on your computer ??? Is that .exe file or real code ? Maybe you can also pass it to Eric friend who can try fix and get up and running ? This could save alot of time. But this make sense only if you have an actual source code, not object code.

Anyway, Eric you have to show your friend JR post and you can revisit his website http://www.nccheckers.org and start from there. Dr. Beckwith probably also may have (not sure) this information on his computer.

JR, what was the last event which Butler processed ?

Separate, "rating only" small site or collection of pages under one directory would make sense.

Regards,

Alex

[Jason Solan]

One thing we ought to keep in mind if the rating system is to be redesigned (delivered in 30 minutes or your next tournament is free?) is compatibility with the crosstables that WinTD, SwissSys, Swissperfect, etc can export. It will take a while, of course, but if we can train TDs to use such software and deliver results in a standardized format, it will cut back on a lot of data entry on both ends. I'm still trying out software for the 2010 Nationals, but so far it looks like SwissSys has an edge over WinTD.

This is the most important key. Calculating ratings isn't the hard part, thats just running numbers through a formula. The most difficult part of ratings is getting the crosstables in a consistent format, which takes many hours of human checking.

What would be truly fantastic is if we could do one of the following
A. Get everyone to agree on a standard piece of software
B. Start a project to code said software and deliver it for free to any TD that wants it
C. Find/Write converters to change the various formats from the other programs into one consistent format.

Sadly this still leaves open the issue of player's names, which will need human interaction. For instance, I recall getting older ratings to post where the same player was listed twice with different spellings. This means that both ratings would have been incorrect for them as well as anyone who played them.

Ratings processor is not a job I covet. I wish best of luck to you Eric.

[Alex_Moiseyev]

I just received a copy of email from Dr. Richard Beckwith to Eric which included alot of text with examination both rating systems ACF and WCDF, feedback and past information regarding rating processing. Attachments contained various files and Richard correspondence with Dave Butler (before he left) about the system he used - it's elements and advantages.

Fantastic, professional, very descriptive email. Many thanks to Dr. Beckwith for helping Eric with jump start.

Eric, you are not alone in this jungle but with all this help there is still a work which only you can do and everyone badly wanted it and anticipated !

Good luck with new challenge, boy ! I also can predict that you may need to contact eventually (soon!) with Igor Keder from Czech Republic - WCDF Rating processor.

Regards,

AM

[Eric Strange]

Thank you all for your support in this whole rating thing. I haven't sunk my teeth into it yet or had a chance to examine the cross tables. I have looked over the formula and read the email from Rich and from what he explained about the differences I may be making some changes and working with WCDF to get on the same page. My questions about calculating ratings against ACF players playing foreign players overseas still has not been answered. How is that calculated. Do I use their WCDF rating against our ACF rating???? If so it seems like a better idea to switch to WCDF rating system. Again to get on the same page. My programmer can create easy web based application to do pairings, rating calculation or basically anything any of you can think of. He does professional work for me for a small fraction of what he charges anyone else. So again if anyone wants to help me pay him to get it done quickly that would be excellent. Otherwise we have to wait til I have enough and I already pay for my server, advertising and coding work he does for my sites currently, so it will take a lot longer to get these projects created. But the ACF needs it badly.

[Alex_Moiseyev]

Eric, here are my personal thoughts. You can accept them, ignore, or accept partially. The main thing is that now everything is very much under your control and you can make decision on your own. Thats about details and tactics. But concerning global strategy change - completely join with WCDF rating system - goes up to ACF Exec Committee.

1. You can use Mr. Buttler formula or WCDF formula, or combination, or any other formula and methods, but ... ACF and WCDF ratings will be always separate and differ from each other and there will be always two separate sets. So - your input should be ACF ratings when Mr. Butler stopped. And everything will be re-calculated from there.

Remember - after years WCDF may be there or not, but ACF is forever

2. Use WCDF rating for foreign players who doesn't have ACF ratings.

3. You can exchange files with Mr. Keder 1-2 times a year. So - it may become a part of official ACF Rating Report showing both numbers: ACF rating and WCDF rating. You can even give a reader an option to resort report base on rating !

4. In my personal opinion the formula which Mr. Buttler used is OK but probably needs to be improved and adjusted for "provisional period"

5. When you will make decision about which formula to use for ACF ratings, along with other things keep in mind one more important consideration: easy maintenance.

BTW. In chess and other forms of checkers/draughts often enough some countries have their National rating and title systems which are different from International. For instance, there is USA chess rating system and FIDE chess rating system.

All for now.

Regards,

Alex

[Eric Strange]

There is one thing that Rich said that I dislike about Mr. Butlers way and that is that it made it very difficult for an improving player to raise their ratings to show their improvement. This is the time when we need to start catering to the new blood in this game but at the same time I don't want to take away anything that the older masters and grandmasters have earned over the years. I think a rating system should reflect how much your improving as you improve. Also basing the formula on 128 games is a little far fetched this day in age as well. Sure some people meet that type of quota but the average working American doesn't get to play in tournaments anywhere near that. I do agree with a provisional type of system for upcoming players because that gives someone a goal to meet.

But again my opinions are based solely off the LITTLE bit that I understand and may change seriously once I get deeper into this.

Thank you,

Eric Strange

[Alex_Moiseyev]

Eric, I don't see any problems though I am not an expert. If it is difficult to fix his system for new players, lets use WCDF system. The main point is that ACF shall continue to restore and run their Rating processing from the point where we stopped.

If we will use WCDF system and in addition - WCDF ratings when players don't have ACF ratings, then on long run ratings in both systems will be close.

You are welcome to contact with Mr. Igor Keder and he may help you with software and start up processing. Make sure that new system for 3-moves and 11 man ballot events count ballot, not a single game. This is the only thing in their system which I don't like. Anything else is OK.

Regards,

Alex

[liam stephens]

The following, you may find, are among the chief distorting elements.

The drift factor ( A sort of Parkinson’s Law – all ratings drift inevitably upwards and those of the top rated player drift up absolutely, refer to Glickman))



The compression syndrome (scoring by points per game instead of points per round will greatly compress the bandwith of the ratings)


The apples and oranges syndrome ( The dubious practice of including such a wide range of strengths of tournaments from the strongest master tournaments right down to the non serious friendly or fun day events, all in one huge higgledy piggeldy amorphous mass )

[Alex_Moiseyev]

I spoke yesterday again with Eric over the phone and we agreed to use points which organisers reported. Some states count ballot, other (most) count each game, 3-moves National count the whole 4 games micro-match. It would be more proper to use the same points which organisers used.

For the time now Eric plans to read all information from Dr. Beckwith about old formula and learn more about WCDF method. After than he will examine and compare both systems and choose best. This may take a bit longer than expected but will be much more efficient and benefficiary at the end. Just one time shot.

As ACF Rating Processor Eric should learn everything related to ratings and eventually become an expert ! Way to go ...

Regards,

Alex