Friday, January 15, 2016

MCF Chess Rating: JAN 2016 Official Release

A happy new year to all my visitors!
 
 
In January 2016 release, there are 23,917 chess players. This represent an increased of 5.8% from 22,613 chess players in Oct 2015. Of which there is more than 22,300 Malaysians in our chess rating database. A unique MCF Chess Rating ID contains 9-Alphanumeric ID was introduced in the October 2013 edition. Please refer to here for more info.
  
Please remember your MCF Chess Rating ID to facilitate registration process of National-rated Events and INSIST on the Event Organisers to key-in your MCF Chess Rating ID into IDNo column of the Swiss Manager file to avoid any rating discrepancies.


This list was done up after spending 33,000 minutes (equal to 550 hours) in following steps:- (1) players' name synchronization between tournament file and rating database, (2) ratings check on each player in each tournament file, (3) re-edit result on unplayed games but key in as played games by Event Arbiters, (4) ratings calculation of each player (more than 5000 of them - It broke the previous high of 3,773 in July 2014 release), (5) manual assignment of K-factor to each player based on individual rating bands, (6) players' rating tabulation, (7) compilation of multiple entries of a player into one single unique entry (3,218 of them in this quarter) aka Pre-Release Rating document, (8) insert 3,218 new/revised ratings into Master database (22,613 as of Oct 2015 release), and finally (9) the extraction process into January Rating release document. All these were done in the last 75 days excluding 1-week that I'm away without my notebook i.e. 5 hours daily for first 30days, 9 hrs daily for the next 21days (thanks to sch holiday - no more teaching at schools), break-off for my year-end holiday, and followed by 12 hours daily in the last 18 days. Usually, it takes around 300hrs for the whole rating tabulation with an average of 2,500 entries per quarter.
 
This is the first time - I'm experiencing back-to-back Quarter release nightmare that never happen in the past 12 years. For your record, there was only 2,364 entries (Jan 2013), 1,591 entries (Jan 2014), 2,136 entries (Jan 2015). This edition "What a SURPRISE! with 5,007 entries".
 
For the past 12 years, I've been doing this MCF Chess Ratings to give a better gauging system for the development of Malaysian Chess especially among the Juniors below aged 12. It took 6 years of education (2004 - 2009) for the chess community to realize the importance of chess ratings for self-development purpose. Things began to change for the better in 2010 where more tournaments were submitted for national ratings. At first I was happy with the change but it didn't last too long. In 2011, little did I realize this 'baby' that I started from scratch in 2002 (Yup... 2 years before it was adopted by MCF and renamed to MCF Chess Ratings) had turned into a little monster that haunted me 4 times in a year.
 
It's time for me to pass this baton to people who are much younger (preferably aged between 20 to 35) who can stay up until 3am and sleep for 3hrs before starting a new day. Please send an email to tsepin@gmail.com if you are interested in this job using the manual system.

It's sad that I didn't receive any application who is willing to continue with my work since I posted on it 3 months ago. However, I did receive 2 inquiries (in this quarter) on whether can this rating tabulation process be automated. I sincerely thank both of them. One of them is willing to test out with some "problematic tun files" by developing a "system" with the objective to automate the following process
(1) players' name synchronization between tournament file and rating database, (2) ratings check on each player in each tournament file.
 
I believe (3) can't be automated. Item (4) to (9) can be automated (real programming work is needed) if there is willing party to build the system for MCF at a small fee or for FREE as a goodwill to Malaysian Chess. Anyway, Item (1) and (2) must be solved, else Garbage In, Garbage Out i.e. "One-tonne" of problems will be created after every quarter release.   
 
 
Click here to download the complete list of MCF Chess Rating List (JAN 2016).

Click here to download the MCF Chess Rating List of 16,364 Malaysian Male Players that represents an additional 865 players (+5.6%) if compared with 3 months ago.

Click here to download the MCF Chess Rating List of 5,942 Malaysian Female Players. An additional of 383 players (+6.9%) if compared with 3 months ago. 
 
For update on specific player's rating changes in the last 3 months, click here.