Latest ECF Ratings

The ECF has finally published the 2016 year-end ratings. For those who don’t know, unlike the USCF or FIDE, who update ratings very regularly, the ECF updates official ratings only every six months.

I am very glad to report that my rating has improved from 111 (1533 Elo) at end June 2016 to 121 (1608) at end December 2016. That now makes an increase of 323 points from my first rating of 1285 at June 2014, to 1608 two and a half years later. This is not spectacular progress, but frankly I am very pleased that I am still improving.

elo

5 thoughts on “Latest ECF Ratings

  • 6th February 2017 at 9:40 am
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    Well done, and I’m pretty sure you can still garner another 100 pts. with your current level of play !

  • 23rd February 2017 at 7:24 am
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    Your and my progress is pretty similar. From the time I started tournament chess to the time that I reached 1608, exactly, was 1 year and 362 days. Your graph starts significantly higher than mine. I’m not sure whether that represents a difference in the UK vs US player pools, or whether that is because you played at ages significantly younger than I did. I wish we could stack up the differences in what we did, and compare the inputs and outputs, so to speak. I’m sure the biggest difference, aside from your training being more sophisticated than mine was back then, was that I played exclusively G/5 for practice. The friend I’ve mentioned, now deceased, gained a tremendous number of points by slapping on 20-25 points per year over many years of retirement. He played as a youth and halted play at about 25 years old, at around 1400. From 55 to something like 90, he was able to get up to nearly 1980, but never crossed 2000. Your 11.06 points per month is much better than 20-25 points per year, so you are making good progress. More important is what you end up doing down the road. Staying on the grind will pay off. In the first two years, I was hitting 17.79 points per month, and that’s including the fact that I was overrated out of the gates. My current 12.73 points per month is a far cry from my early days of improvement, but at least there is some climb yet. (Actually, my projection is that I’m still hitting about 16.94 points per month, but I need to see what my rating does when I play more tournaments in the general population.) That’s a good metric for the long haul that gives you a good idea about how you’re doing, assuming the duration is at least three months with 6 or more events. The less events, obviously, the less accurate. I also use performance ratings and correlations across metrics to project where I am/should be.

    Congrats on the continued success, and good luck in the future.

    • 23rd February 2017 at 8:00 am
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      David, thank you for the comments.

      I wish I had played when I was young, but other than learning (some of) the rules, I only played the odd game against my dad (who knew even fewer rules) and I never played competitive chess.

      At the moment I am very comfortable with my training plan (albeit it is on hold while I sort out a home move which keeps dragging on). Over the past 12 to 18 months it has developed into a beautiful distillation and if I stick to it, I am sure I will continue to improve. There will no doubt come a point where I will need to do something different, but that is a long way off.

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