November 2014


Sun 2nd: The Story So Far (I)
Mon 3rd: Fantasy Hat-trick

Sun 2nd: The Story So Far (I)
Time for a review of the season so far.
Division 1
Cheddleton A 3 0 2 1 2
Newcastle A 1 1 0 0 2
H Chapel A 1 0 1 0 1
Cheddleton B 1 0 1 0 1
Alsager 0 0 0 0 0
Stafford A 0 0 0 0 0
Division 3
Meir A 5 3 2 0 8
Fenton A 3 3 0 0 6
Stafford B 4 2 1 1 5
Newcastle D 4 1 2 1 4
Cheddleton F 2 1 1 0 3
Kidsgrove 3 1 1 1 3
Newcastle C 3 0 2 1 2
Alsager B 3 0 1 2 1
Cheddleton G 3 0 0 3 0
Crewe Bishops 2 0 0 2 0
Division 5
Fenton C 2 1 1 0 3
Cheddleton J 2 1 1 0 3
Meir C 2 1 0 1 2
Newcastle F 1 1 0 0 2
Fenton D 3 1 0 2 2
Cheddleton K 2 0 2 0 2
Meir D 2 0 0 2 0
Division 2
H Chapel B 2 1 0 1 2
Cheddleton C 1 1 0 0 2
Cheddleton D 2 1 0 1 2
Macclesfield 1 0 1 0 1
Newcastle B 1 0 1 0 1
Crewe Rooks 1 0 0 1 0
Division 4
Crewe Pawns 3 1 2 0 4
Cheddleton H 2 1 1 0 3
Fenton B 1 1 0 0 2
Alsager C 2 0 2 0 2
Meir B 2 0 2 0 2
Newcastle E 3 0 1 2 1
Cheddleton I 1 0 0 1 0

Division one has limped off the line with 2 of the first five fixtures postponed, but we should get to see a hint of the Stafford and Alsager squads on bonfire night when the teams are due to meet.

All the teams in all the other divisions are up and running with remarkably few teams still left on nil points. One of these is Crewe Rooks in division two, but with all the other sides in that division having already fielded teams topping 700 of the 725 grading points allowed it looks like that this is one title that will not be won easily.

The A teams of Meir and Fenton are already showing that they mean business in division three, though there is plenty of power in the sides below them. Thus they have laid down early markers, but they won't be the only title contenders in this super-sized division.

Crewe Pawns in division four are currently that club's only point scoring team. However they are flying the flag well for the Anglers, sitting proudly on top of their particular pile.

Newcastle have added a lone voice to the three pairs of twins contesting division five. Yes, they have a 100% record, and are the only team in the division who can say that, but with just one game played it hardly constitutes evidence for basing sane predictions on.

Thirty six teams is the most we've had competing since the mid-eighties, here's hoping they'll all enjoy their seasons enough to come back for more next year.
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Mon 3rd: Fantasy Hat-trick
I blame the newbies.

With a new season approaching and no likelihood of official contact and grading data being distributed in time for it's start - indeed it's now Novemebr and still no sign of it - I decided to seek out some estimated grades for myself.

First off Alberto, who had played in the mini last year. My performances charts gave 73 for his efforts, though that was based onopponent's August grades. Quick recalculation on January ones gives 71. Time to visit the ECF online grading database. First find Alberto, then one of his opponents where an asterisked number will show the grade they used for him in calculating his opponent's grades. 71. No surprise there.

But wait. It is all but impossible to look at a page and see only the info you are looking for. I see also the name Richard Cantliff. Strange. Richard didn't play last season. So click on Richard and up comes half a dozen or so games for him. Fortunately the list of opponents looks like what I would expect for Ben Lack, and a quick visit to Ben's record shows no games since January. I've discoverd a set of misallocated games. Contact Roger, and he quickly and efficiently passes the info on to central grading, and in due course they publish updates.

Next up Leon Harrington. However he played just one game last year, so no point looking him up - an estimate on one game is hardly likely to be a thing of great accuracy. So I don't bother looking for him. Initially. But eventually curiosity as to what they do with a single game causes me to seek out the grading site once more and call up Leon's record. But there isn't one. OK, panic not. I have the match scorecard, so dig it out and look up his opponent. No Leon Harrington. Consistent if nothing else. Try some of the other people who played in the match. Relevant games conspicuous by their absence. Leon seems to have had the privilege of playing his only game in a match that wasn't graded.

I've never got the hang of painting the town red, so Saturday nights away at a congress can be meal and a quiet night in my hotel with my Kindle. Scarborough bound at the end of October, I took my laptop and season 13/14 fixture lists and results. After an enjoyable sojourn in one of the town's many chippies I returned to my hotel Saturday night and used their wi-fi to run an outline check on the North Staffs grading.

What I did: I used individual player look-ups to find evidence that matches had been graded. For example, looking at Alan Paling's record, if I found a game against someone from Fenton with date that of a Newcastle-Fenton fixture I ticked off that fixture as having been graded. This didn't prove that the opponent was correct (or that it was Alan rather than some other Newcastle player involved), nor that the result was correctly recorded, but going through every individual scorecard as would be necessary for a complete check was not on the evenings agenda.

A few false panics ensued where some of the dates had been wrongly recorded, but I refuse to be concerned about such errors, though my feeble sense of humour was tickled by seeing people supposedly playing two games on the same night.

What I found: A further four matches for which I could find no evidence of having been graded despite checking the records of at least half the players that the scorecards showed played in them. So if you are from Fenton, Holmes Chapel, Meir, Newcastle, and indeed even Cheddleton, one or more of the matches that you or your clubmates played in hasn't been graded.

At one point I found myself looking at the record of Paul Barwick, a very pleasant gentleman who plied his trade on the lower boards in division four, and I espied amongst his opponents the name of the equally pleasant gentleman Reinhold Heinlein who haunts the upper boards in divisions one and two. No such contest ever took place. There may have been other misrecorded pairings for which the error is not so obvious, though equally it might be that this one and the Cantliff/Lack confusion are the only cases of mistaken identity.

So there you have it folks. From the man who gave you fantasy constitution and fantasy rules you also get fantasy grading. I suppose I should inform him direct of the errors, but on the evidence provided by no corrections being made to the written versions of either the rules or the constitution despite my pointing out the errors there, that would clearly be a waste of time. But worry not over things you cannot affect. The grading officer is exempt from having to be re-elected or re-appointed every year at the AGM, unlike every other position of responsibility. Maybe he is imposed on us from above by little green men.

A final word about those incorrect dates. Recently, where a player has played fewer than 30 games in the grading period the grading team have worked backwards chronologically through earlier games to bring the number up to 30. Thus a wrong date could for some players result in the wrong games being included in the calculation. From January my undersanding is that they are bringing in two changes. One is that they will always use all the games from the last year even when there are lots of them rather than just the last 6 months. This will have the side-effect of doing away with the X category. The other is that when games from an earlier period need to be included in the calculation, then these will be imaginary ones all taken at your average performance for that period. Thus the dates really will not matter for grading purposes, though will still be an aid for checking purposes.
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