Liverpool Quadrangular

[Donald Wilson]

One of the Scottish players has raised a query about the grades of the English and Welsh players at Liverpool - specifically, about the differences between grades quoted in a couple of my posts above and the grades used for CS grading purposes.

So it may be useful to set out the rules we operate by when dealing with players from outside Scotland: if an opponent has a grade (or more than one grade) we take them in the following order:
1. CS grade (quite a few English players have one, not so many from other countries);
2. FIDE rating;
3. ECF grade;
4. Other national grades.

In submitting the results for grading, I accepted the ECF grades I was given on Saturday for the North players, but replaced four of them with FIDE ratings. For the Midlands players I looked up the ECF grading database, but again replaced three of them with FIDE ratings. And I looked up the Welsh grades on their site, but once again I replaced eight of them with FIDE ratings.

In most cases, the FIDE ratings are not massively different from the national grades, but there are a couple of instances where there is a substantial difference.

For interest, the number of FIDE-rated players in each team was as follows:

U16
Scotland - 5
North - 3
Wales - 1
Midlands - 0

U14
Wales - 6
Scotland - 4
Midlands - 3
North - 1

U12
Wales - 1
rest - 0

I'm not saying there's a causal link, but it's interesting to compare these figures with the final placings of the teams in the three tournaments.