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The Welsh Chess Union ratings website!



    Dyfed - David Norris (acting RO) - gwentratingofficer@welshchessunion.uk

    East Glamorgan - David Norris - gwentratingofficer@welshchessunion.uk

    Gwent - David Norris and Liam Powell-Jones - gwentratingofficer@welshchessunion.uk

    North Wales - Duncan MacDonald - macd04da@gmail.com

    West Wales - Steven Smith - mr.steven.smith@hotmail.co.uk

    General rating issues - David Norris - gwentratingofficer@welshchessunion.uk


    Please note - Rating officers are sometimes given wrong information about game results or they might copy
    them wrongly. If you think you can see any errors please inform your zone's rating officer ASAP.

    To all players playing abroad - Please let your rating officer know before leaving for a foreign tournament.
    Games will not be rated unless the RO is aware of your participation beforehand. Failure to alert the RO runs
    the real risk that your games will be lost. All games played in Wales or high-profile ECF tournaments, such as
    the 4NCL and British Championship are exempt from this, as are games representing Wales in official
    International competitions, as these will be picked up anyway. If one person alerts us to an
    event where multiple Welsh players are playing, then all WCU players in that event will be rated.

News

"For many years, the WCU rating site has provided a facility for new players to have provisional ratings. However, the manual effort of maintaining this functionality now exceeds its benefit. Rating officers have the authority to amend new players' ratings should the initial rating provided be inaccurate and the system caters for such changes. Therefore provisional ratings will be discontinued".

Update: WCU Ratings

29 Aug 2025

It is occasionally necessary to adjust a players new rating (at the end of a rating period).

Particularly, when a player has played a large number of games (e.g. >30).

The reason an adjustment is required is that the rating software uses the initial (start-of-period) published rating (rather than a live rating) to calculate the required increase or decrease in rating for a particular game. This initial published rating is used throughout the Jan-Jun or Jul-Dec period.

For players who are significantly improving or declining, perhaps temporarily, using the initial published rating, rather than the live rating, can lead to an variance in rating which may be substantial over a large number of games played. It may also lead to a yoyo effect from rating period to period.

We aim to address this in the following way:

Where players have played a large number of games to an extent where >150 rating points have been accumulated (or lost) then an adjustment may be made.

This will be determined using recent software which employs a (LIVE RATING) algorithm.

It will be similar to calculating the live rating via batches (in other words calculated over smaller period within the Jan-Jun or Jul-Dec periods).

We dont intend to make adjustment routinely, only for exceptional circumstances where there is a risk of yoyo effects through playing large numbers of games in a season. Improving juniors are likely to be unaffected.

Please feel free to contact Dave Norris (gwentratingofficer@welshchessunion.uk)