CFC Membership Stats

[Bob Armstrong]

Thanks Bob G.

The Pool for Adults & for Juniors have some limits on who is in and who is out....but this seems what is possible, and likely the variation is small enough that the sample is generally valid.

As of May 1, 2023 membership stats:

Adult Rating Pool - Av. Rating - 1690
Junior Rating Pool - Av. Rating - 1406

Bob G also gave stats for the pre-pandemic period (The start of the pandemic in Canada is generally dated in March, 2020; Bob G's stats are as of May 1, 2020 - this is 3 years before the current statistics):

Adult Rating Pool - Av. Rating - 1815
Junior Rating Pool - Av. Rating - 1368

Conclusions:

Between the end of the pandemic (Summer of 2022) and May 1, 2023, numbers of on-line players from during the pandemic came out to try OTB tournaments. After 25 games, they had a permanent rating.

A. In the junior pool, the joining of the newbies raised the average pre-pandemic rating by 38 points!
B. It is quite different in the Adult Pool. The Average Adult Rating dropped a full 125 rating points (Down to 1690 from 1815). Clearly the newbies are the main factor in this drop of the average rating.

Questions:

1. What are the factors/dynamics that led to such a sharp drop in the Average Rating of the Adult Pool as of May 1, 2023?
2. Why did these factors/dynamics not also significantly affect the Average Rating of the Junior Pool?

[Note: According to Bob G's number crunching, the Adult pool average rating remained totally stable for the three years prior to the pandemic:

As of May 1, 2018: Adult 1838

As of May 1, 2020: Adult 1815]

Bob A

[Bob Armstrong]

Average Ratings of 2 Pools (Adult & Junior) - First Defined Group

Bob G., CFC Exec. Dir., has done some number crunching from the CFC stats.

The Pool for Adults & for Juniors that he has used have some limits on who is in and who is out:

1. Member must be fully paid up;
2. Member must have been active within the last 2 years;
3. Members for whom no birth date has been given have been eliminated;
4. Members with only a "Provisional Rating" have been eliminated.
5. Juniors are under 20 y.o.

Given this, Bob G's pool stats:

As of May 1, 2023 membership stats:

Adult Rating Pool - Av. Rating - 1690
Junior Rating Pool - Av. Rating - 1406

Bob G later conscripted me in order to test some rating education ideas he had, and so we had a somewhat lengthy Zoom meeting.

Provisional Ratings

One thing that we realized was that the Provisional Rating membership is quite large recently! Almost the same number of members as those with ordinary ratings. And, of course, the majority of these provisional ratings are quite low.

Our Conclusion: If criteria # 4 above is deleted, then the average rating of both pools would drop significantly.

Question:

Which of these methods of forming the pools seems most relevant to you?

My Answer: I want to know the Average Rating of both pools as they were for ALL members on May 1, 2023. This gives us a good idea of the full range of ratings among the members as of that date. So I'd like to see the second set of Average Ratings of the 2 pools with the Provisional Rating Members included.

Bob A

[Bob Armstrong]

Rating Deflation?

https://www.fide.com/news/2538?fbcli...uAIVHM2-uUQGJU

Bob A

[Bob Gillanders]

Average Ratings of 2 Pools (Adult & Junior) - First Defined Group

Bob G., CFC Exec. Dir., has done some number crunching from the CFC stats.

The Pool for Adults & for Juniors that he has used have some limits on who is in and who is out:

1. Member must be fully paid up;
2. Member must have been active within the last 2 years;
3. Members for whom no birth date has been given have been eliminated;
4. Members with only a "Provisional Rating" have been eliminated.
5. Juniors are under 20 y.o.

Given this, Bob G's pool stats:

As of May 1, 2023 membership stats:

Adult Rating Pool - Av. Rating - 1690
Junior Rating Pool - Av. Rating - 1406

Bob G later conscripted me in order to test some rating education ideas he had, and so we had a somewhat lengthy Zoom meeting.

Provisional Ratings

One thing that we realized was that the Provisional Rating membership is quite large recently! Almost the same number of members as those with ordinary ratings. And, of course, the majority of these provisional ratings are quite low.

Our Conclusion: If criteria # 4 above is deleted, then the average rating of both pools would drop significantly.

Question:

Which of these methods of forming the pools seems most relevant to you?

My Answer: I want to know the Average Rating of both pools as they were for ALL members on May 1, 2023. This gives us a good idea of the full range of ratings among the members as of that date. So I'd like to see the second set of Average Ratings of the 2 pools with the Provisional Rating Members included.

Bob A

I crunched some more numbers this morning. Early Sunday morning with coffee, perfect environment for some math.

Okay, so when you include all the provisionally rated players, which was your question, the averages do drop significantly.

Adult rating pool - average rating - 1,436
Junior rating pool - average rating - 1,079

[Bob Gillanders]

Rating Deflation?

https://www.fide.com/news/2538?fbcli...uAIVHM2-uUQGJU

Bob A

Yes, FIDE has some proposals for combating rating deflation.
Our rating auditor, Ian, has already alerted the CFC Rating SWAT team, so we are already on the case.

I'm looking forward to reading their proposal. Interesting stuff.

[Bob Gillanders]

Anybody wondering why we have so many kids under the age of 3 in the CFC?

Go to the player search page, scroll to the bottom for top players.
Enter age group 0 to 3, switch to quick ratings, change to 500 players.

Are we running a day care centre? More than 500 kids under age 3!
The answer is No.

Please please please, I am asking nicely, when you want us to add new players (your club, or tournament) please supply the CFC office with their date of birth.
Otherwise, for Juniors we enter 2022-01-01 and you get this ridiculous scenario of hundreds of toddler members.

Help us out here. If you know somebody on the toddler list, please ask them to update their profile in JustGo.

[Hugh Brodie]

Shouldn't FQE members be included as per the CFC-FQE agreement of 2012 (which I believe has been renewed with no changes over the years)?

Item 4: "FQE membership numbers would be included in the CFC’s membership tally."

Sub-item of item 9: "The FQE will pay a 9$ fee per adult membership and 4$ for junior and cadet
membership. The payment will occur in the following fashion: On the anniversary date
of the agreement, FQE will report its membership per category and pay an annual fee
according to those numbers."

Is/has this amount being paid/collected, and has it been adjusted since 2012?

The original agreement: https://www.fqechecs.qc.ca/pj/docume...eagreement.pdf

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Shouldn't FQE members be included as per the CFC-FQE agreement of 2012 (which I believe has been renewed with no changes over the years)?

Item 4: "FQE membership numbers would be included in the CFC’s membership tally."

Sub-item of item 9: "The FQE will pay a 9$ fee per adult membership and 4$ for junior and cadet
membership. The payment will occur in the following fashion: On the anniversary date
of the agreement, FQE will report its membership per category and pay an annual fee
according to those numbers."

Is/has this amount being paid/collected, and has it been adjusted since 2012?

The original agreement: https://www.fqechecs.qc.ca/pj/docume...eagreement.pdf

If we had the information, we would be very happy to include those numbers in our membership totals.

There have been some changes in the agreement over the years. The fees paid to the CFC have gone down. I spoke to FQE president Eric Bopala and Richard Berube just recently via a Whatsapp video call and Richard is on vacation for a few more days and the FQE will be sending the CFC a cheque to cover payments for the past two years. I believe that the CFC and FQE enjoy a good relationship and we intend to keep that good relationship going.

It is important that we continue to row the boat in the same direction and I think we have been doing so.

[Hugh Brodie]

From downloading the FQE rating list (select "Exporter" at the right) from https://fqechecs.qc.ca/cotes/categorie/index.php
I get approximately 1149 members in good standing (memberships expiring September 2, 2023 or later). It's hard to break it down by age groups, since birth dates aren't always there, or are some garbage value.

From the same site if I select from "Categorie des membres" I get: 1636 adults; 309 juniors, 1545 cadets, and 924 seniors. However this includes many with expired FQE memberships.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

From downloading the FQE rating list (select "Exporter" at the right) from https://fqechecs.qc.ca/cotes/categorie/index.php
I get approximately 1149 members in good standing (memberships expiring September 2, 2023 or later). It's hard to break it down by age groups, since birth dates aren't always there, or are some garbage value.

From the same site if I select from "Categorie des membres" I get: 1636 adults; 309 juniors, 1545 cadets, and 924 seniors. However this includes many with expired FQE memberships.

It would be interesting to see these numbers for non-expired memberships. Are the adult numbers separate from seniors? Depending on the exact definitions the combined numbers for CFC and FQE would be over 8000 at the high end and 5200 at the low end though more likely in the 6000 players with paid up memberships range if the traditional ratio holds true where about one third to one quarter of the Canadian tournament players reside in Quebec.