Dear chess friends,

 

As you may be aware, at the 2022 ICCF Congress in Glasgow, delegates voted to adopt a new system for calculating ICCF ratings and title norms.  This system was designed by one of the world's leading experts in the field, Professor Mark Glickman, and is specifically designed to reflect the winning chances in modern correspondence chess, where the use of powerful engines has significantly increased the number of draws seen at the higher levels of our game.

 

Details of the system can be seen in the original proposal to Congress, here:

 

Further information is available in Appendices 1 (ratings) and 2 (title norms) of the current rules.

 

Anyone wishing to look at the effects of the new system on ratings and norms is welcome to use the ratings calculator, here:

 

Finally, we are planning to release a booklet, written by Professor Glickman, to describe the new system in non-technical terms for players.

 

Since Congress, we have been working hard on the specification for implementing the new system on our webserver, and we are now working on building and testing the software to carry out ratings under the new system.

 

I had been hoping to have the new system in time for the 2023/2 rating list, which will be published in March and effective from 1st April 2023.  Unfortunately, however, there have been one or two unavoidable obstacles to this, and it will not now be possible to release the software in time for the next rating list.  2023/2 will now be calculated according to the "old" procedures; I am optimistic that the software will be ready for 2023/3, but I am unwilling to make any promises.

 

The new calculations for title norms will be used for all tournaments started after the date of implementation on the server, which I will announce the moment I have some certainty about this date.

 

I apologise for not being able to offer any more certainty than this at this point, please rest assured that we are working on it.

 

Best wishes,

 

Austin Lockwood

ICCF Services Director