Canterbury Chess Club

Full Results

Winners

1	Ali Esmaili	6/7
2	Fred Flatow	5.5/7
3	Arthur Hyunh	5/7

The most improved players

1	Vince Chiara	0.417 (huge!)
2	Ali Esmaili	0.287
3	Renato Marino	0.198

Full Results

Winners

1	Frank Tefanis	6/7
2	Andriy Bukreyev	5.5/7
3-4	Brian Allison & Vlad Dragalchuk	5/7

The most improved players

1	Vince Chiara	0.246
2	Brian Allison	0.228
3	Andriy Bukreyev	0.156

Full Results

Winners

1	Fred Flatow & Vlad Dragalchuk	8.5/9
3	Alexandre Merhi	6.5/9

The most improved players

1	Alexandre Merhi	0.270
2	Vince Chiara	0.193
3	Vlad Dragalchuk	0.146

Canterbury Championship 2021 has finished.
Fred Flatow was the fist with 6.5/7.
Andriy Bukreyev was the second with 6/7.
Graham Allison, Vlad Dragalchuk and Frank Tefanis were equal third with 4/7.

The most improved players:

1	Vince Chiara	0.283
2	Fred Flatow	0.185
3	Andriy Bukreyev	0.127

Canterbury Rapid Championship 2021 has finished.
Fred Flatow and Vlad Dragalchuk were equal 1st with 8/9, and our new player Ali Esmaili was the 3rd.

Improvement score:

1	Esmaili, Ali	0.426
2	Dragalchuk, Vladislav	0.229
3	Ullah, Sami	0.091

Ali scored 42.6% more points than expected given his rating. That’s enormous. Congratulations!

Canterbury Open 2020 has finished. You can find the results here.

Also, I’ve calculated the improvement score for each player. Please see the previous post to become familiar with it. The results are in the table below. You can find a more detailed report in Comments.

1	Ullah,Sami	0.26	u1600 =2nd
2	Allison,Brian C	0.24	u1800 1st
3	Ng,Clive	0.19	Open 2nd
4	Monir,Arman	0.12
5	Gergis,Steven	0.11
6	Dragalchuk,Vladislav	0.09	Open 3rd
7	Dib,Michel	0.06	u1600 1st
8	Fernandez,Daniel Howard	0.02	Open 1st
9	Flatow,A (Fred)	-0.01
10	Drastik,Penelope	-0.02
11	Huynh,Arthur	-0.10
12	Allison,Graham	-0.10	u1800 2nd
13	Tefanis,Frank	-0.12
14	Plaza-Quinteros,Francisco	-0.12
15	Brown,Ted	-0.26	u1600 =2nd
	Ineligible players (not enough rated games):
16	Ahmed,Zafar	0.00
17	Merhi,Alexandre	-0.11	u1800 3rd
18	Issa,Mostafa	-0.39
19	Zirdum,Ivan	-0.43

The last column is the standard official rating category prize the player has won. It’s not based on the improvement score.

I think this shows how the standard rating category prize distribution fails: in the cases 12, 15, 17 the players performed pretty badly given their current ratings but still won u1800 or u1600 prizes.
Also, Sami Ullah had an impressive performance but got only the equal 2nd prize under 1600.

Spring Allegro 2020 has finished:

1. Vlad Dragalchuk – 5.5
2-3. Fred Flatow, Arman Monir – 5.0

See the full results.

I have been calculating the Improvement Score – an experimental metric that is intended to possibly replace the rating category prizes.
It’s just the mean (over the number of played games) of differences between the real and expected results based on the players’ ratings.

Here is the calculation for this tournament:

1	Merhi,Alexandre	0.215958
2	Dragalchuk,Vladislav	0.187954
3	Allison,Graham	0.041005
4	Ahmed,Zafar	0.013094
5	Ullah,Sami	-0.034158
6	Dib,Michel	-0.131608
7	Flatow,A (Fred)	-0.139010
8	Monir,Arman	-0.153234

Basically, a positive score means that the player performed better than their rating suggests, and vice versa. The higher is the better, apparently.
This way we wouldn’t need to create rating categories and allocate prizes in them, which is good as we don’t have actual separate tournaments for the rating categories.

Alexandre Merhi would win this “Improvement” prize if we introduced it.
His 0.22 result means that he gained 22% more points than expected in average.

The following is the detailed calculation for each player, just for reference. Also, see some explanation below.

——- Dib,Michel (1796) ——–
Round 1 vs Ahmed,Zafar: 0.000000 – 0.227871 = -0.227871.
Round 2 vs Merhi,Alexandre: 0.000000 – 0.798315 = -0.798315.
Round 3 vs Ullah,Sami: 1.000000 – 0.963576 = 0.036424.
Round 4 vs Flatow,A (Fred): 1.000000 – 0.065760 = 0.934240.
Round 5 vs Monir,Arman: 0.000000 – 0.059351 = -0.059351.
Round 6 vs Allison,Graham: 0.000000 – 0.544495 = -0.544495.
Round 7 vs Dragalchuk,Vladislav: 0.000000 – 0.261891 = -0.261891.
improvement score = -0.921258, rated games = 7, eligibility criteria met = yes, mean improvement score = -0.131608

——- Merhi,Alexandre (1557) ——–
Round 1 vs Dragalchuk,Vladislav: 0.000000 – 0.082265 = -0.082265.
Round 2 vs Dib,Michel: 1.000000 – 0.201685 = 0.798315.
Round 3 vs Ahmed,Zafar: 0.000000 – 0.069386 = -0.069386.
Round 4 vs Ullah,Sami: 1.000000 – 0.869850 = 0.130150.
Round 5 vs Flatow,A (Fred): 0.000000 – 0.017472 = -0.017472.
Round 6 vs Monir,Arman: 0.000000 – 0.015690 = -0.015690.
Round 7 vs Allison,Graham: 1.000000 – 0.231948 = 0.768052.
improvement score = 1.511703, rated games = 7, eligibility criteria met = yes, mean improvement score = 0.215958

——- Ullah,Sami (1227) ——–
Round 1 vs Allison,Graham: 0.000000 – 0.043232 = -0.043232.
Round 2 vs Dragalchuk,Vladislav: 0.000000 – 0.013235 = -0.013235.
Round 3 vs Dib,Michel: 0.000000 – 0.036424 = -0.036424.
Round 4 vs Merhi,Alexandre: 0.000000 – 0.130150 = -0.130150.
Round 5 vs Ahmed,Zafar: 0.000000 – 0.011033 = -0.011033.
Round 6 vs Flatow,A (Fred): 0.000000 – 0.002654 = -0.002654.
Round 7 vs Monir,Arman: 0.000000 – 0.002379 = -0.002379.
improvement score = -0.239106, rated games = 7, eligibility criteria met = yes, mean improvement score = -0.034158

——- Flatow,A (Fred) (2257) ——–
Round 1 vs Monir,Arman: 1.000000 – 0.472684 = 0.527316.
Round 2 vs Allison,Graham: 1.000000 – 0.944390 = 0.055610.
Round 3 vs Dragalchuk,Vladislav: 0.000000 – 0.834459 = -0.834459.
Round 4 vs Dib,Michel: 0.000000 – 0.934240 = -0.934240.
Round 5 vs Merhi,Alexandre: 1.000000 – 0.982528 = 0.017472.
Round 6 vs Ullah,Sami: 1.000000 – 0.997346 = 0.002654.
Round 7 vs Ahmed,Zafar: 1.000000 – 0.807424 = 0.192576.
improvement score = -0.973072, rated games = 7, eligibility criteria met = yes, mean improvement score = -0.139010

——- Monir,Arman (2276) ——–
Round 1 vs Flatow,A (Fred): 0.000000 – 0.527316 = -0.527316.
Round 2 vs Ahmed,Zafar: 1.000000 – 0.823862 = 0.176138.
Round 3 vs Allison,Graham: 1.000000 – 0.949863 = 0.050137.
Round 4 vs Dragalchuk,Vladislav: 0.000000 – 0.849020 = -0.849020.
Round 5 vs Dib,Michel: 1.000000 – 0.940649 = 0.059351.
Round 6 vs Merhi,Alexandre: 1.000000 – 0.984310 = 0.015690.
Round 7 vs Ullah,Sami: 1.000000 – 0.997621 = 0.002379.
improvement score = -1.072640, rated games = 7, eligibility criteria met = yes, mean improvement score = -0.153234

——- Allison,Graham (1765) ——–
Round 1 vs Ullah,Sami: 1.000000 – 0.956768 = 0.043232.
Round 2 vs Flatow,A (Fred): 0.000000 – 0.055610 = -0.055610.
Round 3 vs Monir,Arman: 0.000000 – 0.050137 = -0.050137.
Round 4 vs Ahmed,Zafar: 0.000000 – 0.198003 = -0.198003.
Round 5 vs Dragalchuk,Vladislav: 1.000000 – 0.228886 = 0.771114.
Round 6 vs Dib,Michel: 1.000000 – 0.455505 = 0.544495.
Round 7 vs Merhi,Alexandre: 0.000000 – 0.768052 = -0.768052.
improvement score = 0.287038, rated games = 7, eligibility criteria met = yes, mean improvement score = 0.041005

——- Dragalchuk,Vladislav (1976) ——–
Round 1 vs Merhi,Alexandre: 1.000000 – 0.917735 = 0.082265.
Round 2 vs Ullah,Sami: 1.000000 – 0.986765 = 0.013235.
Round 3 vs Flatow,A (Fred): 1.000000 – 0.165541 = 0.834459.
Round 4 vs Monir,Arman: 1.000000 – 0.150980 = 0.849020.
Round 5 vs Allison,Graham: 0.000000 – 0.771114 = -0.771114.
Round 6 vs Ahmed,Zafar: 0.500000 – 0.454078 = 0.045922.
Round 7 vs Dib,Michel: 1.000000 – 0.738109 = 0.261891.
improvement score = 1.315678, rated games = 7, eligibility criteria met = yes, mean improvement score = 0.187954

——- Ahmed,Zafar (2008) ——–
Round 1 vs Dib,Michel: 1.000000 – 0.772129 = 0.227871.
Round 2 vs Monir,Arman: 0.000000 – 0.176138 = -0.176138.
Round 3 vs Merhi,Alexandre: 1.000000 – 0.930614 = 0.069386.
Round 4 vs Allison,Graham: 1.000000 – 0.801997 = 0.198003.
Round 5 vs Ullah,Sami: 1.000000 – 0.988967 = 0.011033.
Round 6 vs Dragalchuk,Vladislav: 0.500000 – 0.545922 = -0.045922.
Round 7 vs Flatow,A (Fred): 0.000000 – 0.192576 = -0.192576.
improvement score = 0.091657, rated games = 7, eligibility criteria met = yes, mean improvement score = 0.013094

Here, for each game, 1.000000 means a win, 0.500000 means a draw, and 0.000000 means a loss. This is the real player’s score in the game. An expected score based on rating difference between the players is subtracted from the real score, and the result is the improvement score for this game.
For instance, Round 6 calculation for Ahmed, Zafar:
Round 6 vs Dragalchuk,Vladislav: 0.500000 – 0.545922 = -0.045922.
0.500000 means a draw. The Zafar’s rating is a little bit higher, so his improvement score for this game is negative.