National Grading Scheme

The National Grading Scheme (NGS) has just gone live and there have been some significant updates to the members area. Also, there is now a new NGS Rankings page which you can visit to see the highest graded players and partnerships in the country, search for your friends and see some statistics about how the players are distributed amongst the various grades.



Here you can see the top players. The navigation links in the top left take you forward and backwards through the list and the 'Hide Evolving Grades' link will remove the players who haven't yet played 1000 boards (shown with a grey background with an 'E' icon on the right).

Search is simple - just type the surname of the person you're interested in in the box at the top right and hit enter. If you're searching for a common name it can get a bit slow, so you can add a comma after the surname and then the first few letters of the first name to narrow it down further. For example, try "Smith, P".

Members Area

In the members area you'll see three new columns in your sessions list. These are:

Sopp - the strength of your opponents in that session
Par - your percentage score compared with 'par' for that session
Grade - your resulting grade after that session


If you don't see these values for a given session it means it hasn't been processed by the NGS. This could be for a number of reasons, including: it's too recent (so wait a few more days), it's a teams event, it's a Sim Pairs result (only the local club heats are counted) or something went wrong.

As with many of the tables in the members area, you can click on the headings to sort them. So you can easily check just when it was that your grade was at its highest!

On the right you'll see a new button called 'NGS Info', under 'Change Password'. Click this to get up a new page which shows you information about your grade and your partnership history. You'll see all of your partnerships listed, but there will only be grades for the ones where you've played 300 boards or more.

Club Area

Club administrators will now also see some new features. The Members List will include a Grade column, with an icon indicating their Grade Band. Again, you can click on the header to sort it and find out who the best player in your club really is. The sessions list also includes a new column.



Here you can see the new NGS column, which will show the Strength Of Field for that session when it has been processed by the NGS (you can sort on this field too). The egg-timer icon indicates that the session is too recent to be processed. A red cross will indicate that it couldn't be processed for some reason. Hover your mouse over the icon and it will give you a description of why this happened.

Further Information

This was just a quick walk through the new features. For a more in-depth look at how the NGS works, take a look at the Full Guide, which includes comprehensive FAQs. Further queries can be addressed by email to ngsqueries@ebu.co.uk. Please note that we may not respond to your query directly but your email will be read and you'll be included in any bulk responses we send out in future.

EBU Test Sim Pairs

Today we're running a test of our new Sim Pairs software. We think the submissions process is very simple for clubs to use, but here are some short instructions just in case.

When you've scored your event and gone to our website to submit the P2P file as you usually do for a club session, you'll see a message appear in a yellow box:

This will only appear if a) you've registered for the Sim Pairs event via the members area (and so appear on our list of clubs) and b) you've entered the correct date for the session. If you've done both of these things and are still not seeing the message then see below.

If the session you're submitting is not for the Sim Pairs then uncheck the box and carry on as normal. Otherwise, leave it alone and when you submit the session (successfully) it will automatically submit it for Sim Pairs scoring too. A few minutes later you'll be able to see your club appear in the club list.

Clubs which are running more than one Sim Pairs heat should be able to do exactly the same thing. We'll detect that you've already submitted one file and will append a "(B)" to your club name to distinguish you.

If you wish to delete the session you'll be able to do so as normal but currently this won't delete the Sim Pairs entry. That's something we need to fix for the future. For now, please email us with your club number and we'll delete it for you.

Clearing your cache

If you've logged in to the members area recently it may be the case that your computer will remember the old version of the web page in an effort to speed up the page load. This will mean you won't see the Sim Pairs updates we made live last night. To get round this you need to tell your web browser that you want to clear the old pages. Instructions for all the web browsers can be found on this page.


Finally: if anything does go wrong please be patient with us - we've never run anything of this size before so there could be several unforeseen problems. We should be able to recover from most situations without you having to resubmit, though. If your session isn't listed and you're sure that you submitted it correctly then please don't continue to submit it again and again - we may have deleted it to correct some mistake. Send us an email if you're not sure.

New P2P Charge Rates

On July 1st we started using a slightly different system of P2P Charge Rates for our submission files so that we can cope with licensed events and differentiate between some of the zero-rated events. Don't worry — for the majority of club sessions this will make no difference at all. The old '1' rate is now renamed '10', but if you do submit a '1' we'll convert it for you.

The difference will be when you submit a zero-rated session. Instead of a blanket '0' rate, we now need to know why the session is free. For example, if it's your annual free session (for a summer party, say) then it would have rate '03'. If it's a teaching session with up to 16 boards then it would have rate '04'.

We've published full details of all the charge rates on our website:

• Abridged list, for club users
• Full list, for counties and licensed event operators

The major scoring systems should now support these new charge rates, though you may have to update them to the latest version. You can also select the charge rate when you submit the file — you'll see a drop-down menu like this:



Just choose the rate that matches the session and it will be accounted for correctly.

Clubs which have been submitting licensed novice sessions at half-rate can now just use code '22' and we'll add it to their next P2P statement correctly.

New Club Members Area

Today we're updating the members area for club users, tidying up the layout a bit and streamlining a few of the functions. The first thing you'll notice is that the list of members has moved from the right panel to its own tab. Instead, you'll see a summary of recent activity on the right.

The sessions list has been updated and is now split into years, so you don't have to wade through your 2010 sessions to get to the latest ones. It will also sort with the most recent sessions at the top, or you can click on the column headers to sort it as you like. As before, clicking on the session will open up some more information about it.



The membership management features are relatively unchanged, although they look a bit tidier in some areas. You can now sort by EBU number as well as by name and it's a little easier to copy-and-paste the membership list into a spreadsheet or other document.

The major changes, though, are to the submission of pay-to-play files. When you submit one you'll see a screen a little like this:



Instead of showing the full ranking list, we're showing only the important bits — the people who mismatch and need to be resolved. This puts them all in one place and for large clubs with several visitors it should save a lot of scrolling. If you want to see the whole list you can click on 'Show all participants' and it will offer you the usual view.

As before, you click on the red cross to sort out any problems, although there is now an added 'Guest' button to quickly choose that option (the green question mark next to the red cross). The red cross takes you to a page like this:



This gives you the same options as before but all on one page so if your choice doesn't work out you don't have to go back to the beginning again. In the middle (3) you can select them as a guest or create a new record for them. At the top you can search by name (1) or EBU number (2). Search results will appear at the bottom (4) and you simply click the 'Select' button by the correct record. To save you a bit of time, the system will automatically search your membership list for anyone with the same surname and present them to you as an option.

We've tried to listen to the many helpful suggestions we've had over the past year and we hope these changes are positive ones. If you do find anything not working as it should or you have any further suggestions then please send us an email or leave a comment. And if things are really broken for you then you can still go back to our old members area for the time being.

EBU credits now in Members Area

As Barry announced yesterday, online booking is now available in the EBU Members Area but that update also added support for showing EBU credits.

If you won a prize at the recent Cheltenham Midweek Congress, for example, you'll now see something like this in your members area, in the panel on the right:

We hope this will be useful for people who want to keep track of their prize credits.

Last year's P2P Rebates are also now displayed in this table, for those people who played more than 150 sessions up to the end of March.

If you notice any problems with this or the online booking, or have any suggestions, leave a comment or email me. If you have any queries about your prize credits or current balance, contact the Competitions Department.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to all our members! The EBU is 75 years old today, and the staff at EBU HQ had a little celebratory lunch to raise a toast to this special day. John & Gill Pain made the sandwiches and the special 75th Birthday cake over the weekend, and others organised the room, so we could all celebrate in style. Happy Birthday to everyone!

Click on the photos to make them larger, or look here for more photos.

• Our dedicated 75th Anniversary area of the website

New Members Area

The current EBU members area is almost a year old now and we've had a lot of feedback in that time on how we might improve things. Last week we made live an updated version which has incorporated a few of the ideas and you can view it by clicking here (or following the link from the existing page).

The first thing you'll notice is the list of sessions on the right-hand side has been moved to its own tab and in its place is a summary of your latest sessions and master point credits. We've also moved the 'log out' button up here so that it's a bit more obvious.

Hover your mouse over an entry to see some more information about it.

The other major change is the sessions list.

We realised that the old list was rather basic and was getting a little too long for some people. It's now been tidied up and for those who have played a lot it will split itself into separate years, which should hopefully make it load up quicker too. The default view is by date played in reverse order, so the most recent session is at the top, but you can click the column headers to sort it however you like. As before, clicking a session will open up the full information about that session.

The other changes are mostly behind the scenes to make it load a bit faster. There's also an option to remember your login so that if you shut down the browser without clicking the 'Log Out' button you will stay logged in when you next visit the members area — useful for frequent visitors.

There's more to come in this area as we'll be adding master point promotions and National Grading Scheme information here too, but we'll announce those when they're ready.

For club administrators, the club counterpart to the members area is not available yet in this new version but should be ready soon. For now you'll have to stick with the old version.

If anyone has any suggestions or notices a problem, you can email me or leave a comment.