Rodney Barking likes to bring you original material, but will of course credit his sources when he draws on their work.

He particularly likes to bring you material which is based on original research and which has never been presented before.

So today: what criteria are used to determine the team board order in league chess in England? There are two main criteria. One is the order of playing strength. The other is the published ECF rating order. In either case, should the rules provide for displacement, such that a higher-rated player may play on a lower board than a lower-rated player?

Playing strength is more flexible and subjective. It can accommodate rating disparities more easily than a system based on the objective rating order. One can conceive of cases where (for example) a player rated 1950 is in better form than another player rated 2000 and should play on a higher board. But how far can this be stretched?

This may seem like a niche subject to which many players are indifferent. But it can give rise to heated argument, as Rodney has discovered on more than one occasion. Mostly recently in a difficult online exchange with another league official.

Now, people settle arguments in different ways. Some resort to brute force, or in extreme cases the power of the gun. Rodney prefers to use logic and reason, based on actual evidence. This is what you would expect since one commentator has characterised him as “an Oxbridge-educated civil servant”.

Rodney carried out an internet survey of leagues and playing rules overnight to obtain evidence about what provisions actually do apply. He surveyed all chess leagues in England (excluding online and junior-only) with an internet presence. There are 86 of these. These are the main points:

• In 34 leagues, teams are in order of playing strength. 17 of these have a points differential and 17 do not.
  
• In 21 leagues, teams are in rating order. 16 of these have a points differential and 5 do not.
  
• In 7 leagues, there is no provision at all about the playing order.
  
• In 24 leagues, the playing rules are not available online.
  
• Where there is a rating points differential (33 leagues), this ranges from 38 to 150 points (equivalent to a grading difference of 5 to 20 points). 
  
• The most common points differential is 75 points (16 leagues), followed by 100 points (7 leagues).

Rodney draws two conclusions from this. The first is that playing strength is a more common criterion than rating order. The second is that a points differential is much more strongly associated with leagues where teams are in rating order than in leagues based on playing strength. This is what one might expect given that there is a logical connection between rating order and rating differentials, whereas playing strength and rating differentials are of a different nature. If you’re going to allow a rating differential, you might as well have a basic rule of playing in rating order.

So Rodney has placed this on the table and awaits a response. In line with a famous work by an American evangelical Christian author (Josh McDowell), this is ‘Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-changing Truth for a Skeptical World.’