8by8verse blog · Notes on chess, ratings & the platform
How chess ratings actually work — for players, parents, coaches, organisers.
Plain-English notes from the team building 8by8verse. New posts as we have something genuinely useful to say — not on a content-calendar schedule.
Why every OTB chess game should count toward your rating
FIDE captures a tiny fraction of the games India's club players actually play. Here's why that gap matters — and what NCR does about it.
A parent's guide to reading your child's first chess rating report
You don't play chess. Your child just came back from a tournament. Here's exactly what each number on the NCR report means — in plain English.
Running your first tournament: the 21-point checklist from arbiters who've done 100+
Venue, pairings, prize fund, parents — the boring stuff that decides whether the players come back next year.
What FIDE's rating system doesn't tell you about players under 1400
The Elo formula is identical at every rating. The information it carries is not. A look at why ratings below ~1400 need a different lens.
Coaching 30 students with one Sunday — how academies scale with BSPM
The Sunday Test was the bottleneck. Auto-grading + auto-parent-reports turned it into the engine.
New posts as we have them. Subscribe to 8by8verse Magazine for the monthly long-form edition, or get one-line notifications on WhatsApp when a new post lands — your free NCR account handles both.