Identify deceased players to make it easier to remove them from player lists

it is shown by the value 'D' in the status field of the players2 table.

REQUEST 1
When I listed the players in the Ely Club I noticed the name of someone who died last season. Several years ago I was asked to remove a deceased player from a similar list in my LMS as it upset some people in that club. Apart from this their removal does have the advantage that they are omitted from drop down lists and cannot be accidentally selected.

The master file is of no help but the ECF Online Grading Database is. If you enter
*(Deceased
as the player name you can get a list of deceased players. I then use this list to delete deceased players from the player table. Since I do this whenever I get a new master file then I have to check they have any recent games recorded in my database. Probably a better way would be to get a list of deceased players at the end of the grading year and use this list throughout the year.

I did ask Richard Haddrell about the possibility of adding deceased player information to the master file but got nowhere.

I am quite happy for this suggestion to be ignored but thought it was worthwhile bringing it to your attention.

REQUEST 2
I’m not sure if you could do anything about this, as I think this is a bug. Where LMS does not know if a paid up ECF member has passed away! What has happened, last month in the Cleveland Chess Association, we had a death of one of our active players (230803E Hewitt, Garry J). I reported his passing to the ECF rating database management. Since doing this the rating database and LMS have now synchronised. The above name is now flag as “Game Fee Players” on LMS. This is incorrect, as this person is still a paid up ECF member, even though he has passed away!

I think what is happening, is when someone is reported as deceased. The rating database membership is wiped and deceased is put into his/her status. Thus, LMS then thinks this person has no ECF membership. There must be a better way to handle a sensitive scenario as this!

Paul Weightman