[size=150][1][/size] AR seems to be saying (see the whole interview) that the invitational system sadly encourages elite players to avoid tournaments that include mere 2500-2600 players, and/or which use a Swiss pairing system.
One of AR’s solution ideas is to increase a player’s rating partly on the sheer quantity of victories he achieves.
Or maybe the idea is to penalize players who play only a few games per year, by lowering their rating? Is it a good idea to have one’s rating partly affected by one’s quantity of games played or victories achieved, say during the preceding 12 months?
[size=150][2][/size] What is the advantage of the Tennis Rating system that AR seems to like? Does it add rating points based on one’s quantity of victories?
I assume the ACP is the “Association of Chess Professionals”?
One should never base a chess rating on the number of games played. However, one could easily base a tournament invitation on both the rating and the number of games played.
One solution proposed by Mark Glickman (chair of the USCF ratings committee?) and implemented by at least FICS, is to have two numbers: one is the rating (current best esimate of the playing strength), the other is the “rating deviation” (RD), which is supposed to be a measure of uncertainty in the rating. The RD increases with time, and decreases when a game is played (on FICS, I think the RD is only calculated when a game is played, but I’m not sure).
Interesting idea, but it does require some tuning. I only play games >= G/45 there (which basically means only in tournaments), and it looks like my RD will never get below 80 (FICS cutoff for “provisional”). The tuning has been done for blitz games, and hasn’t been tweaked for a 3-4 game per month player.
Although this system formalizes things, for the original situation, you could just state that a player has to have played N rated games over the past year and get essentially the same result.
I agree with Bill, on both counts. Applying then the info Charles supplied…
To me it seems many big name tournaments rely too heavily on ratings when issuing invitations. Players are given incentives to “play the ratings system”, which means avoid certain tournaments for fear of what the result might do to your rating. Alexander Riazantsev is talking about this same problem that I was hearing about decades ago.
For tourney invitation purposes, it might be good to subtract a player’s “rating deviation” from his rating (per Glickman), and then see if his adjusted rating is still high enuf to warrant an invite.
In Chess Life, Andy Soltis wrote about how some elite players found it to their advantage to play very few games per year, in some cases literally only 3 games: they did not want to risk their high rating. I wonder how they make money not playing?
I do not keep old CL issues that long ago. And UsChess.org lacks a CL archive like what ChessCafe.com has long had, so I cannot site the year/month of the issue (but I think the issue was 2-4 years ago).
Although this may not apply to the very elite players, chess teachers in the 2000-2400+ range may find it easier to charge more if they are able to point out that they are experts, masters or senior masters. In their cases, losing a few rating points could adversely affect their teaching income, and is a risk that outweighs the potential reward gained by winning some tournament prizes.
Other people may have decent examples of benefits a 2500+ player can get by minimizing the playing opportunities in a bid to keep the rating high.
Come to think of it, 2600+ may be a better definition of elite.
to have one’s rating partly affected by one’s quantity of games played or victories achieved, say during the preceding 12 months?