I was reading the Komodo 11 article on Chessbase, and was struck by something interesting. Although for obvious reasons, the article in it’s entirety it’s mostly an advertisement for Komodo 11, and in the latter part of the article, a plug to get readers to buy Chessbase 14.
But there was one interesting thing mentioned by the author of the article: he’d mentioned a friend rated 2200 USCF who took a vacation in India and played some tournaments there. He said in India, he was losing to players rated 400 points below him. Ostentatiously the author said that it was due to players from India using Chessbase 14, but I surmise it’s more likely they just tend to study a lot more than American chess players, and Chessbase 14 would be merely one more tool in their arsenal.
That does make for an interesting discussion about ELO points being skewed in different parts of the world due to the local chess players studying harder or less than chess players in other parts of the world. On a side note, the American player was not FIDE rated, or the author would have mentioned it. Not really sure what the difference between 2200 USCF and 2200 FIDE elo would be, although I’ve heard in the past that a FIDE rating of 2000 would be closer to 2200 USCF. That was years and years ago and not really sure if that’s still the rule-of-thumb.
But even taking in the differences between FIDE and USCF ratings, a 400 point spread would be a pretty large of a discrepancy not to take into account the differences of chess players from India compared to say, European chess players, then comparing those two groups to American chess players.
My admittedly unscientific experience is that FIDE ratings are in most cases roughly 75 - 100 points less than US Chess ratings. A 200 point difference would be highly unusual.
My understanding was that the spread between US Chess ratings and FIDE ratings was close to zero at around Elo 2000. (Not currently true in my case, but it was roughly true for me for more than a decade.)
That is a crude estimate, but it works well enough to stop strong international players from winning class prizes. FIDE ratings are initialized to US Chess ratings in a somewhat more complicated manner.
Here are the conversion formulas US Chess uses for players with no US Chess rating but with a published FIDE rating. These were last changed in 2013. I believe they were reviewed by the Ratings Committee in 2015 and the decision at that time was that no changes were needed.
#2013 adult conversion formula
#USCF = 180 + 0.94*FIDE for FIDE <= 2000
#USCF = 20 + 1.02*FIDE for FIDE > 2000
#2013 youth conversion formula
#USCF = 560 + 0.76*FIDE for FIDE <= 2000
#USCF = 80 + FIDE for FIDE > 2000
The youth conversion formula is only used when computing ratings for opponents of US Chess members playing in specific FIDE youth events like the World Youth Championships for the purposes of making FIDE adjustments.
Organizers and TDs may want to use a higher estimated rating for prize and pairing purposes, for the reasons noted upthread.
The 6th edition of the Rules of Chess gives three possible conversion formulas under rule 28D1: USCF = FIDE +50, USCF = (0.895 x FIDE) + 367, or USCF + FIDE +100. The formulas you cite are not listed, nor are they listed on US Chess’s on-line PDF document as changes to the rules that have been approved since the publication of the 6th Edition (2014). No change to rule 28D1 is mentioned. Where do you find these formulas?
28D1 is for TDs to assign a rating for pairing and prize purposes. Mr. Nolan explained how the rating system initializes ratings. Two completely different things. There is, in practice, no need for the TD to know what any of his players’ pre-event rating will be. In fact, whatever he assumes will almost always be wriong a re-rate or two later.
Those formulas can be found in the ratings system white paper, which Prof. Glickman maintains on his website. They are not part of the Rules of Chess, and there are valid reasons why organizers and TDs might want to use a higher rating than the one(s) the conversion formulas produce.