Heartbeat of Current Ratings

The thump heard is from the USCF ratings system. The passion fueled
by the ratings system, gain or (for the youngster) hopefully, not too
great of a loss, in their “number” after the tournament’s completion.

More than trophies, more than placement, more than cash, this is the
key reason most of our advancing youngsters play. Nearly EVERY one
of them want to see INSTANTLY at the end of the tournament what
their rew ratings will be–if they have achieved new milestones.

The use of published ratings exclusively for the very active tournament
player, in weekly events, can be a disservice both to USCF and the
player. In particular those just starting, namely youngsters. I do
encourage pre-pairings announcements that current ratings, esp
for the U sections will be used, and that further, if a players
current ratings would “allow” them to play “up” that they be allowed
to do so.

I have found that Novice U300-U400 sections are ideal for new
students, for this ensures that their opponents are also “green as
grass”. After a tournament or two, depending on their number
of games played, and strength of opponents defeated, forcing
movement up regardless of their now hopelessly outdated and
obsolete “published” rating, is ideal. The same thought process
applies to intermediate U sections as well.

Interest is heightened when youngsters who achieve new plateaus
do not have to wait weeks to enjoy those fruits. Also, is it truly
reasonable to place these players into sections, ignoring their
track records, into sections which their current ratings show they
are too strong for?? How does this serve USCF, the player, or
the tournament??

The key to developing and growing a strong and passionate youth
base is sparking the fire of passion. This must be a key goal of
our emphasis in ratings. A continued inflexible use of the published
ratings thus would seem to be a detriment at least at a good percentage of USCF events.

Rob Jones

One of the worst things you can do for a young player, is focus them on ratings. It’s a huge dis-service to them, Rob.

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Rob, I’m afraid that I don’t understand what you are saying. It sounds like you are talking about a scholastic player, who has played a few games and now has a P900/8 or something similar being “forced” into a U300/UNR section.

The purpose of a U300/U400 section is to protect the novice players. If a player comes up to me and says that their current rating on the website is P900/8, and that they feel that they are better suited in a U1200 section instead of a U400 section, I’ll assign them a rating of 900 for the tournament.

The TD tip after rule 28C (ratings of players) talks about allowing a player who shows a higher rating from the USCF website to use it under the guidance of rule 28E (Assigned ratings for rated players).

I don’t know of any TD who would let a player ‘sandbag’ a section if they inform the TD that they are stronger than their official rating. If anything, I’d say that most players I see would be trying to win a U400 section before their rating caught up to their current strength.

Now, I’m willing to discuss ways to make official ratings available faster; however, I don’t think that this is the reason to justify the change.

Rob Getty

One change to make official ratings available faster is already in the works.

Starting with the November Ratings List the cutoff will be the third Friday in the month rather than the first Friday of the month. (So the cutoff for the November list will be October 19th rather than October 5th.)

The downside of this is that the rating supplement files won’t be available until a few days after the cutoff, so they probably won’t be available until the 22nd or 23rd of October for the November list, if not later.

TDs can use unofficial ratings, providing they use the higher of the player’s official rating or the unofficial rating.

A TD using unofficial ratings should be prepared to justify the ratings being used. Saying “I saw it on MSA” may not be adequate justification, because unofficial post-event ratings on MSA can change, so it may not be possible for others to confirm the ratings being used.

When the players in an event are all in the same closed pool of players (such as the players at a school or chess club), then using unofficial ratings is less likely to create inequities, because all players should have equally up-to-date unofficial ratings. But players who are outside of that closed pool of players could justifiably complain that they are being treated differently than other players in that event.

TDs and organizers should also keep in mind that using unofficial ratings needs to be mentioned in all pre-event publicity.

Absolutely, and 100% totally and without any question, incorrect. PASSION leads to excellence. Period. Passion is the key to building excellence.

Rob Jones

the ratings are easily justified by pretournament announcements and publications that this is what we do. In regard to your last sentence, that truly makes little sense.
How can some complain that they are being treated diffently when in fact, they are not??

R

Explaining your policy (which you should always do when it deviates from USCF standards) is not the same as being able to prove that the ratings you are using are both appropriate and consistent for all players. (Which is what I mean by justifying the ratings you’re using.)

If someone comes to you and says “Why are you using rating X for Joe and rating Y for BIlly?”, how do you defend the ratings you’re using if those exact ratings are no longer available on MSA because of updates?

Suppose you used the unofficial MSA ratings as of Thursday evening and Sam (not a member of your usual group of players) says he should be listed with a different rating than the one you have for him, because the event he played in last night at another club has been rated already, what do you do about that? That’s what I mean about creating inequities by using unofficial ratings.

Maybe that hasn’t happened in your events, but it has happened elsewhere.

With official published ratings, everyone has access to the same data.

the information in this case cited would be equitable, for in
both, if I get your example, would be the most current
available.

Rob Jones

What if a player has an event rated at 6AM Saturday morning?

Then the TD has to check all the ratings of all the players right up to the start of round 1. That might be some chore by hand with hundreds of players and no software (is there such a package?) to do the checking.

And what if the rating changed while the event was going on–and the rating changed for prize qualifications…hmmm?!

Do you think there would be any complaints if a person with a 1799 rating decided to be inactive for a few months, paid hundreds of dollars for plane/train fare and an entry fee, took vacation time, planned on playing in the U1800 section of a big tournament late in a month, and then found that a rerating done a few days before the event made them an 1800?

For that matter, I know scholastic parents that would be upset even for a low-entry-fee, trophy-only, no-rating-class-prizes event because the pairings would be different than they would be using the supplement ratings.

On the other hand, it would be plausible (and already allowable) for a local event where players know in advance what would be done, the practice is in the pre-event publicity, and the players are used to such a practice. So an organizer doesn’t have to change the rules for everybody else’s events just to use the very, very latest rating.

In regard to the scholastic parent, some will be upset for whatever reason, regardless of
the format used.

Rob Jones

I believe re-rates happen on Fridays, right? Oddly enough, the National Elementary, Junior High and High School championship events all start on Friday afternoons.

So, if this became the rule…here we are, at SuperNationals 2013…and we have to go check every player’s latest rating. All 5,000+ players. On Friday. Maybe a couple of hours before Round 1.

As a result of the re-rates, some players will likely have rating increases that kick them out of the section for which they’d registered. Other players will likely have rating decreases that would have allowed them to play lower than the section for which they’d registered. Of course, the vast majority of affected players won’t know about these changes until they are already on site, which is too late to be practically useful for them. In some cases, these changes will likely have a negative effect on things like team composition (for example, a school who brought four players for the K-12 U1300 loses a player if the re-rate pushed him from 1298 to 1300). That will only agitate customers further.

Result: Chess Control will quickly become Chess Out-Of-Control, thanks to (justifiably) irate players, coaches and parents.

(Please note that this isn’t necessarily intended to disparage the idea…but it is certainly a customer service and PR nightmare that I would think we’d want to avoid at all reasonable cost.)

You may be right, but I thought re-rating was done on Tuesdays when not much else was going on.

Rerates are currently on Tuesdays (sometimes taking until Wednesday evening to finish, depending on how far back it has to go) and on the Thursday/Friday before a rating supplement cutoff. (Effective with the November Rating List, the cutoff date will be changing from the 1st Friday of the month to the 3rd Friday of the month.)

I was thinking of the supplement cutoff when I typed that last post. However, we’re not likely to schedule national scholastic events around the cutoff dates, so we would still have this issue with any national scholastic event that features sections limited by rating (with the exception of a two-day national scholastic like the NYAC), if it were scheduled to start on a cutoff weekend.

Here’s another potential headache, no matter when the re-rate happens: A TD checks the player’s current rating during the registration process. In the time between that point and the start of the first round, the player’s rating changes, courtesy of a re-rate. The TD is made aware of this, say by a player checking ratings on his smartphone.

Isn’t the TD obligated to adjust the ratings and re-pair, especially if the changed rating affects prize qualification or wallchart order? (This would apply more to club tournaments…and a lot of chess clubs meet on either Tuesdays or Wednesdays.)

Of course this could happen whenever a TD happens to send in an “old” tournament that might have happened three days ago. Ratings changes can hit at any time, (well, once an hour), and while these will be reordered by a rerate, they will be the latest ratings for at least some amount of time. For all the reasons posted above, this is a VERY bad idea.

Alex Relyea

Issuing official rating lists more frequently than monthly would probably create more problems for TDs than it would solve.

IMHO using unofficial ratings also creates more problems than it solves, but not everyone agrees with that, obviously.

At least when CCA ratings are used, that’s a publicly available list, so everyone knows what ratings CCA will use for them. Using unofficial post-event ratings is more problematical, because those ratings are ephemeral. What you see as someone’s ‘most recent’ post-event rating now could change in the next hour, either because a more recent event has been posted or because of a rerate of that player’s events. How can players be sure that the ratings being used for them and their opponents are correct if they can’t verify them online?