I have a provisional rating of 1872 but have no idea where that came from, since I have lost 4 of the 5 rated games I have played so far. Can anyone explain the basis of provisional ratings?
Also, if I register for a tournament, should I register as “unrated” or “under 2000”? I know one must play 26 rated games before getting an official rating. So what does a provisional rating really mean?
Yes.
Provisional means you haven’t met the 25 games to get an established rating.
It basically means your rating is subject to greater fluctuation based on your results until you get those 25 games in!
With an ‘official’ provisional rating, you are no longer unrated. So unless they are using a supplement in which you were still unrated, you have to use your provisional. Even then, the TD/organizer could choose to use your provisional rating in absense of another rating.
A provisional rating is an official rating, but it’s based on less then 25 rated games. The formula for calculating a provisional rating is different then what’s used after you’ve played 25 games. If you look at your MSA record you will see they have results from tournaments that you played in in 1993 and 1995.
uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlTnmtHst.php?12411380
At the 1995 USATE you had an outstanding result that pushed your provisional rating up to 1900. That performance is part of the calculation used to compute your rating based on your current results. The provisional rating tends to fluctuate more as very good or very bad results have big impact on it. If you’re not able to perform at 1800 level then you will find that your provisional rating will drop more. The more games you play, the closer the rating will become in terms of your actual performance.
You are rated 1872 so you would play in the under 2000 section, not the unrated section.
Go to main.uschess.org/content/view/7875/400/ and click on the link to USCF Rating System. It’s a lot of math speak, but it does explain how ratings are calculated.
The explanations and links given above are correct, but I’m concerned about your statement that you’ve lost 4 of 5 rated games. Our records show you have played in four tournaments, one in 1993, one in 1995 and two so far in 2009.
For details, please go to msa.uschess.org and enter your USCF ID.
If those events from 1993 and 1995 are not yours, please contact the USCF office.
I wish the USCF (and a few big-money organizers) would stop using that term. All it means is that the USCF uses a different, somewhat more volatile, formula to calculate your rating. Either you have a rating or you don’t.
Hi John:
What you said is true, but in the greater area of life it also means you can’t appear on the top 100 list or get invitations to invitational national events.
Regards, Ernie
How many brand-new players would this apply to? Not many. For 95% of players, the “established/provisional” distinction is just an annoying distraction.
They might want to start directing tournaments too.
Thank you for the information. The 1995 result and the 1900 rating is not mine. Who do I contact at USCF?
Thank you for the comprehensive information and the links. I’m new at this.
Club TDs do not need an established rating (Please see rule 2 on page 240 in your rulebook for further info).
You will need to contact Judy Misner, extension 126 or jmisner@uschess.org. The USCF will probably need to issue you a different USCF ID, so that your tournament history can be separated from the earlier tournament history under that USCF ID.
For regular rated events held between 6/1/2008 and 5/31/2009, there were 53,998 players. (That number will go up a little over time as more events from that time period are rated.)
Of those, 30,552 were provisionally rated for at least some of their events. That’s 56% not 5%.
Most of those were kids, so there’s a fair chance that some of them might have made Top 100 lists for their age had their ratings been established rather than provisional.
You’re missing the point, Mike. Sure, a lot of those players were “provisional” (everyone has to be, at some point). But it makes no difference to the player what formula the USCF uses to calculate their rating. I defy anyone without a math degree to even explain the “standard” formula. If what you want is to keep “provisional” players off the top-100 lists, a simpler method would be to require a certain number of rated games in order to qualify, with no need to use the loaded terms “provisional” or “established.” Using those terms results in a significant number of players thinking there is a difference between the ratings. There is not.
Actually, since 2001 the ‘special’ formula applies until someone has 8 games (and not all losses or all wins), not 26 games.
The distinction between a provisional and an established rating after 26 games is for reasons other than the mathematics. In other words, it’s largely a political distinction these days.
In theory, it should not matter what rating you claim, since the organizer or TD is supposed to look it up anyway and go by what he finds.
I suppose, though, if the TD were gullible enough (or just too trusting), you might get away with claiming you are unrated, and the TD might be in too much of a hurry to check. That would be dirty pool, though.
Bill Smythe
For some events, with entry fees based on one’s rating, it could make a difference what rating someone claims, though Bill is correct that the TD is supposed to look everyone up on the ratings list.
Although it’s not the issue here, what do TDs and organizers do when someone shows up at their tournament, says he has a rating of XXXX from 30 years ago, but it isn’t in the system? (Several thousand USCF IDs were purged from USCF computer records during the 80’s and 90’s, mostly for disk space considerations, and there are also players who had ratings from before 1977 who have never been issued a USCF ID.)
If someone showed up and said that they use to be 1800 or so 30 years ago and I couldn’t find him in the USCF database I would play him or her at 1800.
This is probably the best reason to do away with the once rated always rated mantra. I think one could choose a time span, 10 or 20 years without USCF rated play and you revert back to unrated. There probably so few of these anyway that it would probably make the ratings more accurate if these individuals started over anyway.
With over 700,000 players in our database, the number who return after absences of 10 or more years is a lot more than you would expect, and not just kids who return to rated chess as adults. Also, nearly every week we have to restore several ratings for returning members who haven’t played since 1991 if not much further back. (Recently Walter had to go back to about 1968 to find a rating for someone.)
In the time it would take to get an established rating again, a returning player whose strength has changed markedly will likely have his rating come close to catching up to his current strength. (Because of the bonus system, it probably catches up to an improved player much faster than to one whose strength has ebbed.)
At my tournaments if someone claims a very old rating and we don’t have access to lists that old during the event, we will usually accept what he says, but warn him that if he wins a prize it will not be paid until the rating is verified. So if he is unsure which class he is in but knows it is one of two classes, he is taking a risk if he chooses the lower of those classes.
Allowing rated players to ever revert back to unrated would not be a good idea. The old ratings are usually pretty accurate even after many years, and if a player could wipe out his rating through inactivity some would deliberately do that in order to start over with a lower rating and win prizes.
Even without legalizing the cancellation of ratings, there have been players who have done this (it wasn’t noticed that they had old ratings because they had common names and had moved to a different state). In the World Open many years ago, a 1500 player from Massachusetts won $5000 in Under 1600 but before the prize was paid, another player who was from Oregon recognized him as a 2100 player previously from Oregon who had been inactive for many years, and he was disqualified and his USCF membership suspended.
Bill Goichberg