A player who has no rating listed online but has a rating floor listed, uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?10485592, has signed up for the tournament I will be running in a week and a half. How does a player get a rating floor without having a rating at all? I was thinking he may have an old rating but the old rating would have had to have been known to determine the rating floor and thus the old rating should show up on his MSA page.
The answer is the same as the answer to the question “What do you get when you cross an elephant with a rhinoceros?”
“Elephino.”
I dunno, maybe he has a FIDE rating US Chess knows about?
Bill Smythe
Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask the player if he has a rating? Old CL’s had ratings on the labels.
My guess (and only a guess) is that maybe this guy hasn’t played in a LONG, LONG time, like pre-MSA (he does have a USCF id that starts with a 10_____). Maybe his rating used to be over 1900 back in then, so the office gave him a floor of 1700?
With an ID of 10485592, this individual was a member back in the mid 1970’s when IDs were first assigned.
If he hasn’t played since then, it’s very possible that he may have a published rating in the paper supplements. Contact the ratings department, ratingsmgr@uschess.org. The more information you can supply, the better the staff will be able to research it. (Significantly reducing the need for staff to do this work is another reason why I think the old supplements should be scanned and posted on the website.)
In fact, in general when someone has a ratings-related question, that’s the best place to get a response, NOT posting it in the Forums! I am retired and trying to wind down my consulting time with the Federation, and I do not follow the forums as closely as I used to. From this point on it may be days or even weeks before I see a question posted here. There’s probably nobody on staff who would know the answer who does follow the forums.
As to why he has a floor but no rating, I could probably concoct a half dozen scenarios that could result in that, the ratings system has been computerized since the mid 70’s and a lot of things could have happened over the years. The most common cause for that is not fully correcting an error, which could have occurred a number of ways, for example, if his ID was used by mistake in an event.
Can anyone see if they can find an old rating for him? Thanks
What did he say?
Robert W. Tompkins of CA (ID# 10485592) appears in the 1976 annual list with an established rating of 1979. I checked all the lists after that through 1990 and he does not appear in any of them.
– Hal Terrie
Hal, I think you just established yourself as the go-to person for anybody looking for an old rating. It’s a job you probably didn’t want. Be careful what you wish for – or volunteer for!
Anyway, that explains the no-rating AND the 1700 floor.
Bill Smythe
Thanks a lot Hal!
No. It doesn’t. US Chess presumably knew that Mr. Tompkins had an established rating of 1979 forty one years ago. That’s the only reasonable explanation for why they are flooring him at 1700. If they knew that, why would they now list him as unrated?
That is a reasonable question if there was only a single database that had both ratings and floors.
Considering how old the rating is I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that there used to be one file with players’ floors and a separate file with players’ ratings with the file with the floors surviving. Many years ago if there were not as many floors as players (back before the 100-150 floors were created) it would take less disk space to have a file with ID and floor instead of adding a field for the floor to every record, and disk space used to be expensive. Also there were probably multiple programs using the rating file (more than just the rating program) and all of them would have to be rebuilt if the file format was changed to also have a field for the floor. A new floor-file used by the rating program would be a viable option to changing the rating file, increasing the disk space needed and rebuilding programs for: mailing labels, rating supplements, membership management, etc.
When were ratings floors instituted?
That sounds plausible, and a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.
I just looked up several players that were active decades ago but not recently. In almost all cases, the name still exists on the database, but in at least half, the rating does not. There were some, however, where the rating survived even though there was no tournament activity since 1991.
Apparently the process of importing the old data was haphazard and/or manual.
Bill Smythe
Hal, can you check to make sure his rating was 1979 and not 1976? Robert said his last rating was 1976 in the year 1976 but it’s certainly possible he’s not remembering correctly exactly what his rating was.
His memory is faulty. I just checked it again and the rating is 1979.
– Hal Terrie
Micah, aren’t you getting a bit too nit-picky? What are the odds that another player will have a rating of 1977 or 1978, which would affect the pairing order? What are the odds that, even if it happened, anybody would notice? What are the odds that, even if anybody noticed, anybody would care?
I know you strive for perfection, but really now –
Bill Smythe
One might also very well wonder what the predictive value of a forty year old rating is …
Don’t worry, a 3-point adjustment was made in the rating, to compensate for the un-learning process. 
Bill Smythe