By the luck of the pairing system, I ended up playing five juniors and one thirtyish fellow who had been out of OTB chess for some time but had been playing a lot of online chess. Even though I won some money, I lost a bunch of (Canadian) rating points. But that’s where it gets a bit interesting. The average pre-tournament rating of my six opponents was 1846. The average Event Performance Rating of this same six was 1992. (Their average post-tournament rating was 1912.)
This is what happens when one runs into a bunch of rapidly improving players. Based on the pre-event ratings, I under-performed significantly. Based on EPR, I performed to my rating. I don’t think there’s much difference between the USCF formulas and the Canadian in this instance.
Could a rating system try to compensate for this by some post event processing? SHOULD a rating system try to compensate for this? Dunno. It’s self-healing in the long run, I suppose.
The current USCF Rating system does attempt to correct this (somewhat) by “post event processing”. One pass is made
to determine post-event ratings for all players. Then, a second pass is made, in which your rating change is based on YOUR pre-event rating, but YOUR OPPONENTS’ post-event rating (well, post 1st pass).
I don’t know if the Canadian system does anything similar.
Of course, the secondary attempt to “fix” this is Bonus Points awarded to your fast improving opponents.
Cool. Didn’t realize that. Seems perfect. Not sure how the Canadians address this – I know they have a much more aggressive bonus system based on an EPR exceeding a lifetime high.
It is only self healing if it happens on occasion. If it happens consistently all the time (for example wave after wave of improving youngsters) I’m not so sure anymore about the self healing.
Good point. That DOES seem to be happening in BC. Most of the guys up there whom I considered my peer group (age 50 and up, roughly 1950-2050) when I returned to chess 12 years ago are now struggling to stay above 1800. Several of them have told me it’s that youth wave you mention. Of course, the 12 years probably has something to do with it too.
It might be reasonable to assume that as players get older, they reach a point where their their strength declines due to age.
However, looking at players who have been continuously active since the mid 90’s, players in their early 60’s have only lost on average about 60 points. Players in their early 50’s are actually rated about 15 points higher rated now than they were in 1995. Players in their 40’s, who would have been in their late teens or early 20’s in 1995, are on average rated nearly 280 points higher than they were back then.
I had to look at players in their early 70’s to see around 100 points of ratings decline.
There may be some selection bias here, those players whose strength has dropped a lot may have stopped playing.
But when I look at the players who are in their 30’s now, the ones who stuck around are FAR stronger than they were in 1995, going from an average rating around 1200 to a rating around 2050.
Late teens (a little old to include prodigies), rated around 1200 in 1995 would have been prime candidates for selection bias, with those not improving less likely to keep playing. The ones who kept at it, in their 40s now, would be close to their peak, barely on the cusp of age-related decline.
Might the age-related slope for club level players decline a bit less rapidly than it does for professionals?
