It appears to be a somewhat common perception that the people in your state are underrated, which explains why your rating falls so short of your true chess strength. It would be interesting to see which states fare best against unsuspecting visitors.
Mike Nolan, if this thread catches your interest will you please pull some numbers that prove once and for all that Nebraska is the most underrated state? Please list all states so that we know where to travel to pick up easy points.
Here is my suggestion for a quick comparison: Filter for games vs. players not from the same state, and take (Performance Rating vs those opponents) less the (Average pre-tournament rating for those games) to get a value for each player. Then average those resulting values and group by state.
I did some state vs state comparisons for Bill Goichberg some years ago, I think he thought the results were more interesting than I did. In a large state like TX or CA, there may be regions of the state that are under/overrated.
When I was doing some work on the JGP program, I noticed that we have quite a few junior players who live in one state but play most of their rated chess in another state. I assume students who are attending school in another state account for most of this.
I used WV as just one example of a small pool or “pond.” Over the years I have seen other such areas where there are small groups of players who rarely play outside of their locale and have few venture in. Unless they play more widely, it is hard to compare their skill or proficiency against the whole rated players pool.
Upstate NY doesn’t have the pool NYC does either. I am sure Texas, Illinois and California have swings like that too. It has to be harder to be a Master in Champaign than in Chicago.
I think that in Texas the great distances between the large and moderate cities is also a factor. A lot of the larger cities outside of Dallas, Houston and San Antonio have a lot of smaller pool of players who are at the relative same level, and are genrerally underrated. I think it all works out in the end, and is not really that big a difference, it just takes longer to get your rating up.
