This may be less of an effect in standard-play (as there are few all-junior standardplay events), but with rapidplay I think the differing K-factor is essential.Roger de Coverly wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 3:40 pmWith a few games now having been played, I took a look to see how the variable K factors for juniors work out in practice.
It's done one month at a time, If a junior's rating would go up based on a complete month of results, their K factor would be 40. If on the other hand it would be going down, their K factor is 20.
The effect would be overall to increase junior ECF ratings above what they would be with an invariant K. I cannot help but thinking that it's going to help widen the existing gap that's developing for players whose results go into both FIDE and ECF systems.
There are many all-junior tournaments. With the previous system, these events could still be used to reflect improvement as all juniors were, ultimately, connected by series of results to the strongest juniors who play mostly in adult tournaments, and the ratings were calculated only at the end of the year.
In the new system, without the variable K factor these events would just shuffle points around and never reflect absolute improvement.