NickFaulks wrote:The first is that tournaments including players rated 2200 and over must allow each player at least two hours thinking time for a game. The idea is that FIDE ratings are based on serious chess, and this is one part of the definition. I don't thnk there is a lot of support within FIDE for reducing the time limit, although it might be argued that 2200 is too low. In any case you don't see many rating restricted tournaments with a higher limit than that.
I take a different view. If FIDE have a Rapidplay rating list and a Blitz rating list, and another list which is a subset of standardplay chess, since there is a hole within standardplay which is rating dependent. I think that list should be for standardplay chess, and so if the Laws of Chess define standardplay as anything with at least 1 hour thinking time for a game, then that should be included in the main list. If the players don't think that chess is serious, or that it is an abomination to put their FIDE-rating on the line over such a short time limit, then few tournaments of that nature will be organised, because they won't get any entries. If the players embrace it, and more FIDE-rated chess is played, this is surely a good thing?
I've wondered what might happen if there was one FIDE-rating list, but k varied depending on the length of the game. To pluck numbers from the air at random, in addition to k = 20, you might have k = 4 for Rapidplay and k = 1 for Blitz. You might have shorter standardplay games at k = 10. I suspect this is far too radical to be a serious consideration, but I think it's an interesting concept.
One theoretical statistical advantage of this would be increasing the number of games in the pot. If ratings are an approximation of strength, that must be a good thing.
A couple of days away and it's full of 'k' numbers. I am very happy to debate the pros and cons of FIDE rating AFTER this weekend!