English Chess Forum

I was wondering about the accuracy of FIDE grades in the cases of people who have not played chess for a long time. For instance: I was browsing the FIDE grades and found an old Brentwood chess club player (Karl Bowden) has a grade of 2348. pretty decent! Anyhow, from what I know he hasn't played chess for years and the FIDE grading site has no listed games for the last 8 years. I noticed that Jon Rogers's grade is 2329, again pretty decent, but he has been very much active playing for Barbican 4NCL in the main. My thought was that Rogers played Bowden then theoretically by grade they should draw a lot, but in practice due to the fact that Rogers has played a lot more in the last 8 years you would expect Rogers to win more. Is this quite the case in practice? Are there examples of a player returning to chess with a particular FIDE grade suddenly dropping big time after a long break from the game. I have seen the "dodgey" graded players who in one season have an epiphany and suddenly become a genius with a string of good tournament results followed by a season of dunderheadedness creating a yo-yo affect on their grade. Is this also the case why in the 4NCL the grades of team seem to be all over the shop rather than in correct FIDE numerical or (i.e. 7000 bd1, 6900 bd2, 6800 bd3 etc)

Gavin Strachan wrote:Is this quite the case in practice? Are there examples of a player returning to chess with a particular FIDE grade suddenly dropping big time after a long break from the game.

Well, Gata Kamsky seems the obvious example. When he "retired" after losing to Karpov in 1996, he was probably #3 in the world (behind Kasparov and Karpov) with a rating of 2745. Now he has made his comeback, his rating is 2720, but that's only good enough for #24 in the world - it would have been much higher 10 years ago.

I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from that. Relative to other people therefore, he's not as good as he was, i.e. more people are better than him relative to 10 years ago. As for the actual standard of his play, it's difficult to tell. I'm not sure it's a very dramatic drop in terms of points, though.

I am surprised that such old grades are kept on the system. Also, some players play very few games in a season which must somehow have the same effect of not really giving a wholly accurate grade considering ecf you play 30 games for an exact grade.

Gavin Strachan wrote:Is this also the case why in the 4NCL the grades of team seem to be all over the shop rather than in correct FIDE numerical

In the 4NCL, all you have to do is ensure that no player plays above someone rated 80 FIDE points above them. It's long been established that 4NCL teams determine their board orders with regard to the tactics of a particular match, norm chances, colour alternation and many other factors. Until they changed the rules regarding the time you had to declare your team, the Saturday night curry was the time and place to thrash out Sunday's board order.

Gavin - I played both Karl and Jon when they were juniors and both were extremely talented. I would think that both could have made IM without any difficulty. But, although Jon captains Barbican 4NCL and is the lifeblood behind that club, both have found other things to do. Now since I play - rather badly - for Barbican, I won't comment on their respective playing strengths - other than to say if they played a match, there would be few draws because of their styles. Both play - or played - for a win.

Thanks John,

I used those two players as an example of the small conundrum I had due to the Brentwood link, I am sure there are plenty of others. Looking at Ruston v Rogers in the 4NCL the queen sac proves your point! It certainly doesn't look like Tiviakov style of play. With the ECF grades, people kind of disappear off the system but not with FIDE one and it sort of assumes that a player who hasn't played for yonks is a certain grade. The only reason I think I posed this question is because congress organisers in particular certainly like a certain amount of accuracy with grades and the purpose of grades is to give an accurate reflection of a players strength. In someways, a person who stops playing chess and then comes back using the same grade could be less of a problem than someone who has the yearly yo-yo dodge. As a side point, I'm not quite sure why anyone would deliberately lower their grades so to play at a lower level in a following season. At the level I play at the prize money at tournaments for low graded players is never mega bucks and playing 5 rounds against players who give are not particularly challenging (apart from the other dodgey players) over days seems a bit like about pointless as an adult rugby team entering a minis tournament. I wonder how useful these old grades are that have been kept on the system for such a long length of time and if any other congress organisers have had such problems?

Apogolies to Messers Bowden and Rogers for getting their names mixed up in my grading questions, and for generally rambling on...

Not at all, i enjoyed it immensely!

Far too many people ask "what would happen if Sampras came back to play Federer?", or even "Kasparov against Anand" but, it always seems to me, very few speculate on Bowden v Rogers. There might be quite a few draws though - we always drew in the "old "days (when draws were good results for me).

I don't know if any empirical work has been done on the effects of inactivity. There would, i suppose, be quite a few variables to manage - perhaps it affects strong players less (or more?), the age of the player when coming back would seem relevant (that would explain to me why Karpov is being mauled quite so badly as he currently is, in San Sebastian) and also, I think, whether the player had peaked when he gave up (as opposed to being young and improving but temporarily distracted).

My completely unscientific observation suggests that if a player who had played regularly but given up due to outside distractions in his early thirties, then returns ten years later, he is likely to start playing around 15 - 20 points lower than his former strength. But he might get much of that back after the first year or two into his comeback.

I think that when a player comes back to chess after a long absence you observe a very strange and unexpected rating performance. They start off improving their rating (the most extreme example of this is Janis Klovans who got his first GM norm at an age of 50+) - I think this is due to two factors

1. General rating inflation in the FIDE system
2. Their opening repertoire is a decade or two out of date, so everybody has forgotten how to counter it

After a year or so their rating then falls back, so I suspect that if Karl Bowden were to come back to playing in general swisses (I suggest a ten game match against Jonathan is not the best way to prove my point) that he would go up to about 2400.

2250= What ECF?

200 http://grading.bcfservices.org.uk/help.php#elo

I have come in and out of chess (probably now staying with chess since my body is too beaten up to play much else!) and my grade went to the 130/140 mark. Then after a break fell to 118 and is now 150+ from my own calculations though have to wait for new grades to come out. Though this is more due to more time with chess and I would be surprised if I was to, even with inflation, get near the 200 mark though it would be a nice achievement. Personally I enjoy playing the game than the grade

Good good , still under FIDE rated, like being the underdog who people dont want to play

Yeah I think 200 is around 2240-2260