REGULATIONS ON REGISTRATION & LICENSING OF PLAYERS

[LawrenceCooper]

Are you really sure about people being attracted by FIDE ratings?

Odd given how horribly unreliable they are for most people compared to their English grades. Inevitably so due to having many less games included of course. Still people aren't known to be rational

Most people = juniors

[Sean Hewitt]

Are you really sure about people being attracted by FIDE ratings?

I'm sure of it. A number of people tell me that, with limited time available to play congresses, they would only play those that are FIDE rated.

I've seen evidence of it too, when we moved to FIDE rating the 2nd section in our congresses. The number of entrants in those sections increased dramatically.

I'm sure that dynamic, monthly changes to FIDE ratings have something to do with it - as well as (to some extent) a rarity factor.

[MartinCarpenter]

Not just juniors.

A similar issue for random club players - you get locked to your performance in your first tournament or two, and it'll takes ages to correct to something more representative given how few FIDE rated games tend to be involved. That is less systemically serious in that it does at least average out over the population
(Serious juniors playing FIDE tournaments to try and catch up a tiny bit faster makes obvious sense.).

It'd be silly to argue with what seems to be reality Suppose that FIDE's name is, despite their best efforts, still worth something.

[Roger de Coverly]

A similar issue for random club players - you get locked to your performance in your first tournament or two, and it'll takes ages to correct to something more representative given how few FIDE rated games tend to be involved.

The e2e4 tournaments have always had an ECF grade restriction applied to unrated players in the rating restricted second and sometimes third sections. There's now a maximum ECF grade cap as well.
The Under 2000 at Bedford is barred to players above 185 ECF if they have a FIDE rating and 175 ECF if they don't.

[LawrenceCooper]

Not just juniors.

A similar issue for random club players - you get locked to your performance in your first tournament or two, and it'll takes ages to correct to something more representative given how few FIDE rated games tend to be involved. That is less systemically serious in that it does at least average out over the population
(Serious juniors playing FIDE tournaments to try and catch up a tiny bit faster makes obvious sense.).

It'd be silly to argue with what seems to be reality Suppose that FIDE's name is, despite their best efforts, still worth something.

It all depends on the player and the chess they play. What you perceive to be reality is not reality for all players, however silly you may consider that. I do accept though that players for whom the majority of their chess is unrated will give more weight to ECF grades whereas for someone like myself I consider FIDE rating and FIDE performance to be of more value partly because they are updated monthly and not six monthly.

[David Sedgwick]

Are you really sure about people being attracted by FIDE ratings?

I'm sure of it. A number of people tell me that, with limited time available to play congresses, they would only play those that are FIDE rated.

I've seen evidence of it too, when we moved to FIDE rating the 2nd section in our congresses. The number of entrants in those sections increased dramatically.

For Standardplay events, yes. For Rapidplay and Blitz, I'm not convinced (although I see that Adam Raoof is).

I'm sure that dynamic, monthly changes to FIDE ratings have something to do with it.

Well. not for me they don't. Each according to his or her own, of course.

This Forum may not be representative, but, for what it's worth, your poll didn't show any great demand for monthly ECF grades.

[Jonathan Bryant]

It all depends on the player and the chess they play. What you perceive to be reality is not reality for all players, however silly you may consider that. I do accept though that players for whom the majority of their chess is unrated will give more weight to ECF grades whereas for someone like myself I consider FIDE rating and FIDE performance to be of more value partly because they are updated monthly and not six monthly.

On the way back from a tournament at the weekend a friend of mine mentioned to me that his next elo rating was likely to be under 2000. He has an ECF in the 180s.

I myself will probably hit my lowest ever rating on the next list. This just a month or two after getting my highest ever ECF grade. (When I got my first Elo rating in 2011 they were one point away from identical using the traditional conversion formula). ECF reckons I've stayed about the same strength over the past two years (170s). Elo reckons I'm 150 points weaker. I'll check when I get home this evening, but my sense is that I've played at least as much elo-rated tournament chess as I have unrated club or tournament chses.

I achieved my drop by
(a) playing those notorious under-rated juniors
(b) playing a lot of adults whose ratings dont' compare to their ECF strength
(c) winning a lot of games against unrated opposition.


I wonder if it's not just the type of chess you play that matters, but where you are on the ladder. Folk like me, my friend - and perhaps MartinC - are in that pool most likely to be affected. Folk like you being higher up are more insulated?

[MartinCarpenter]

Yes that's the thing. Folk around 160/70/80 ECF (yes, me too) won't play very many FIDE rated games, so any FIDE grade they get is going to remain more or less (pseudo) random for various reasons. Apparently, however, they've motivated to play in events by aquiring one?! People can be strange so I can believe it

I hadn't noticed the grading section limits in the e2e4 things using FIDE. Surely ECF makes more sense for judging that cut off?

Yes, FIDE grades are more meaningful than ECF for stronger players for all sorts of reasons. This sort of thing could easily spread upwards though. The juniors are the biggest threat of course, but even playing a field of people with grades randomly out by +-100? 150? (whatever it is) really isn't going to help the stronger players get/keep accurate grades.

[LawrenceCooper]

Yes that's the thing. Folk around 160/70/80 ECF (yes, me too) won't play very many FIDE rated games, so any FIDE grade they get is going to remain more or less (pseudo) random for various reasons. Apparently, however, they've motivated to play in events by aquiring one?! People can be strange so I can believe it

I hadn't noticed the grading section limits in the e2e4 things using FIDE. Surely ECF makes more sense for judging that cut off?

Yes, FIDE grades are more meaningful than ECF for stronger players for all sorts of reasons. This sort of thing could easily spread upwards though. The juniors are the biggest threat of course, but even playing a field of people with grades randomly out by +-100? 150? (whatever it is) really isn't going to help the stronger players get/keep accurate grades.

I'm not sure this is true now. FIDE ratings go as low as 1000 so I don't think it's a case of being different for stronger/weaker players it's more a player choice of if they choose to play FIDE rated events or not. Just because players choose a different path to your own doesn't automatically make them strange though but likewise I wouldn't say your that your opinion is strange because it's completely different to mine.

[Jonathan Bryant]

The juniors are the biggest threat of course ....

This hasn't been true for me. I'm not convinced that the problem is lack of games played either. Not always, anyway. My last two elo-rated tournaments are a good example of what's happened to me

I have played a couple of juniors and I felt both were underrated

but

of my 5 wins 3 were against unrated opposition so they don't count.


I didn't have runaway success at either event by any means, but neither did I have complete disasters ... but I'm dropping points anyway.


I wouldn't say elo is less meaningful for me per se. Like I say, I'm pretty sure I play as much elo chess as not. The fact that the rating system is so warped - for my immediate cohort at least - makes it almost worthless for me.

[Roger de Coverly]

I wonder if it's not just the type of chess you play that matters, but where you are on the ladder. Folk like me, my friend - and perhaps MartinC - are in that pool most likely to be affected. Folk like you being higher up are more insulated?

Some years ago, the ECF ran a least squares recursion on the relationship between International Elo ratings and ECF grades. They came up with the formula that the then traditional ECF*8 + 600 = FIDE only worked above Elo 2333. Below that they introduced the somewhat ridiculous (FIDE - 1250) / 5 = ECF, which expressed the other way round was FIDE = 1250 + 5 *ECF. That would give ECF 110 as 1800, ECF 150 as 2000 and ECF 175 as 2125.

That was in fact what could be achieved, the basic effect being the distortions caused by having the Elo cut-off at around 1800 and 2000 before that. This had the effect for lower graded players of only rating their best performances, thus making it easier to hit a high Elo. The bouncing ball effect of the typical seeded Swiss could help as well by excluding poor results against lower strength opposition. For a while, rapidly improving Juniors could be shown to have improved by reference to their International Elo which was often more recent than their ECF and had to have been earned by a good performance.

I wonder what a least squares test would show now. I'd imagine the dispersion is pretty high as well.

[MartinCarpenter]

Yes it'd be fascinating to see how well they are lining up against each other. Or just a test of how predictive the ELO's below a given level are. For weaker players I'm pretty sure that the ECF grades will be a much better predictor. I'd be very surprised if the population in general (below a given level) wasn't playing many more ECF graded games than FIDE ones. Local leagues for instance, a load of congresses etc.

Even those that are more evenly split have sundry issues like Jonathan's. I doubt if (m)any of the normal club level players take them at all seriously. We're too sensible for that.

As a relatively high level example, I'd be rather surprised if the ECF grades wouldn't have predicted the British championship results rather better. The juniors would give them a massive head start!

[Roger de Coverly]

As a relatively high level example, I'd be rather surprised if the ECF grades wouldn't have predicted the British championship results rather better. The juniors would give them a massive head start!

One test that's usually quite simple to apply is to take the absolute value of the W-We column in the final crosstable. This gives a measure of how far each player out or under performed their pre event rating. For example the 103 rated players in the Torquay British had a total of 127.7 between them over 11 rounds. So that's an average of 1.24 each or 0.11 per game. It's something I also tested on the 2008 and 2009 British with similar results.

The recent Coventry open comes out at 0.1 per game as well, although that's a bit distorted by the number of half point byes.

The London Classic of 2012 was a bit lower, at 0.095 per game.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

One thing I don't understand about the amount of FIDE rated chess played, is what the statistics on the FIDE rating website mean. When I look up my rating card, I get 106 games listed in the games column here:

http://ratings.fide.com/id.phtml?event=470589

But around 180 opponents listed here:

http://ratings.fide.com/chess_statistic ... &details=1

And the statistics page here give a total of 203 games:

http://ratings.fide.com/chess_statistic ... ent=470589

The last two figures can probably be reconciled by playing some people more than once. But are they showing statistics for unrated games as well? And listing opponents that were unrated at the time I played them? Or is the rated games column (the first link above) incomplete?

[Paolo Casaschi]

Yes that's the thing. Folk around 160/70/80 ECF (yes, me too) won't play very many FIDE rated games, so any FIDE grade they get is going to remain more or less (pseudo) random for various reasons.

Interesting to compare this with the feedback I got in a previous thread about the possibility of scrapping the ECF grading and the extension of FIDE rating for more events played in the country. A common argument for not FIDE rating events like evening leagues has been the fact that players care too much about the FIDE Elo and don't want evening/club games to affect it since those are often played in sub-optimal conditions. Now you tell me instead that certain players don't really care about FIDE Elo, perceived as too volatile and random because of too few events being rated.
It might be then two very distinct set of players: weaker players (let's say 160 and less) play very few FIDE rated games and probably would like it better for more events to be rated so their rating would be less volatile. Stronger player that already play enough FIDE rated games like better to protect their rating from "casual" play.