English Chess Forum

For many years the FIDE rating regulations have purported to require individual membership of a National Federation in order to obtain an international rating. That was in fact false, or at least not the way it was interpreted in practice, as International Chess didn't cease in countries that only allowed bodies such as clubs or regional associations to legally be members. Anyway the written words have now caught up with the practice and it now says (wef 1st July 2014):-

13.1 To be included in the FRL or FIDE Rapid/Blitz Rating Lists, a player must be registered through a national chess federation which is a member of FIDE. The Federation must not be temporarily or permanently excluded from membership.

Additionally it's now only five games to get an initial rating, although you do have to break your duck.

I rather suspect instability in ratings is going to increase, so with also the lack of stability in ECF grades arising from six-monthly grading, the relationship between grades and ratings for individuals with both ECF grades and International Elo is going to bounce all over the place.

This would be down to new K factor rules

8.56 K is the development coefficient.
K = 40 for a player new to the rating list until he has completed events with at least 30 games
K = 20 as long as a player's rating remains under 2400.
K = 10 once a player's published rating has reached 2400 and remains at that level subsequently, even if the rating drops below 2400.
K = 40 for all players until their 18th birthday, as long as their rating remains under 2400.

Roger de Coverly wrote:I rather suspect instability in ratings is going to increase

I rather suspect that was the intention; the FIDE rating system suffers badly from juniors' ratings being insufficiently responsive to their changing strength.

IM Jack Rudd wrote: I rather suspect that was the intention; the FIDE rating system suffers badly from juniors' ratings being insufficiently responsive to their changing strength.

My point is slightly more subtle. Rather than have a fudge factor adding artificial age-related points as in the ECF and BCF system before it, they choose to increase the K factor. If Junior players always exceed their expected score, the rating will increase at a more rapid rate, which was the objective. It's if they have a setback or even have a pair of tournaments which taken together are average, the ratings could plummet even on a temporary basis.

Roger de Coverly wrote:

IM Jack Rudd wrote: I rather suspect that was the intention; the FIDE rating system suffers badly from juniors' ratings being insufficiently responsive to their changing strength.

My point is slightly more subtle. Rather than have a fudge factor adding artificial age-related points as in the ECF and BCF system before it, they choose to increase the K factor. If Junior players always exceed their expected score, the rating will increase at a more rapid rate, which was the objective. It's if they have a setback or even have a pair of tournaments which taken together are average, the ratings could plummet even on a temporary basis.

They could, but overall random underperformances are going to be cancelled out by random overperformances over the population as a whole. It's worth introducing a little more random error to damp down a systematic error.

It depends which systemic error you are trying to dampen. An increase in the variance of rating error increases observed "stretch" in the system.

IMO increasing junior K-factors in that way is not a good way to go.

If juniors play in a junior APA the situation is made worse ! Rated junior APAs are probably good for selection and training purposes but this takes the edge off it. It doesn't even have to be an all junior APA; a junior contingent of 50% of competitors would cause problems. Some leagues with tight board order rules are effectively APAs. It needed something a bit more imaginative to be useful and there are better ways.

On some very rough calculations it seems to me that about 35 would be a better junior k-factor if it had to be done that way.

Brian Valentine wrote:An increase in the variance of rating error increases observed "stretch" in the system.

I do wish I'd paid more attention at school