Giver Uppers

[Joey Stewart]

You know how players give up chess and take away their rating points (which are subsequently lost) and then come back later in life, reclaiming their former rating but at the expense of having to steal a lot of points from their fellow players....

Well I have a good solution for this - if a player "gives up" playing and goes inactive then their rating points are put into a pool and those points are randomly distributed to other players at the end of the season.

It has two good things going for it.

1. The points lost are still out there for them to grab back when they make their triumphant return.

2. Lots of people will be happy when their grade unexpectedly goes up by 10-20 points at the end of a season.


I think it is a system with no drawbacks, who should I write to to get it put into practise?

[Greg Breed]

..Or more specifically, give the points to those players who lost against said player in their last season.

[Roger de Coverly]

You know how players give up chess and take away their rating points (which are subsequently lost) and then come back later in life, reclaiming their former rating but at the expense of having to steal a lot of points from their fellow players....

That doesn't really happen though. Assume a player with a grade of 175 scoring 50% against a field of average 175. They go inactive for a season or two. Then they come back and score 50% as before against the same opposition. Their grade is 175 and their opponents get credit for playing a player of 175. The new player process in effect injects the necessary points back into the system.

The only way it presents a potential problem is where they come back and only make a performance of 150 in their first rating period. If in the subsequent rating period, they resume being able to score 50% against 175 average, they will dilute the grades of their opponents a bit. But in a national rating system, it isn't a valid assumption that a player inactive locally loses strength.

The Glicko system tries to make this assumption. I believe that FIDE are experimenting with it as a possible alternative to the traditional Elo methods. One problem was that when Matthew Sadler returned with a very good performance, the system tried to rank him alongside Carlsen.

[Sean Hewitt]

You know how players give up chess and take away their rating points (which are subsequently lost) and then come back later in life, reclaiming their former rating but at the expense of having to steal a lot of points from their fellow players....

Well I have a good solution for this - if a player "gives up" playing and goes inactive then their rating points are put into a pool and those points are randomly distributed to other players at the end of the season.

It has two good things going for it.

1. The points lost are still out there for them to grab back when they make their triumphant return.

2. Lots of people will be happy when their grade unexpectedly goes up by 10-20 points at the end of a season.


I think it is a system with no drawbacks, who should I write to to get it put into practise?

How about these guys?

[Stewart Reuben]

I am making up the numbers, but this happened to me. The rating floor used to be 2200.
I was 2210 and lost 20 rating points in one period. Thus I no longer had a FIDE Rating. My 20 point loss had disappeared from the pool. The 20 point gain for my opponents was still there. This was inflationary.
The problem still exists today, but now the floor is 1000, it is far removed from the top players.
By the way, I later returned to the list at 2270 and have gradually drifted down since.

Joeys suggestion was presumably intended as a joke. It is very hard to know whether a player has retired or whether he is temporarily inactive.
1965 I left the US with a rating about 2150. I next played in 1991. I reminded them of my rating. For the next several events my rating went up until I restablised at 2240. But I was not a stronger player in 1990 than 1965. The USCF had had inflation in their system.

[Joey Stewart]

I like this system of losing the rating completely if you drop below the "floor", but you are right about the floor being too low now, certainly in the 4ncl you tend not to see many players with fide ratings below 1600 and that is considered on the low side.

P.S. Is that 1965 a typo or are you older then you look, I thought you were somewhere in your 60s but that would mean you were a young boy when you were living in America?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

P.S. Is that 1965 a typo or are you older then you look, I thought you were somewhere in your 60s but that would mean you were a young boy when you were living in America?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Reuben

Born 1939, before the outbreak of World War II.

[Arshad Ali]

You know how players give up chess and take away their rating points (which are subsequently lost) and then come back later in life, reclaiming their former rating but at the expense of having to steal a lot of points from their fellow players....

Well I have a good solution for this - if a player "gives up" playing and goes inactive then their rating points are put into a pool and those points are randomly distributed to other players at the end of the season.

This hoarding of rating points takes place in capitalist societies, where people selfishly grab these rating points and then privately go and gloat over them, removing them from circulation.

Here in Minneapolis as there's more or less a closed group of players, the same rating points get shunted back and forth: the total pool of rating points is (semi-) fixed. In the past I've suggested we organise raiding parties to other states to win some fresh rating points that we can then subsequently inject into the local rating pool. The consequence of having closed groups of rated players is that, say, a 1700 player in one state is not equal in strength to a 1700 player in some other state.

[Stewart Reuben]

I have not suggested that the rating floor of 1000 is too low. Indeed it was my idea that it go down to that level. It took 13 years. I may suggest for 2015.

It has been suggested that players in the North-East England are systemically under-graded. Young improving players take grading points from the established players and move South, taking the points with them.

Joey, flattery will get you everywhere!

[Arshad Ali]

It has been suggested that players in the North-East England are systemically under-graded. Young improving players take grading points from the established players and move South, taking the points with them.

For some inexplicable reason this reminds me of the old Scottish joke that when a Scotsman moves to England he raises the average IQ of both nations. Maybe here "playing strength" should be substituted ....