In October, 2005 the Executive Board passed a motion to USCF rate
certain foreign FIDE events. Among the tournaments are the Olympiad,
World Team, World Junior, World Youth, World Senior, Pan-Am Junior,
and Pan-Am Youth.
Since then, Mike Nolan has steadfastly refused to do the job. This has
resulted in a heated debate on the USCF Forum. I see the bright side
of this. I believe that what we really need to do is set up a
Crossfire type TV show about this. We can have tomatoes and other
objects to throw at each other and a Jerry Springer type moderator
with a buzzer that will sound to tell us when to start throwing
things. Since Mike Nolan is bigger than I am, we had better avoid any
fisticuffs. Too bad we can not invite really nasty guys, like Tim
Hanke and Bill Brock.
Here is the essence of the debate:
I feel that we should rate these events because many of these players
come to the US to compete. If they have USCF ratings that will
encourage more of them to come. A few of the low rated players will
even be eligible for class prizes. In short, we will all get rich.
This should have been done years ago. In fact, I have been advocating
this for 30 years since 1976.
Mike Nolan argues against: He argues: "So, how many of the 323 women
and 718 men who played in the 2004 Olympiad do you think are likely to
play in the US? 138 of those players are currently in USCF records,
and that includes our 10 players. According to USCF records, only
around 386 foreign FIDE-rated players have played in USCF rated events
in the last two years, and that includes about 50 players from Canada
and Mexico, plus several dozen players who live in the US but have not
yet changed their FIDE country of registry."
I (Sam Sloan) contend that most chess players play to gain rating
points. Very few, if any, play for the money. Even top grandmasters
generally cannot make a living from chess. As soon as they find out
that they have a USCF rating, they will start coming here in large
numbers to improve their rating. It is important that the USCF rating
system be run completely independently from the FIDE system. Actually,
they are entirely different systems. We should not just add 100 points
to their FIDE rating when they come here. They should start at zero,
just like everybody else does.
Mike Nolan replies "We don't just add 100 points, I'm not aware of a
time when the USCF ever did that. The current FIDE-to-USCF conversion
formula, which the Ratings Committee spent quite a bit of time working
on, is as follows: For someone whose FIDE rating is 2600 or higher,
their starting USCF rating is their FIDE rating + 50 points. For
someone whose FIDE rating is between 2200 and 2599, their starting
FIDE rating is their FIDE rating + 1/8 of the difference between 2200
and their FIDE rating. (Someone who is FIDE 2200 gets a 2200 USCF
rating, someone who is FIDE 2400 gets a 2425 USCF rating, etc.) For
someone whose FIDE rating is below 2200, their starting rating is
their FIDE rating. In all cases these are set up as provisional
ratings. If the player's FIDE rating is 2150 or higher, it is P/10,
otherwise it is P/5."
I (Sam Sloan) say that this is wrong. The USCF has a website at
http://msa.uschess.org/ There are more than 400,000 players with USCF
ratings there. Adding 1300 players from the coming Olympiad would be
an insignificant job. Indeed, I think that right now we should rate
the Olympiads for 2004 and possibly even 2002 so that we have a
database with these players. Since their results and birthdates are
already posted on the Internet, to download the data and add these
players to our database would not be a big job. Perhaps two rating
clerks could complete it in a few days. Once on our website, these
players would look up and find their ratings. If they think their
rating is too low, they can just come here and raise it.
Mike Nolan replies: "Several years ago the Ratings Committee came up
with a relatively simple way to update the ratings of our players
based on their FIDE events, using the data from the FIDE site once the
event is rated by FIDE. The current version of this procedure can be
found at
http://math.bu.edu/people/mg/ratings/fideuscf.pdf . This
procedure would take no more than a few hours for even a large event
like the Olympads or the World Youth, because the only players that
would have to be looked up are our players, not all of the 1000+
participants."
Mike Nolan continues: "It has been suggested that we should put all of
the active IMs and GMs into our database so that when any of them play
in USCF-rated events we would already have a USCF ID for them. I think
this would involve adding 2500-3000 records to the USCF database, and
it could probably be done automatically from the FIDE Ratings List,
thus requiring very little manual effort by the USCF office. The
ratings program now looks up any non-rated player with a FIDE ID in
the FIDE ratings list to come up with an initial ratings estimate, but
that doesn't deal with players who have previously played in a USCF
rated event and have a USCF rating, but one that is out of date
compared to their current strength. With players for whom the majority
of their chess play is not in USCF-rated events, 'once rated always
rated' may not be a very sound policy. In one recent case, a 16 year
old GM who played in a few games in the USA when he was around 10
still had a USCF rating of around 1800 from those events that was used
when he played in a recent USCF rated event. (His rating was changed
manually using the FIDE-to-USCF formula given in an earlier post and
the event was re-rated.) As I understand the policy, events to which
the USCF sends official representatives, like the Olympiad, the World
Team and the World Youth would be automatically covered, meaning all
USCF representatives would have their USCF ratings affected. (For the
2005 World Youth this would have included all 31 USA players, not just
the ones who received some financial assistance to attend.) Other USCF
members in those events who are not there representing the USCF but
happen to be playing in that event may or may not have their USCF
ratings affected, depending on exactly how we handle processing the
event. Say, for example, that one or more of the members of the
Canadian Olympiad team are USCF members. Those members are not
automatically covered by this policy. However, if the USCF were to
rate the event as if it had been a USCF-rated event, then all players
in the event would need USCF IDs and all players would get a USCF
rating or have their existing USCF rating affected. This could be 1000
or more players, the Torino Olympiad website says they're expecting
over 1300 participants. Other FIDE events may be rated if a USCF
member so requests in advance and pays a processing fee. Again,
whether any other USCF members who are at that event or all players in
that event would have their USCF ratings affected would depend on how
we handle processing these events. If we were to use the procedure
developed by the Ratings Committee for updating USCF ratings from
FIDE-rated events, then only the USA team members at events like the
Olympiad would have their USCF rating affected, and for other events
only the players who request in advance of the event and pay a
processing fee would have their rating affected. Using the USCF
ratings formula would require us to rate ALL players in the event, not
just our representatives, because the USCF ratings formula does not
have any shortcuts that would enable us to rate just a handful of
players in an event. We would need to rate all games by all players,
or at least all players who played our players, or played players who
played our players, or played players who played players who played
our players, etc.. (I think by the time you go two-ply deep in most
events you've essentially spanned all players in the event.) Getting
complete and accurate crosstables of events is one of the challenges
with treating these events as if they had been USCF rated events. It
would also be necessary to identify all the players correctly and make
sure we have up-to-date USCF ratings for them. Most of the players in
a large event like the Olympiad are either not going to have a USCF
rating or may have one that is from one or two events in the past,
possibly many years ago, and that rating may not be consistent with
their current FIDE rating, if they have one. (As far as I can tell
about 10% of the players in the last Olympiad did not have FIDE
ratings in advance of the event.) Using the procedure developed by the
Ratings Committee would not require getting a complete cross-table of
the event or processing all the players in it, just the handful of
players who are there representing the USCF or the players who have
requested in advance that their results be USCF rated. By stipulating
which events will be automatically covered and for other events having
the player request his or her results be USCF rated in advance of the
event, we eliminate the potential for someone asking for only their
good results to be rated, not their bad results."
In response, Sam Sloan argues that the USCF rating system is
completely different from the FIDE rating system. They started out the
same but have drifted far apart. The USCF no longer uses the Elo
system. It uses the Glickman System. The method of calculation is
completely different. Nobody really knows how they compare.
FIDE has had its problems, just as the USCF has had. Six years ago,
Myanmar had ten players rated over 2600 for example. They had
manipulated the rating system. Having the two systems completely
independent from each other would act as a check on that.
Right now, the question is: The Executive Board has ordered Mike Nolan
to rate the forthcoming Olympiad. Since he already knows the names of
1300 players who will be playing there, why is not he hard at work
putting their names and birthdates into the USCF database? Why has the
Woman World Championship which has been over for a few days not been
rated yet?
As I (Sam Sloan) see it, one problem here is to determine what it
means to "rate" the event. Mike Nolan, Grant Perks and some others
want simply to assign a provisional rating to the FIDE rated players
who are not USCF rated according to a formula. under which, for
example, a player FIDE rated 2400 would be considered to have a USCF
rating of 2425. Then all ten USCF players (6 men and 4 women) would
have their games rated based on this formula. Then data of all the
non-US players would be deleted or trashed.
The result would be a quick and dirty adjustment for ten US players
which would be totally meaningless. I would be completely opposed to
that entirely. Better not to do it at all, then to do it that way.
What Sam Sloan, Bill Goichberg, and apparently the board wants is that
all 1300 players in the Olympiad and the 64 players in the Woman's
World Championship be assigned permanent USCF ID numbers and brought
in to the USCF database permanently and then all their games be rated
in accordance with the same method that is used to rate new unrated
players who join the USCF for the first time. This is how the USCF
rated the Continental Woman Championship played in South America in
2003:
http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain....50560-12807449
The problem is: Mike Nolan does not want to do this. What is the
reason? I assume that Mike Nolan gets paid adequately for his
services. I realize that this is a lot of work and is a hard job.
Still, if Mike is getting paid, I cannot understand why he refuses.
This is not a new problem. Mike Nolan has been arguing against this
for several years.
In that case, why not hire Steve Immitt to do this? I am sure he would
be more than willing.
Sam Sloan