On Nov 16, 5:18 pm, "Chess One" wrote:

Now and again I chat with the geniuses who administer chess in this
country.

Can you be specific: which country? Do you /believe/
you are in Ireland, for instance? Or England? (There is
a strange flag by your name at ChessWorld -- not the
stars and stripes, nor even the flag of the Confederacy.)

There is also a strange rating attached to it, improbable both for someone
my age and some who cheats, though these exhaust your own criterion

I see. So you cannot answer due to your "clock" of
secrecy pact.


O. But we do not discuss such epehemral subjects as rating floors

That must have slipped my mind.

It so happens that in perusing a current listing of
the players in my area, I saw that several were
plastered on the floor -- held up by a purely artificial
construct (not unlike Parr-logic) of no substance.
My current goal is not to fall flat to whatever mine
happens to be -- at least not rapidly.


Let me give a real-world example: here in the
state of Indiana there is a player named Emory
Tate, and he has been "taken out" of contention
more than once by far lesser players, when
competing for say, the state title. Yet when he
faces off against "other GMs" (yes, he actually
believes he is one!) his results are much better
that his rating would predict -- or at least his
upset potential is. This is most likely because
of his far greater effort in those games, and his
relative lack of effort when playing patzers.

an eccentric example, to example what point?

I expect it is a point far beyond the very limited
powers of a nearly-an-IM to grasp; all you need to
know is that 99% of readers here will "get it", so
your unique level of intelligence is an anomaly.


At the other end of the scale there are many
players who have low ratings, but who are in the
process of studying and improving rapidly; such
players' ratings could well be off by a class or
more, since they knew so little to begin with.
If an average player were to sit down thinking he
was expected to win, and take the improving
player's rating too seriously, the result could be
disastrous.

humm.

Okay... ummm hmmm haa ha hmmm. Now you
try it.


is the rating held by any player currently active in their rating pool,
relective of their relative performance against other players in the same
pool, similarly active?

Reflective? Yes. Always reliable? No. The key
to remember is that ratings reflect results -- no
matter how they may have been obtained. This
includes thrown games, fluke losses and obviously
unrepeatable events like Frank Marshall losing 0-7.
No, wait -- he did repeat that, over and over!

Currently, the best example I can give (and it's not
a very good one) is that of the GM (or IM) who
routinely takes a draw in the final round of a Swiss
tournament, so as to be able to leave early while
still collecting his first-place prize. Obviously, as
these are not real, contested games their being
rating skews the numbers, rendering them far from
perfect.


When such unsubstantiated claims surface,
it is possible to look at results /objectively/ by
taking raw numbers and doing math -- where
the human-bias element is removed from the
equation altogether, *if* the equations and
relevant data were determined in an objective
manner, with no room for human meddling.

you cannot remove 'human bias' from things to do with human beings.

I can if I kill them all and then run the numbers
through an alien-designed ratings system to see
who was best! Besides, one day ants will rise up
and conquer inferior societies, like those of humans
and squabbling geese.


did you say anything here I failed to reflect?

Did you learn to read yet? Only after completing
your course will you be able to finally grasp what
more intelligent people write here (which basically
includes everyone, unfortunately).


the proposition that ratings are equivalent to strength is the issue, and is
one a [relative] synonym for the other, is the question

The answer is "not necessarily".

But this is no meal-ticket for posturing that in
spite of rating X, you are really nearly-an-IM.
You see, there needs to exist a /real/ reason
of cause for the anomaly to exist, not merely
the emotional desire!

In my case, the reason my rating is not
reflective of my /current/ strength is that I have
not played in a long time, AND what I believe
is a very real ratings deflation which has taken
place in the interim. While former rivals sit on
cold floors, helpless to get up, I am still floating
in thin air... .


-- help bot