RookHouse wrote:
I've only played on GameKnot, so that is the only one that I can
speak to.

I've played 287 games over the last few years on there and have a
1724 rating. Just to correlate that figure for you a little bit, I
am definitely NOT a 1724 player. I've had a National Master play
through my games and he evaluated me to be about a 1400 caliber of
player.

That tells you nothing about the strength of the players at GameKnot.
It just suggests that ratings at that site are bigger numbers than
USCF ratings. The rating system only looks at the difference between
ratings so GameKnot could subtract 324 from everyone's rating tonight
(or add 1000 or 1000000) without making any substantive difference to
anything.

Elo-style rating systems are essentially defined by three constants:

1. the rating of an `average' player;
2. the rating difference corresponding to a given expected score; and
3. `k', which governs how quickly ratings change.

It would, perhaps be a good thing if sites chose dramatically
different values for 1. and 2., so that ratings on different sites
would be dramatically different. That way, people wouldn't be tempted
to try to compare their 1700 rating on one site with their 1400 rating
on another.


Dave.

--
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