On May 9, 4:29 pm, Mike Murray wrote:

I spent half an hour on the phone this week interviewing someone who wants
to bring chess ratings into the C21st, and who will additionally provide
Chessville with 4 articles on the subject. He operates an outfit in
competition to 'standard' ratings, but is still true to Elo - in fact more
true than those systems which use ratings floors and ceilings. Phil Innes

So his system cuts sandbaggers and manipulators a little more slack?


Let's not forget that there are "lifetime sandbaggers"
as well. When I first started playing in rated tourneys,
I noticed that the winner of our state's Reserve section
sounded strangely familiar. It turned out that he was
deliberately staying below the cutoff point, so he
could win, year after year, thereby becoming world-
famous like Sam Sloan.

No amount of quibbling over K-factors or ratings
floors or ceilings can impede these "lifers". And in
addition to American "lifers", there are of course
more than a few foreigners who travel to play in our
"big money" tournaments, year after year. These
folks know that if they stay below certain cutoffs,
they will end up the richer for it, financially anyway.

Fortunately, the amount of devotion to duty and
determination to lose -- sometimes -- and never
having the ambition to become a Class A player
like me, is rare, so these "lifers" are /relatively/
few and far between.

One item which seems to be of interest is the
mathematical advantage of having the first move
in a game of chess. If this edge were found to
be almost identical at every level, it should be an
easy matter to implement a change in the ratings
system to more accurately reflect the fact that I
have been given 62.147% Blacks and only
36.853 Whites (the other 1% of the time I was
forced to play with red or green pieces, and I
hung my Queen as a direct result).

Apparently as the result of some fairly recent
ratings deflation, a lot of folks are now on their
rating floors. What can be done about this? Is
it merely superficial, allowing such players to
"save face" when in fact their /real/ ratings are
tracked and used for calculating all ratings
changes? I, of course, wouldn't know about
such things, since I am never on any floor and
am always breaking through ceilings (ahem).


-- help bot