On Sat, 17 May 2008 08:29:00 -0400, "Chess One"
wrote:

The folks who receive the rating reports, enter the data and publish
the ratings can hardly be expected to determine that some of the paid
USCF members in the crosstable don't really exist, or didn't really
play in the event.

They can't be expected? But I thought that was the entire point of official
ratings? Some expectation exists of 'officiating'.

When a tournament report is submitted and all the players have valid
membership numbers, I can't see how it would be cost effective for
USCF office staff to (1) make sure a person corresponding to the
membership actually exists, (2) make sure the person corresponding to
the membership number is actually the person playing in the
tournament, etc. This is one case where "Management By Exception" is
probably the right approach.

When to drill down? When some fake wins a prize, qualifies for an
invitational, some guy who we know is a relative fish gets a high
rating from some out-of-town events and the locals get suspicious,
etc. That's when it make sense for the office to start checking --
not ALL the time. And, I agree, when handing out LM titles and giving
rating floors at a level where the prestige of such a floor has
economic value, more thorough checking is in order.

And the spurious events didn't all come in a
batch -- they were nicely separated both in time and space.

But a visual scan of data of ratings would immediately make that clear. That
seemed to be a benefit of the XPR system I wrote about.

I'm not following this -- how would it work?

As I
remember, Tanner was strong enough that the fake events didn't stand
out as egregious anomalies. Some nice detective work by Sam Sloan.

Because the data is recorded as number. As a visual presentation in a
chart - it would be immediately apparent.

Why? Why would he not just appear to be a "streak" player?

But if this is indeed USCF's system of /recording data/ where is any quality
control to occur?

Secondly, on awarding a master rating and rating floor, /still/ no-one
noticed or checked Tanner's record [if indeed, we are to believe that].

Nobody complained.

Chess history has been destroyed. The ratings for past individuals (prior to
1990) have been destroyed. Some say it was an accident. Others say it was
done to cover up false rating reports submitted by coaches to inflate their
chess ratings in order to gain respect and money by claiming superior chess
skills (e.g., I can coach you because I am a master).

As I understand, the ratings records exist on paper and could be
re-entered if we were willing to bear the expense. I'm reluctant to
introduce conspiracy when incompetence is a sufficient explanation,
but you could be right. Paid coaching seems to me almost as
destructive of ratings integrity as large class prizes.