SANDBAGGING

"As long as we have the goofy system of paying large class prizes we
will have sandbagging. Reward excellence and just maybe there will be
more of it," said an idealistic official, a voice in the wilderness.
--

GM Larry Evans in a chapter about sandbagging in THIS CRAZY WORLD OF
CHESS (page 143),


David Richerby wrote:
J.D. Walker wrote:
Taylor Kingston wrote:
[Rating floors are aimed against sandbagging.]

Thanks for the explanation of the cause of the ratings floors.
Given this, I still maintain that it leads to a corruption of the
rating system.

If preventing sandbagging was the only reason for rating floors, it
would have been much better to just say that nobody can win a class
prize in a class more than 200 below their highest ever rating, or
something similar.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Poisonous Impossible Robot (TM): it's
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ like a high-tech robot but it can't
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J.D. Walker wrote:
Summarizing: where is the economic legitimacy of professional chess
in a capitalist society?

I don't see why you're singling out chess. Where is the economic
legitimacy of professional sport as a whole in a capitalist society?

But isn't it just that people are prepared to pay for entertainment?


Dave.

--
David Richerby Sadistic Widget (TM): it's like a
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ thingy but it wants to hurt you!

On Nov 18, 5:00 pm, " wrote:

Also see: Did the Soviets Collude?: A Statistical Analysis of
Championship Chess 1940-64

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...ract_id=905612

Taylor Kingston wrote:

Yes, a good article, adding some mathematical support to the
collusion thesis. It was very gratifying to see several ChessCafe.com
writers cited in it. Didn't see the supposedly seminal, scholar-
acclaimed Evans mentioned at all.

On Nov 18, 5:35 pm, artichoke wrote:

The paper is interesting but not conclusive. It says that if Soviets
colluded their clean sweep was a 75% probably event but if they did
not collude it was a 25% probably event. That isn't proof beyond a
reasonable doubt.

The paper is not intended as conclusive proof that there was
collusion. Its main point is to show, through probability models, that
collusion would in fact *_increase_* the Soviets' overall chance for
success. Some have thought otherwise; the paper deflates that argument.

David Richerby wrote:
J.D. Walker wrote:
Summarizing: where is the economic legitimacy of professional chess
in a capitalist society?

I don't see why you're singling out chess. Where is the economic
legitimacy of professional sport as a whole in a capitalist society?

But isn't it just that people are prepared to pay for entertainment?


Dave.

I single out chess because I care about it, and because it is topical
here. As for entertainment, my point was that chess makes poor
entertainment for the masses, thus basing a chess economy on the
entertainment dollar is not sensible.

--

Cheers,
Rev. J.D. Walker, MsD, U.C.

On Nov 19, 8:50 am, David Richerby
wrote:
J.D. Walker wrote:
Taylor Kingston wrote:
[Rating floors are aimed against sandbagging.]

Thanks for the explanation of the cause of the ratings floors.
Given this, I still maintain that it leads to a corruption of the
rating system.

If preventing sandbagging was the only reason for rating floors, it
would have been much better to just say that nobody can win a class
prize in a class more than 200 below their highest ever rating, or
something similar.

Do not forget that there are some players who, from
day one, were advised to never allow their OTB rating
to get very high, lest they later be unable to win money.

And of course there are those who cross borders,
with the sole intention of either winning lots of class
prize money, or else grooming their ratings to enable
future reaping of harvests.

In my area, a few of the players I have known for
many years are sitting on their floors, apparently on
account of a gradual deflation process. Years ago,
many of these same players were hitting new all-time
highs, apparently as the result of ratings inflation.

It seems to me that inflation, while mathematically a
bad thing, was helpful in promoting tournament
participation, while deflation should yield the opposite
effect.

-- help bot

On Nov 19, 10:43 am, " wrote:

"As long as we have the goofy system of paying large class prizes we
will have sandbagging. Reward excellence and just maybe there will be
more of it," said an idealistic official, a voice in the wilderness.
--

GM Larry Evans in a chapter about sandbagging in THIS CRAZY WORLD OF
CHESS (page 143),

Coming from a grandmaster, this comes off as
greed. IMO, the top players are already getting
the lion's share of prize money, so grasping for
even more is selfish and worse, it ignores the
inevitable result: less participation overall by the
lowly masses, the peons GM Evans and his ilk
hold in disdain. If arrogance could be replaced
by a sweeter attitude, the result might be more
akin to the work of Zorro, and less like that seen
in a famous quote:

"...let them [the peons] eat cake."


-- help bot

J.D. Walker wrote:
David Richerby wrote:
J.D. Walker wrote:
Summarizing: where is the economic legitimacy of professional chess
in a capitalist society?

I don't see why you're singling out chess. Where is the economic
legitimacy of professional sport as a whole in a capitalist society?

But isn't it just that people are prepared to pay for entertainment?

I single out chess because I care about it, and because it is topical
here.

OK but I don't think that chess is in a significantly different
position to other sports/games/whatever-you-want-to-call-them-s.

As for entertainment, my point was that chess makes poor
entertainment for the masses, thus basing a chess economy on the
entertainment dollar is not sensible.

It's poor entertainment for the masses, yes. But fine wine, haute
couture, supercars and luxury yachts are also poor entertainment for
the masses and do just fine. Now, of course, they are all low-volume,
high-value markets, while chess is relatively low volume and low
value. And that indicates why professional chess players aren't rich
unless they started rich.

Fundamentally, though, chess does little more than entertain, just
like any other sport/etc. To its niche market, it's very
entertaining. It would be foolish to base a `chess economy' on
anything other than its entertainment value.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Natural Impossible Bulb (TM): it's
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ like a light bulb but it can't exist
and it's completely natural!

David Richerby wrote:

Fundamentally, though, chess does little more than entertain, just
like any other sport/etc.

*** To its niche market, ***

it's very entertaining. It would be foolish to base a `chess economy' on
anything other than its entertainment value.

Exactly. Explain it to the people who suggest moving into the mass TV
market to bring big bucks into chess.

On Nov 20, 7:09 am, "J.D. Walker" wrote:
David Richerby wrote:
Fundamentally, though, chess does little more than entertain, just
like any other sport/etc.

*** To its niche market, ***

it's very entertaining. It would be foolish to base a `chess economy' on
anything other than its entertainment value.

Exactly. Explain it to the people who suggest moving into the mass TV
market to bring big bucks into chess.

I recall the BBC aired a series on chess, The Master Game, during the
1970s. I've never seen it, but from descriptions of it, it sounds like
an ideal treatment of chess on television. A tournament among top
players was organized, the games were taped and the tapes edited to a
half-hour broadcast length, and the players asked to provide their
thoughts on the games. The BBC used some simple techniques involving a
glass chessboard and pieces that had their symbols on the bottom to
show the position on the board. IM William Hartson was a host of the
programs.

Such an approach seems to keep chess as chess with minimal concessions
to mass audiences. The problem with tinkering with chess for broadcast
is that you don't create an audience for the game, you create an
audience for your tinkered version. So if you drag some rock band into
a chess match, as one failed experiment in chess broadcasting has
shown, your audience has come for the band, and not the game. To quote
one of the Muppets, "if you put enough sugar in [champagne] it tastes
just like ginger ale." Ginger ale outsells champagne; do we want our
chess with sugar?

This discussion reminds me of the hopefully-dead trend of attempting
to market classical music by tarting it up or dumbing it down. It was
a failure; there was no 'string quartet boom' because of Bond
concerts, and I doubt anyone became an opera fan from listening to
Charlotte Church or any of those other 'mockera' singers the big
labels pushed.

J.D. Walker wrote:
David Richerby wrote:
Fundamentally, though, chess does little more than entertain, just
like any other sport/etc.

*** To its niche market, ***

it's very entertaining. It would be foolish to base a `chess
economy' on anything other than its entertainment value.

Exactly. Explain it to the people who suggest moving into the mass
TV market to bring big bucks into chess.

I tried. They insinuated that I somehow wanted to hold chess back and
deny it its place in the sun.


Dave.

--
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