I believe that most players reach their peak strength at age 30, and
then remain relatively stable for the next 20-30 years with their
ratings rarely going up or down more than 50 points.

Thus if you see an across-the-board drop of all players in the 30--50
age group of 100 to 150 points, you know that something is wrong.

On the other hand there is strong reason to believe that today's kids
are getting stronger because of the Internet.

For example, when I was a kid I had almost no chances to improve. I
went to the Lynchburg Chess Club once a week but the strongest player
there was below 1600. I became champion of my city at age 14 and from
then on all my opponents were weaker than I. My only chances to play
were about three times a year when traveled long distances to open
tournaments. I basically taught myself chess by ordering chess books
from Bushke and by playing postal chess.

Nowadays, any kid with a computer can play chess online with
grandmasters 24 hours a day. Opponents are always available. I am
certain that if I had had such opportunities when I was a kid I would
have become a good player.

Nowadays we have a 14 year old kid from Norway with a rating over 2700
who regularly beats the best players in the world. He has obviously
spent a lot of time on the Internet.

Sam Sloan

On Mar 16, 3:50 pm, "samsloan" wrote:

I believe that most players reach their peak strength at age 30, and
then remain relatively stable for the next 20-30 years with their
ratings rarely going up or down more than 50 points.

Thus if you see an across-the-board drop of all players in the 30--50
age group of 100 to 150 points, you know that something is wrong.

The USCF should consider adopting the same system
used by our national government, which is to say, one of
constant inflation and devaluation of its currency, or in
this case, ratings.

Here are a just a few of the advantages:

1) Most players would think they are still improving,
because their ratings keep climbing.

2) Players who believe they are improving tend to
play more often, to see how high they can go.

3) This in turn brings in more revenue, in the form of
membership renewals and tournament rating fees.

4) After several years of rampant ratings inflation,
Bobby Fischer would start playing again to protect
his record from being broken by all the "weakies".

5) The USCF could offer "bonus points" to rated
players who enroll new members, or who play a
set number of games per year, etc.

6) All other chess-playing Web sites would become
obsolete, since only the USCF would offer bonuses
and constant inflation to bolster its members' ratings
ever higher and higher.


Now, there could be a couple of very minor drawbacks,
though these are fairly insignificant in view of all the
above advantages:

1) Currency devaluation may eventually lead to total
collapse of our monetary system, as we know it.

2) The Chinese and Japanese, among others, may well
take over our former position in the global economy,
leaving us struggling just to feed and clothe ourselves
whilst they become the new world leaders. (Even so,
we would undoubtedly become a leader among all the
other banana republics like us).

3) Ratings inflation can lead to an effect known as
devaluation, whereby bigger numbers are quite
worthless.

As you can see, the advantages far outweigh the
relatively few, and small, disadvantages. This is why
I favor immediate adoption of the ratings-inflation plan.
If patented, the USCF would not only enjoy the
"first mover advantage", but also exclusive rights to
all this entails.

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