Newsgroups: rec.games.chess.misc Path: info!dregis From: dregis@exeter.ac.uk (D.Regis) Subject: Re: Rating Floors to Cause retirement or inactivity. Message-ID: Organization: University of Exeter, UK. References: <32FB2763.1A95@esu3.esu3.k12.ne.us> <19970209140201.JAA08791@ladder01.news.aol.com> <5dl6qs$ql4@nntp.novia.net> Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 12:35:23 GMT In article <5dl6qs$ql4@nntp.novia.net> Bruce Draney writes: > If you throw a potato at me I'll throw a corncob at you. I don't >pretend to speak for Idaho, since I've never played chess there, but the >other day on another thread you wrote in to say that it was hard to >become a master (and stay one) in your state. A Devon dumpling is hurled into the arena: Statistically, an expert has an expected percentage score which should maintain their rating and status - say, 80% against opposition whose average rating is a couple of hundred points below them, or 20% for opposition which outrates them by a similar margin. So, theoretically you should be able to maintain any rating against any standard of opposition. Anecdotally, this seems not to be the case. Is there a contradiction here? Maybe not. Also anecdotally, I play better against better opposition. My average rating (BCF grade) against opponents who are better than me is much higher than my performance against players worse than me, in any given season. I don't know if the lower-rated player plays better, the higher-rated plays worse, or a bit of both, but it is a consistent feature of my chess for the last twenty years. Just my chess? Maybe not, and this would account for the class of the "lonely experts" dropping. P.S. I remember reading a letter, perhaps from one Jonathan Berry, where complaints about the ratings system is his country fell into two categories: 1. My rating is too low. 2. The ratings of players from my town/county/state are too low. He concluded, that, in the absence of any other complaints, one can assume that the system is working perfectly! From info!dregis Mon Feb 17 12:06:55 GMT 1997 Article: 5503 of rec.games.chess.analysis