English Chess Forum

I suspect part of Richard's point lies in the perception of rating deflation; when you've reached the level where you may get invited to lucrative norm tournaments based on your FIDE rating, the natural thing to do is to play in as many other FIDE-rated events as possible when you think there is inflation, and as few as possible when you think there is deflation.

IM Jack Rudd wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:41 pm

I suspect part of Richard's point lies in the perception of rating deflation; when you've reached the level where you may get invited to lucrative norm tournaments based on your FIDE rating, the natural thing to do is to play in as many other FIDE-rated events as possible when you think there is inflation, and as few as possible when you think there is deflation.

In which case, there is a chicken and egg problem - they don't want to play in FIDE-rated events because of perceived deflation, but Nick is saying this problem would go away if we FIDE-rated more events.

I guess one way to test this would be to hold a Scheveningen match between English players rated 2400-2500 and a continental team, largely of the same rating, and see what the result is. If the argument of deflation in England is true, then the English players should gain rating points.

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:48 pm

I guess one way to test this would be to hold a Scheveningen match between English players rated 2400-2500 and a continental team, largely of the same rating, and see what the result is. If the argument of deflation in England is true, then the English players should gain rating points.

Why? What makes you think the same problem doesn't exist everywhere else?

Alex McFarlane wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:28 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:01 pm

If you have an amateur tournament (i.e. most weekend tournaments in England), then I think you need to FIDE-rate it to attract more players.

Blackpool? Scarborough?
The two biggest weekenders on the circuit. Neither are FIDE rated. (And neither qualify for entry to the British.)

Blackpool certainly used to......

IM Jack Rudd wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:58 pm

Why? What makes you think the same problem doesn't exist everywhere else?

Whether the "problem" is real or imagined, players elsewhere don't seem fussed about it.

NickFaulks wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:05 pm

Richard is arguing that England should largely withdraw itself from FIDE's titles and ratings systems.

I suggest that his point is that if you are trying to push your rating to 2200, 2300, 2400 or 2500, a weekend Swiss is not the best place to use. There are no longer any titles linked to ECF grades, so it doesn't matter so much if you pursue victory where a draw is objectively the best decision or agree to halve the points against a lower rated opponent to safeguard a prize.

Well, that seems to have stimulated a fair bit of discussion! Unfortunately it appears mainly due to people being unable to read, drawing inferences where there are none and/or making “logical” deductions which are completely illogical!

All for just basically stating the, I would have thought unarguable, point that normal FIDE rated weekenders (note: not one game a day events, not nine round norm events, nor even to some extent longer seven round bank holiday events) are an absolute potential disaster area for any strong player who cares anything about their FIDE rating. And i’m not making a point about inflation or deflation or anything like that. Just that two (or three if allowed) rounds a day, usually with an evening round is tiring, leaves little to no margin for error, a levelling of the playing field caused by quick time controls and no preparation time and an inevitable conflict between pursuit of prize money and rating points. And to dismiss all this as a factor for organisers to consider, and arguably seek to discourage them from considering, when deciding the sort of players they want to attract to an event is somewhat complacent. In the opinion of this reasonably strong, amateur, player.

Richard Bates wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 27, 2018 7:08 pm

Well, that seems to have stimulated a fair bit of discussion! Unfortunately it appears mainly due to people being unable to read, drawing inferences where there are none and/or making “logical” deductions which are completely illogical!

If you're going to say things like "in FIDE rating terms such tournaments effectively offer almost no upsides and potentially very large downsides" without further explanation, then you must expect people here to try to guess what those downsides are ( although I was careful not to fall into that trap ).

(note: not one game a day events, not nine round norm events, nor even to some extent longer seven round bank holiday events)

So how many does that leave? Most club players would play hardly any rated games, so that when they do, their opponents will understandably complain that their ratings do not truly reflect their playing strength. I do not have a solution to this peculiarly British problem.

NickFaulks wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 28, 2018 1:16 am

I do not have a solution to this peculiarly British problem.

The solution was demonstrated by the BCF and other national federations sixty years ago. You just set the rating standards to include all chess. It's something FIDE will have to do eventually, if it has ambitions to replace national rating systems.

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:46 am

If Richard's argument were true, then it would apply equally to a 9-round Open played at 1 game per day as it would a weekend tournament; or indeed a 7-round event like Paignton or Guernsey.

NickFaulks wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:05 pm

Richard is arguing that England should largely withdraw itself from FIDE's titles and ratings systems. I do not doubt that he has his reasons for believing this, and that he given careful thought to them, but he stops short of telling us what they are.

Richard Bates wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 27, 2018 7:08 pm

Well, that seems to have stimulated a fair bit of discussion! Unfortunately it appears mainly due to people being unable to read, drawing inferences where there are none and/or making “logical” deductions which are completely illogical!

All for just basically stating the, I would have thought unarguable, point that normal FIDE rated weekenders (note: not one game a day events, not nine round norm events, nor even to some extent longer seven round bank holiday events) are an absolute potential disaster area for any strong player who cares anything about their FIDE rating.

Thank you, Richard. I was beginning to think that I had imagined that this was a discussion about weekend congresses.

NickFaulks wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 28, 2018 1:16 am

(note: not one game a day events, not nine round norm events, nor even to some extent longer seven round bank holiday events)

So how many does that leave? Most club players would play hardly any rated games, so that when they do, their opponents will understandably complain that their ratings do not truly reflect their playing strength.

You have a variety of tournaments, which the weekend congress scene now provides. There are indeed many amateur players with limited time who prefer to play in the FIDE rated ones.

You reduce the time limit for FIDE Rating from four hours to three hours, except perhaps for players 2500 and above, and remove the 40 move restriction. That would give many Leagues the opportunity to opt for FIDE rating if they so wished.

But what you should not do is try to pressurise events which do not wish to adopt FIDE rating into doing so.

David Sedgwick wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 28, 2018 9:17 am

Thank you, Richard. I was beginning to think that I had imagined that this was a discussion about Weekend Congresses.

It was, but if you take away evening leagues as well ( which I assume Richard would do with even more force ) then for the great majority of English club players there's not much left.

NickFaulks wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 28, 2018 1:16 am

I do not have a solution to this peculiarly British problem.

Is it peculiarly British?

Take a look at https://ratings.fide.com/tournament_lis ... 2018-02-01, https://ratings.fide.com/tournament_lis ... 2018-03-01, https://ratings.fide.com/tournament_lis ... 2018-02-01 and https://ratings.fide.com/tournament_lis ... 2018-03-01.

In Azerbaijan there were 18 FIDE rated tournaments in 5 separate events in the first two months of this year. In Armenia there were 5 FIDE Rated tournaments in 2 separate events.

Is this really the totality of chess activity in these two major chess playing nations?

In England during the same period, there were 80 FIDE rated tournaments in 30 separate events, not including the Tradewise Gibraltar Festival and treating each Division of the 4NCL as a "tournament" for this purpose. Apologies if I have miscounted.

Admittedly a fair number of these were Rapid and Blitz tournaments.

Lots of discussion. There are lots of tournaments, ECF & or fide, weekenders or not. Amateurs wanting to improve rating. Real downside is getting drawn against a weak player like me. There is no incentive for them.
As for adult leagues any reason not to have a 2.5 hour session for fide. Why not also allow adjournments? Some of us that came into the game loved the idea of adjournments in World Championships but also team tournaments and so what if the opposition analysis was better than ours.

I lived in Exeter for 3 years at University. So always wanted to play tournaments in the West Country later on in my life but family really got in the way.

I do not think that the congress would have got anywhere near the same numbers if played a week later. And I hope that all those that are battling against snow keep warm, stay safe and are not stuck somewhere because of Storm Emma.

The aforementioned Warwickshire Open event ended up with about 60 players, but about 30 withdrew on the day, and we expect that some others didn't enter (or were leaving it late to enter) because of the weather. We know of two such people for sure. So we can't really compare the year-on-year entry levels.

However, what relatively little FIDE-rated chess was played due to the numbers pumped 27 Elo points into the system. My suspicion would be that other FIDE-rated events too around England would achieve similar results, but I've not looked into that at all. It's perhaps an investigation for someone else to perform.

If it is true that more FIDE-rated chess means more FIDE-rating points being added into the domestic players' ratings, then arguments about deflation would fall away; because this would show that FIDE-rating is inflationary. So the answer to the deflation argument would be: That's because you're not FIDE-rating enough chess.