FIDE rating differences between countries

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Wadih Khoury
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FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by Wadih Khoury » Fri Jun 11, 2021 11:40 am

I was reading a couple of articles on Chessbase (links at end of post) which were overlapping with some of my own research and I believe it may be of interest for those of you who like numbers :wink: :

The first article looks into junior average gain/loss of rating points at World Youth Chess Championships.
The findings are partially as expected, and partially surprising:

Image


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As expected for countries like India, China, Iran or Turkey, and a bit surprising for countries like Russia which I thought were usually under-rated. It could be because in the age group I am familiar with, Russian juniors have few Fide games, while as they get older they are pushed to play in more Fide rated tournaments.

Also of interest is England, showing as not gaining nor losing points. This is quite a surprise, given the general anecdotal consensus that English players give loads of points in these events.
Again, maybe 2 factors explain this: the ones complaining are usually the ones that have higher fide ratings and hence have been playing more often. Their point losses could be balanced by the English players with less games that are more underrated. Another reason could be that while English players do not lose points on average, we can still consider them as underrated if we consider countries like Germany, France, Spain and Russia to be sufficiently calibrated. i.e. England being underrated would gain points against the aforementioned countries, but lose an equal amount against the severely under-rated countries like India.

This article then piggy-backs onto another that looks at a deflation of ratings past the top 1000 (which are witnessing a rating inflation). It's a long article, but their conclusion is that it is linked to the number of juniors in a federation that tend to drive down average ratings.

Not sure how England fits in that logic, with a ridiculously low number of Fide rated juniors

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Only 358 juniors (361 according to my own dataset).

One of their recommendations is to change the K for junior so that a junior vs junior game is inflationary (lower K for the loser than the winner). It would be actually interesting to see how the ECF's take on rating will work (juniors that lose ratings in a month have their K halved)

From my side, I compared FIDE ratings to the ECF ratings. Given that the conversion formula between the old grade and the new rating was supposed to mimic closely FIDE ratings , you'd expect little variance.
In reality, I found an average gap of FIDE rating of 225 points, with some age group as high a a 259 point gap. Additionally, that gap does not reduce with time as 17 yo juniors still have a 215 gap.
Only 4 juniors have higher fide than ECF, while it's not uncommon to find gaps of 400 points for strong players.

Image

This proves how underrated England Juniors are, though not as severely as countries like China or India.

The solution is something we all know: organise more FIDE rated tournaments, with loads of adults. Junior FIDE rated tournaments are a waste of time (from a rating perspective), it will keep the average gap at 225 and simply reshuffle points around.
I even suspect that this rating gap also translates into lower opportunities which in turn translate into less Title potential for England:
Looking at the table below, you can see how England compares to other countries:

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My understanding is that this is driven by:
  • The lack of FIDE rated opportunities against adults
  • The fact that many continental tournaments are not truly open: they often have minimum rating requirements, which limit English juniors to the weaker sections, which wile still challenging, do not provide the same learning opportunities provided by playing stronger players.
What do you all think of these interesting data points, articles, conclusions and remedies?

Sources:

https://en.chessbase.com/post/why-do-so ... ing-points
https://en.chessbase.com/post/problems- ... or-players

Matt Bridgeman
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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by Matt Bridgeman » Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:14 pm

I did make approaches to the two big northern congresses, Blackpool and Scarborough a while back regarding making some of their sections FIDE. Blackpool didn’t even respond and understandably Scarborough didn’t feel it was right for them economically. Which is a shame as it leaves international chess ratings in the main still very south-centric in England.

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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by JustinHorton » Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:26 pm

I did raise the question of underrated juniors on here once before (albeit in the particular context of the effect of playing them on one's own rating) and my recollection is that I was informed that it was a non-issue.
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David Sedgwick
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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by David Sedgwick » Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:39 pm

Wadih Khoury wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 11:40 am
Also of interest is England, showing as not gaining nor losing points. This is quite a surprise, given the general anecdotal consensus that English players give loads of points in these events.
The England figures are distorted by what seems to have been an exceptional performance in 2019. There was an average rating loss of ten points in the other six years.

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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by Roger de Coverly » Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:40 pm

JustinHorton wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:26 pm
I did raise the question of underrated juniors on here once before (albeit in the particular context of the effect of playing them on one's own rating) and my recollection is that I was informed that it was a non-issue.
FIDE weren't minded to do anything about it.

It's an underlying assumption in the mathematics underpinning Elo methods of rating that there's an underlying concept called "strength" which only changes slowly, also that the method gives a reliable estimate of the same. In the case of players, mostly juniors, whose standard of play improves rapidly, most rating systems struggle to cope. The FIDE system relies almost wholly on variable K factors, rather than the more radical ideas used in other adaptations of Elo methods.

Pitching more adults against juniors with outdated ratings would have the likely effect of deflating adult ratings. That can be seen in Senior events where those players who continue to play in Congresses and 4NCL can have lower ratings than those solely playing other veterans.

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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by Joseph Conlon » Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:53 pm

Wadih Khoury wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 11:40 am
One of their recommendations is to change the K for junior so that a junior vs junior game is inflationary (lower K for the loser than the winner). It would be actually interesting to see how the ECF's take on rating will work (juniors that lose ratings in a month have their K halved)

....
The solution is something we all know: organise more FIDE rated tournaments, with loads of adults. Junior FIDE rated tournaments are a waste of time (from a rating perspective), it will keep the average gap at 225 and simply reshuffle points around.
I agree with the first and I am surprised that FIDE have not done anything in this direction. It was perhaps not an issue, or far less of one, when the rating list started at 2000, but if a player can come on with a rating of ~1100 while their strength could naturally increase by 800 points over the next several years, then the 'system' should build some inflationary element into it.

On the second point, indeed it makes sense provided there are plenty of adults willing to sacrifice their rating for their greater good :) Particularly on emergence after lockdown, it would be entirely *rational* behaviour for an adult who cared about their FIDE rating not to want to play lots of juniors who may be 200 - 400 points stronger than the last time they played a FIDE rated game.

One aspect that was really very good about the Clarke ECF grading in recent years was the way it treated juniors as fresh players every year - it did seem to mostly solve the problem of under-rated juniors, at the cost of a long lag-time for the grade.

However, as this last point is an international issue, it really needs FIDE to take a view on it.

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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Fri Jun 11, 2021 3:47 pm

Matt Bridgeman wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:14 pm
I did make approaches to the two big northern congresses, Blackpool and Scarborough a while back regarding making some of their sections FIDE. Blackpool didn’t even respond and understandably Scarborough didn’t feel it was right for them economically. Which is a shame as it leaves international chess ratings in the main still very south-centric in England.
I got my FIDE rating mostly from playing at Blackpool, so they certainly used to rate their Open section at least.

IIRC they stopped doing so because some strong players made clear they would prefer it not to be.
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Matt Bridgeman
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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by Matt Bridgeman » Fri Jun 11, 2021 4:32 pm

Matt Mackenzie wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 3:47 pm
Matt Bridgeman wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:14 pm
I did make approaches to the two big northern congresses, Blackpool and Scarborough a while back regarding making some of their sections FIDE. Blackpool didn’t even respond and understandably Scarborough didn’t feel it was right for them economically. Which is a shame as it leaves international chess ratings in the main still very south-centric in England.
I got my FIDE rating mostly from playing at Blackpool, so they certainly used to rate their Open section at least.

IIRC they stopped doing so because some strong players made clear they would prefer it not to be.
The size of the Blackpool Open and possibly the Scarborough Open seem to be shrinking in recent years. Maybe going FIDE would give them a new lease of life?

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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by NickFaulks » Fri Jun 11, 2021 8:07 pm

Wadih Khoury wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 11:40 am
The solution is something we all know: organise more FIDE rated tournaments, with loads of adults.
Well, yes, but how many times is there any point in contunuing to state the obvious? If half of the victories scored by juniors over adults around the world were rated, the problem we keep discussing would not exist. Unfortunately, my guess is that for whatever reason 90 per cent go unreported.

FIDE is constantly being pressed to give juniors bonus rating points to compensate for the fact that most of their good results don't count, but surely the better solution is to report them and make them count.

I think the problem is that federations are generally funded by adults who prefer not to see their ratings damaged by losses, but in that case they should stop complaining about the inevitable consequence.
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Joey Stewart
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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by Joey Stewart » Fri Jun 11, 2021 8:47 pm

There seems to be a kind of underlying feeling here that adults are selfishly protecting their ratings and refusing to play these promising up and coming juniors, but I would put the counter argument that there are simply not that many points left to plunder - unless they were exceptionally talented, most of the players of age 18-30 are now stuck with the same low ratings they had as juniors and they too are improving so are not going to be easy marks to take points from.
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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by David Sedgwick » Fri Jun 11, 2021 9:42 pm

NickFaulks wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 8:07 pm
If half of the victories scored by juniors over adults around the world were rated, the problem we keep discussing would not exist. Unfortunately, my guess is that for whatever reason 90 per cent go unreported.
Weren't you telling us not so long ago that this was a problem largely confined to Great Britain, at least among European Federations?

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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by NickFaulks » Fri Jun 11, 2021 10:42 pm

David Sedgwick wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 9:42 pm
Weren't you telling us not so long ago that this was a problem largely confined to Great Britain, at least among European Federations?
I quoted England as a serious example. You, as I recall, made the valid point that Armenia submitted a very small number of tournaments for rating, so why did they not have a big "underrated juniors" problem. A quick check revealed that they did, which I think supports my theory.

Selection policies could be an issue - might particularly underrated players be less likely to find themselves in national squads?
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Nick Burrows
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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by Nick Burrows » Sat Jun 12, 2021 6:16 am

NickFaulks wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 8:07 pm
I think the problem is that federations are generally funded by adults who prefer not to see their ratings damaged by losses, but in that case they should stop complaining about the inevitable consequence.
Isnt the main problem the prohibitive costs of getting events Fide rated?

Wadih Khoury
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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by Wadih Khoury » Sat Jun 12, 2021 7:15 am

Nick Burrows wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 6:16 am

Isnt the main problem the prohibitive costs of getting events Fide rated?

So how do some continental countries manage to get 90%+ of their tournaments rated? (I think France and Spain, not sure about Germany)

Alex McFarlane
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Re: FIDE rating differences between countries

Post by Alex McFarlane » Sat Jun 12, 2021 7:29 am

For Swiss events the FIDE cost of rating is €1 per player per event.

National Federations decide what they will charge to pass on the results.

(All Play Alls have come down in price for some categories but can be expensive to rate.)

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