2021 US Championship

[Pargat Perrer]

No. Women are eligible to play in the Open section, and thus play for the bigger prize money (there simply happen to be no women there at this time), but men are not allowed to play in the Women's section. Thus females are eligible for all of the prize money, men only for some of it. This strikes me as sexist.

Can women play in BOTH the mixed section AND the women's section? If not, then they aren't eligible for all the prize money. They must choose.

[Bob Armstrong]

Hi Pargat:

It is not that I don't get it......it is that I disagree.

There are rating pools of players across this country and the actual playing strength of players is shown by various ratings accorded, depending on the strength of the pool. What happens is that the rating increase stagnates at the rating of the top players in the pool because they all beat each other randomly and their ratings stay effectively fixed.

Thus the level of the women's elite pool is the same....it has a maximum beyond which it will never go (I disagree that women playing women will send their ELO's over time skyrocketing). The maximum ratings at the top of the pool fix the ceiling rating of the pool.

To increase their ratings, top women must enter the best and highest rated pool, the non-gender open section (Qualification for the world cup, etc.). Here the ceiling is higher, and since women are equal to men, they will achieve the higher rating.

I fear you are the one who fails to grasp how the ELO system actually plays out at ground zero.

It has nothing to do with gender. It has to do with WHO YOU PLAY!

Bob A

[Pargat Perrer]

There are rating pools of players across this country and the actual playing strength of players is shown by various ratings accorded, depending on the strength of the pool. What happens is that the rating increase stagnates at the rating of the top players in the pool because they all beat each other randomly and their ratings stay effectively fixed.

You seem to be saying that chess players cannot improve by playing other players in their so-called "rating pool", whatever that is (never heard that term before).

What you fail to realize, Bob, is the players improve through study and learning outside of actually playing games. They learn openings, they learn rook-and-pawn endgames, they learn tactics, all via books or lessons. What you are saying is that no one can ever advance out of their "rating pool". The top players in the pool never improve, they just split all their games 50-50 and no one's rating increases, according to you.

This is ridiculous. Sorry, you can call it disagreeing, but I call it ignorance.


What we need here is a history of the ELO rating system in chess. How did it start? Were all the players awarded the same starting rating and things just went from there?

Also relevant is the story of computer engine ELO ratings. How did engine ratings get as high as 3500? Does a new engine get the same starting rating as all other engines did and advance from there?

If women are not at all inferior to men at chess, can women not achieve the same ratings as men over time JUST BY PLAYING OTHER WOMEN? It simply must be the case, otherwise how did men ever get 2800 ratings? Unless some men were awarded a starting rating of some extraordinary value, like 2500 lets say, while other men got a starting rating of say 1000.

Thus the level of the women's elite pool is the same....it has a maximum beyond which it will never go (I disagree that women playing women will send their ELO's over time skyrocketing). The maximum ratings at the top of the pool fix the ceiling rating of the pool.

To increase their ratings, top women must enter the best and highest rated pool, the non-gender open section (Qualification for the world cup, etc.). Here the ceiling is higher, and since women are equal to men, they will achieve the higher rating.

To be clear, I am not saying that women won't improve by playing higher-rated men. Yes, of course they will over time.

I'm saying that even the highest-ratinged women DO NOT NEED to play the highest-rated men to improve their ratings to the levels that men achieve.

How did men get there? When the highest-rated man in the world was say 2500 ELO, how did he manage to get to 2600, or 2700, or 2800? He kept beating players with LESS SKILL THAN HIM.

Unless someone can point out some man who started out with an ELO rating of 2800 before even playing a single rated game?

[Pargat Perrer]

If women are not at all inferior to men at chess, can women not achieve the same ratings as men over time JUST BY PLAYING OTHER WOMEN? It simply must be the case, otherwise how did men ever get 2800 ratings?

Tonight I went on Quora web site where I am a member and asked the question in a non-sexist manner, not even mentioning women at all. Here is how I worded the question:

"If I want to start a new chess variant and do Elo rating of games played, what initial rating do I assign all players? What did FIDE use when it began using Elo ratings?"

Here is the only answer I have so far, and I did direct my question to members of Quora who have answered FIDE Elo rating questions in the past:

"Easily the most interesting question about Elo ratings I’ve come across. I don’t know the answer. I think maybe 1200…"

I did an extensive internet search on questions such as this, i.e. history of FIDE Elo ratings, and no one seems to know how it all started.

The Elo formula is dependent on the 2 players having an existing rating. No one addresses how it gets started when there is NO EXISTING RATINGS FOR ANYBODY! That is why I asked my question about doing Elo ratings for a new chess variant, because that guarantees that no one will have an existing rating.

But on Quora web site, I did see lots of questions that were a bit similar. For example, someone asked what initial FIDE rating one gets, and this was answered by a member of the FIDE rules committee:


Shaun Press
,FM, FT, IA, Member FIDE Rules Commision
Author has 392 answers and 381.2K answer views

A2A

There is no beginning FIDE rating, as it is based on your performance in your first event(s) ... Currently the lowest FIDE rating that can be achieved is 1000, although most players start with a rating higher than that. Garry Kasparov ‘s first FIDE rating was 2595 after winning the Banja Luka GM event in 1979 despite being unrated when he began the tournament.

Perhaps since the lowest FIDE rating possible is 1000, it means when FIDE first began Elo ratings, everyone was assigned a rating of 1000 to kick things off. But he didn't say that specifically.

[Bob Armstrong]

Hi Pargat:

Re Elo - for a long time, the lowest ELO rating was 1200, and they would not evolve it to allow for lower ELO ratings......then finally they caved. Not sure when that was, but during my chess lifetime.

I know nothing about how Arpad's system was implemented by FIDE, but I believe before that there were other countries that did have their own rating systems (Again, not sure of this though)

Bob A

[Bob Gillanders]

Good morning Pargat and Bob A.

I am having my morning coffee and reading your discussion on how ratings work.
I have so much to explain, but I think an illustration would work better.

I am toying with the idea of creating a fictitious chess club with all fake unrated members.
They send in their first tournament to be CFC rated. What happens?
This has happened before several times, so I do know of what I speak.
I will keep the fake people separate from real people, so as not to affect the real CFC ratings.
I will start a new thread afterwards to explain the new ratings. It should be a great tool to explain CFC rating calculations.

[Kerry Liles]

If everyone in such a "fake tournament" is unrated I am curious how initial ratings are calculated too.
Luckily, there are many rated players around and encountering such a situation must be rare.
I will have to revisit some rating "theory" but I've always been curious how to evaluate a unrated player losing against someone rated 1400 and another loss against someone 2100. etc

[Pargat Perrer]

Good morning Pargat and Bob A.

I am having my morning coffee and reading your discussion on how ratings work.
I have so much to explain, but I think an illustration would work better.

I am toying with the idea of creating a fictitious chess club with all fake unrated members.
They send in their first tournament to be CFC rated. What happens?
This has happened before several times, so I do know of what I speak.
I will keep the fake people separate from real people, so as not to affect the real CFC ratings.
I will start a new thread afterwards to explain the new ratings. It should be a great tool to explain CFC rating calculations.

Thanks Bob, I will be very interested to see what you post, i hope it doesn't take a long time.

In the meantime, do you have anything to contribute to the real question at hand: if women are not inferior at chess to men, and they limit themselves to only playing other women, will they eventually achieve ratings parity with men, meaning an equal % of the women will have ratings over 2800, equal % will have ratings in all other rating categories? Allowing for margin of error, of course.

Bob Armstrong is arguing that women MUST play higher-rated men in order to get their ratings eventually up to the 2800 level. That suggests that women are inferior at chess to men for no other reason than being female.

[Brad Thomson]

Gender is irrelevant, to become the best you need to play the best, period.

[Bob Gillanders]

Thanks Bob, I will be very interested to see what you post, i hope it doesn't take a long time.

In the meantime, do you have anything to contribute to the real question at hand: if women are not inferior at chess to men, and they limit themselves to only playing other women, will they eventually achieve ratings parity with men, meaning an equal % of the women will have ratings over 2800, equal % will have ratings in all other rating categories? Allowing for margin of error, of course.

Bob Armstrong is arguing that women MUST play higher-rated men in order to get their ratings eventually up to the 2800 level. That suggests that women are inferior at chess to men for no other reason than being female.

Lesson 1 will deal with your question about what if nobody has a rating?
I will include the fake tournament with the weekly update tomorrow evening.
Thursday morning I will explain the calculations and answer any questions.

In the meantime, you will need to be patient young grasshopper.
It will take several lessons to learn the basics of the CFC rating system.
Only then, will I wade into the discussion between yourself and Bob A.

I have learned over and over and over again, explaining things on chesstalk is a most frustrating experience.
I will let the lessons illuminate the truth to you.

[Pargat Perrer]

Gender is irrelevant, to become the best you need to play the best, period.

Ok, here's a scenario: let's pretend that Kramnik's No Castling Chess became a recognized chess variant by FIDE (might happen). Let's call it NCC (easier to type).

Let's also pretend that in order to excel at NCC, all the players who took it up abandoned regular chess entirely, meaning they never play any regular chess rated events or games. Let's say 10,000 players worldwide took it up and abandoned regular chess. Out of these 10,000, let's not differentiate between males and females, it's not important for this scenario.

They start playing events, which FIDE rates separately from regular chess. After 10 years, let's suppose that a young genius superstar, Joe Woodpusher, has risen to the top, and he is rated an astounding 3500 at NCC. Let's also assume Carlsen's regular chess rating is still below 2900 at that time.

If you had to bet on a 12-game match of regular chess between Carlsen and Woodpusher, who would you bet on? They have never played each other because Carlsen never plays NCC and Woodpusher never plays regular chess.

I think most bettors would go with Woodpusher, because the difference between regular chess and NCC is so small and the rating difference is so huge.

Woodpusher winning the match would prove that he had become the best in the world at regular chess without ever having played Carlsen, except this match to prove he is better than Carlsen.

[Pargat Perrer]

Why is it so difficult to face the fact that female-specific chess programs are a hangover from a pre-modern, pre-feminist age when men looked down upon women as inferior intellectual specimins?

I was on Quora again today, and found a question asking "Will we ever see a female World Chess Champion?"

One person gave this answer:

"Won't happen.

The reason is that men have brains evolved to be better at abstract visualizations. It was found that boys draw much better than girls. This ability to imagine movement and objects in their head is a prerequisite to excel in chess. There are many theories about why men have this ability more than women. It is theorized that men in prehistoric times who needed this ability when hunting large game.

Think about it. A chess game is very similar to game hunting. You have your hunting team. You have the enemy(the prey). And you have a set of logical rules that you need to comply with in order to win the game. When hunting you need imagine various scenarios and to do that you need to imagine the prey moving through a terrain. In chess you need to move pieces in your head and analyze the resulting position. This is something men are way, way better at than women."

I had never heard this viewpoint before. The statement "boys draw much better than girls" seems suspect, to say the least.

[Brad Thomson]

Anything save a contradiction in terms is logically possible. Theories about ancient evolutionary patterns are dangerous ground and not acceptable in this modern age. They have been used to denegrate not only women but certain races. We are all equally capable.

[Bob Gillanders]

Thanks Bob, I will be very interested to see what you post, i hope it doesn't take a long time.

Okay, so experiment #1 did not give the result I expected.

https://www.chess.ca/en/ratings/t/?id=202110013

As you can see, parameters of experiment 1 are:

8 unrated new players.
5 round Swiss with a few byes included

Comments:

Since all players are unrated, the rating system is unable to proceed without some user input.
It stopped and asks for the average rating of unrated players.
I entered 800. Program continued with this results.

Performance ratings are correct.
The formula for performance rating is
win - add 400 points to your opponents rating.
draw - use your opponents rating
loss - subtract 400 points from your opponents rating,
to calculate your performance rating.

For example, for Brenda
1200 +1200 +400 +1200 +1200 = 5200 / 5 = 1040

For Evelyn
+1200 + 400 + 1200 + 400 = 3200 /4 = 800

Provisional ratings should simply be your cumulative average performance rating,
so I was expecting all the provisional ratings to be equal their performance ratings.

That didn't happen. I am disappointed but not all that surprised.
The program does give unexpected results occasionally in very unusual conditions.

I am going to try some further experiments and see what happens.
If any math wizards out there can decipher the differences between perf and ending ratings, I would love to hear it.

[Stephen Wright]

FWIW the CFC Handbook (without getting into the question of the current relevance of that document) still contains the following:

419. Insufficient Information: Events can be rated if at least one of the players has a rating. If none of the players has a rating, the report may be set aside for rating later, when at least one of the players gains a rating.