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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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Plus, have you stopped to consider that if something as innocuous as a chess rating gets you this pissed off, then maybe you're pursuing the wrong hobby? Don't people usually choose their hobbies based on entertainment/therapeutic values? If you want to engage in something that makes you angry, why not take up politics?
Pissed off? Angry? Maybe my use of all caps has given this wrong impression. There is nothing on this forum that could possibly get me pissed off or angry, I assure you.
Thanks for what you wrote about the grasshoper thing. I had not heard that reference. I took it not only as a possible slur, but also to be demeaning in the sense that i was a young know-nothing who had to be educated, and he added that it would take several lessons before I was educated. I can only think he assumed I literally know nothing about Elo, but if that were the case, I wouldn't be arguing my point, because my point does need some good understanding of Elo.
Thank you Peter. You are correct. My comment was in reference to the Kung Fu series. Grasshopper was a friendly positive name for the impatient apprentice. I was horrified to read above that Pargat took it as a racial slur. It was certainly never meant as such. It was careless of me to assume Pargat was familiar with the reference.
Pargat, please accept my sincere apology.
Yes, I accept and sorry for the misinterpretation. Also sorry for seeming smug in my reply.
Just understand that I do get what you and Bob A. are arguing, but the crux of the argument is false. You haven't really provided anything solid on Bob A.'s argument, this idea that women must play higher-rated men to raise up their ratings. I mean, yes, they can do that, but to tell them that they MUST do that only insults them, even if that was not intended. I know some women in chess in the USA, so I know something of what I speak.
The better message to be getting across to women is to grow their membership in competitive chess, especially at the children's level but keeping them interested into adulthood.
Can we agree on an investigative model, somewhat reflective of reality?: that the 2021 women's pool at the moment has a lower average rating than an open pool of the same number of players. And the average rating of the elite women players is about 200 rating points below that of the elite in the open pool. And for the sake of argument, let's say that, at the moment, there are the same number of players in each pool (arbitrarily.....1000), though in fact the open pool is bigger. For our investigation, I think this fact does not affect the outcome........or do you think it does?
Yes, I've been saying (and Bob G. agreed apparently) that the key variable is the relative size of the two pools. If you take the size of the open pool now, let's say worldwide it's 100,000 people for just a round number, then we see that with that many people and with some number N rated games between the members of the pool, the highest rating achieved so far is just over 2850.
If the pool grows by X number of members, the rating of Carlsen might reach 2900. Exactly what X needs to be could probably be worked out mathematically.
Now let's say this open pool is actually all men, it's not critical because we have already hypothesized that men and women are equal at chess ability by nature. You can still call it "open pool" if you like.
Now we create a new pool and it is women only. At first it only had let's say 1,000 members. Over time it grows to 10,000, then to 50,000, and finally to 100,000 members. And they are only playing against each other, no games against the men. Now all we need is for the right number of rated games played by all the members to achieve a Bell curve that is accurate enough. Maybe that number is actually less than N, the number of rated games that has been played up to today by the open pool. Or maybe it does need to be N.
Once we reach that number, the Bell curve for the women will be almost totally identical to the open pool curve. That means the outliers will be almost identical in number and in rating, there will be maybe 2 women near to the 2850 rating. This will happen without any woman playing any man in a rated game.
If we can agree on that, then we don't need any investigation, which of course a real investigation cannot happen because we can't actually separate out the men and women in real life.
Here is a question and answer on Quora.com which reinforces my point:
Question: What is the highest Elo chess rating possible?
Shaun Press
, FM, FT, IA, Member FIDE Rules Commision
Answered Jan 17, 2018
A2A
As the question is currently stated - there is no upper limit to Elo ratings. As the pool of players increases, the rating of the highest players get larger (not constantly, but eventually)
If you are looking for a specific number then the question could be restated as - “In a closed pool of N chess players, what is the highest theoretical Elo rating possible?” Then you can calculate the answer.
I underlined the critical statement. This is what you need to understand about Elo ratings.
Yes........what generally happens is that the open pool grows by new, low-rated players entering the pool. They are then beaten up upon by the top players in their section. These top players move up a section, becoming the lowest rated players one section up. But they are over-rated - they didn't improve; they just beat up on weaker players. So the top players in this section beat up on them, and gain rating points, enough to enter the next section up. And so on up the sections 'til the "Open" section. Then in the Open section the top players increase their rating a very small amount by winning away from the bottom, the new rating points brought into the Open Section pool by these bottom rated plalyers.
BUT.......
This increase will be very modest, because of the rating formula FIDE has at the top rating level. Furthermore, the average rating of the elite top 10, for example, will then stagnate and remain the pool's average top rating, since the top players will just trade points back and forth, randomly winning, drawing and losing. This is barring one of the 10 actually being Magnus Carlsen, who could then beat up on the other 9 elite players, and raise his rating to the top level, a ways above the average rating of the other 9 elite players.
Note also: if the new player into the pool is rated the same as the other 10 elite players, and is not Magnus Carlsen, the average ceiling rating of the pool will not change.
Do Pargat and Bob G agree that I have the system properly working so far in my investigation?
Last edited by Bob Armstrong; Tuesday, 19th October, 2021, 07:26 AM.
Some data on ratings and gender (2016). I thought that the women's bell curve would be narrower, more players in the centre and less in the extremes. But the curve is similar to the men's.
The women's age under 25 is significant as there were much fewer women players before 1990. I think the Queens Gambit film would have increased the number of fenale players.
Do Pargat and Bob G agree that I have the system properly working so far in my investigation?
Hi Bob A.
I don't quite follow your argument, so I will refrain from commenting.
But you do talk about moving up and down sections, so let me illustrate a point important to that issue.
I have a real life example to illustrate from the SCC Jack Frost U1400 before the pandemic.
Daniel won the section with a score of 5/6.
Without going through the calculations, instinctively most people would expect his rating to increase.
But his rating did not increase, but remained at 1341.
I checked the calculations with the online rating calculator, and it is correct.
Those of us who understand the formula (like us 3) are not so surprised since Daniel was rated much higher than his opponents.
This is a source of frustration for some players who find themselves trapped at the top of their section.
They often need very good scores to move up to the higher section.
Thus why so many want to play up, and most organizers understand this and agree.
But that just makes it even harder for those who don't play up.
This is not news to those of us familiar with rating formula, but I thought it was a good example for the rookies.
Daniel won the section with a score of 5/6.
Without going through the calculations, instinctively most people would expect his rating to increase.
But his rating did not increase, but remained at 1341.
I checked the calculations with the online rating calculator, and it is correct.
Those of us who understand the formula (like us 3) are not so surprised since Daniel was rated much higher than his opponents.
Yup, points do mean anything without knowledge against whom they were won.
Look at the second place: 990->1182 with performance 1398 and 4/5 (real points)
I have three questions.
#1. If you have 20 players all rated 2700 and they play a round robin and all games are drawn who wins points?
#2 If you have an open round robin section where 10 players are 2700 and the rest are 2699 and all game among players are drawn who gets the points?
#3 If 10 players are 2700 and 2 players are 1600 and the 1600's win all their games and the 2700's can only draw against themselves then who gets the points?
Bob G: "I don't quite follow your argument, so I will refrain from commenting."
At this point, I'm not really arguing anything.
You, Pargat and I are all debating using theoretical models. But I'm unsure if we all agree as to how ELO works on ground zero.
So I proposed a situation close to reality and described how I believe it works.
All I'm trying to do, at this point, is to get agreement on something.......something in common we can work from, rather than each of us throwing up separate models.
I simply am asking you and Pargat if I accurately describe how ELO works on one model. If you both agree, then we can use that model to argue the issue of what happens when there is a women-only group, playing only among themselves, with some new women/girl members entering steadily. This is the situation that Pargat wishes to project on re increasing ratings, as I understand him.
Bob G: "I don't quite follow your argument, so I will refrain from commenting."
At this point, I'm not really arguing anything.
You, Pargat and I are all debating using theoretical models. But I'm unsure if we all agree as to how ELO works on ground zero.
So I proposed a situation close to reality and described how I believe it works.
All I'm trying to do, at this point, is to get agreement on something.......something in common we can work from, rather than each of us throwing up separate models.
I simply am asking you and Pargat if I accurately describe how ELO works on one model. If you both agree, then we can use that model to argue the issue of what happens when there is a women-only group, playing only among themselves, with some new women/girl members entering steadily. This is the situation that Pargat wishes to project on re increasing ratings, as I understand him.
Bob A
Hi Bob, it is a pleasure to debate with you, because like Brad Thomson, you are level-headed and emotionally stable.
So to demonstrate conclusively what happens at Elo ground zero (with some FIDE convolutions added, more on that in a bit), I dug up some information from FIDEs web site.
FIDE has been doing Elo ratings for just over 50 years now. And you are trying to say (I think) that the top echelon, the very elite, of chess as a "rating pool" will not change much over time, because the highest rated player can't move up a section and give points to that section as an "overrated" member of that section.
Well, here is the data that refutes that and that shows how increase in membership translates to growing ratings (albeit very slowly growing) at even the elite level:
Sorry that I can't get the right formatting here. But the first column is FIDE top 20 ratings for January 1972, before Fischer had played Spassky.
The second column is January 1996, so 25 years later.
The numbers in brackets show how much the rating of that position in the ranking went up or down.... actually, always up.
The third column is January 2021 top 20, and again the numbers in brackets are how much that ranking went up in rating from the 1996 ones.
So you see, even the top elite are going up in rating over a long period of time, quite consistently. Fischer was ahead of his time by 25 years in terms of his rating, he was quite dominant.
The key numbers are the top 20 average rating at the very bottom row. Consistently moving up.
This is what happens when you add membership to the rating pool.
And this would happen for women also, who right now their total membership isn't yet 20% of the male membership, unless some really rapid growth has happened in the last 5 years.
So this is what happens on the ground in Elo ratings, Bob. Membership growth fuels ratings growth, even at the elite levels.
Once women get their membership up to men's levels, they too will have their 2800+ members.
The problem with your model is that you don't agree that even the elite section grows in Elo ratings as membership grows. This data proves the opposite is the case. But if you still disagree, then please explain where all these increases in ratings are coming from?
It is quite interesting that it takes 25 year periods to really demonstrate this, because of the slow rate of play of chess. In computer engine chess, the engines are playing each other 24/7 and the ratings are probably much more accurate and up to date.
Now maybe you can see my point? We should be emphasizing growing women's membership, not telling women they must play against men to improve.
What is the problem of playing with men, chess is not boxing or karate or hockey, I don't understand why there are still woman section.
Because, as a broad generalization, men and boys behave ignorantly towards women; they're rude, inconsiderate, insensitive, and the list goes on. If you were to ask the 30 or 40 somewhat regular posters at Chesstalk to each post the incidents they recall of boys and men behaving with gratuitous ignorance towards girls and women in a chess environment, I'll bet we could break 1,000 before dinner. Here's the most egregious incident that I personally experienced:
It's 1992 at the Labour Day Open in Toronto, about 2 hours into the Sunday morning round. Roughly 2/3 of the games are finished. A chess god walks into the room and with no warning shouts (and I mean SHOUTS) "C**T!!!! LET'S GO!!!!" As you can imagine, he scared the living shit out of everyone in the room. Then a young woman stood up, grabbed her chess set, and trotted out at the heels of the chess god. Friggin' pathetic and sad. To the best of my knowledge, the tournament organizers did nothing.
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." - Thomas De Quincey
I have three questions.
#1. If you have 20 players all rated 2700 and they play a round robin and all games are drawn who wins points?
#2 If you have an open round robin section where 10 players are 2700 and the rest are 2699 and all game among players are drawn who gets the points?
#3 If 10 players are 2700 and 2 players are 1600 and the 1600's win all their games and the 2700's can only draw against themselves then who gets the points?
With Swiss Manger and for FIDE rating calculations.
#1 and #2 - none gets rating points. 2700 and 2699 are too close. For rating differences 0-3 points , the expectation is 0.5
#3 - The problem has several flaws - 1600 can not win all their games.
a) Let's say at least 1600 vs 1600 is a =. Both 1600 will get rating points (+184); other drops -18. K factor is 20 for 1600; and K=10 for 2700.
b) most likely after several 1600 wins against 2700, cheating suspicious will go through the roof.
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