2021 US Championship

[Bob Armstrong]

Hi Guys:

I do go barefoot in the house, deck and front lawn. I'm still wearing shorts. I now have to go fill our three birdfeeders. I always spend at least 1/2 hr. out on the deck, morning, afternoon, or evening...........in contemplation (My form of meditation).

I really do try to refrain from posting here during my "interlude", but I couldn't resist the temptation on this one.

Bob A

[Peter McKillop]

You really do have a way with words, don't you! Prat!

I don't see anything wrong with what Pargat said.

[Peter McKillop]

Peter, what a wasted opportunity! You had the chance to say something inflammatory, and then watch the fun! At the end, the thread could be debating whether women are more suited than men for travel to Alpha Centauri! Where, incidentally, there is a chess rating pool of Similaars whose ratings peak around 2850!

LOL!! Sometimes it's better to wait. Too much fun in too short a time span can be bad for the digestion.

[Fred Harvey]

Ok Bob, have a great hiatus from the grid. Do some Earthing every day (sitting outside with bare feet resting flat on open ground for about 10 minutes, known to improve chess ratings by a few Elo points!)

You really do have a way with words, don't you! Prat!

[Pargat Perrer]

Hi Pargat & Bob G:

I will be limiting my use of the internet for the next two weeks. I do do this regularly.

I think we have developed an interesting, and from time to time, informative thread. I have read Pargat's last post on this.

I just wanted you to know that I did not disappear for a while because of frustration, etc. I will hope to pick up the discussion again when I return. In the meantime, I'll look forward to the intervening "enlightening" posts by others, on my return.

Bob A

Ok Bob, have a great hiatus from the grid. Do some Earthing every day (sitting outside with bare feet resting flat on open ground for about 10 minutes, known to improve chess ratings by a few Elo points!)

[Pargat Perrer]

That has been discussed so many times over the years with no consensus reached! I didn't have the energy to bring it up again.

Peter, what a wasted opportunity! You had the chance to say something inflammatory, and then watch the fun! At the end, the thread could be debating whether women are more suited than men for travel to Alpha Centauri! Where, incidentally, there is a chess rating pool of Similaars whose ratings peak around 2850!

[Pargat Perrer]

Is it because women want to have their cake and eat it too, and because men want to give it to them?

Or.... is it because women want their shoes and to wear them too, and men want to sell them shoes?

[Bob Armstrong]

Hi Pargat & Bob G:

I will be limiting my use of the internet for the next two weeks. I do do this regularly.

I think we have developed an interesting, and from time to time, informative thread. I have read Pargat's last post on this.

I just wanted you to know that I did not disappear for a while because of frustration, etc. I will hope to pick up the discussion again when I return. In the meantime, I'll look forward to the intervening "enlightening" posts by others, on my return.

Bob A

[Peter McKillop]

This interesting proposition does not express the reason why women's programs were devised in the first place.

That has been discussed so many times over the years with no consensus reached! I didn't have the energy to bring it up again.

[Brad Thomson]

Because, as a broad generalization, men and boys behave ignorantly towards women; they're rude, inconsiderate, insensitive, and the list goes on.

This interesting proposition does not express the reason why women's programs were devised in the first place.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

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.

[Brad Thomson]

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.

Is it because women want to have their cake and eat it too, and because men want to give it to them?

[Peter McKillop]

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.

[Marc Andre Beaudry]

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.

[Pargat Perrer]

Hi Bob G:

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:


FIDE TOP 20 RATINGS OVER 50 YEARS
JAN 1971 JAN 1996 JAN 2021
--------------------------------------------------
01. 2760 2775 (+ 15) 2862 (+ 87)
02. 2690 2775 (+ 85) 2823 (+ 48)
03. 2670 2770 (+100) 2791 (+ 21)
04. 2660 2735 (+ 75) 2789 (+ 54)
05. 2640 2735 (+ 95) 2784 (+ 49)
06. 2640 2725 (+ 85) 2781 (+ 56)
07. 2630 2700 (+ 70) 2777 (+ 77)
08. 2630 2700 (+ 70) 2770 (+ 70)
09. 2620 2690 (+ 70) 2770 (+ 80)
10. 2620 2675 (+ 55) 2765 (+ 90)
11. 2615 2670 (+ 55) 2764 (+ 94)
12. 2615 2670 (+ 55) 2763 (+ 93)
13. 2605 2665 (+ 60) 2759 (+ 94)
14. 2605 2665 (+ 60) 2758 (+ 93)
15. 2600 2660 (+ 60) 2757 (+ 97)
16. 2600 2660 (+ 60) 2753 (+ 93)
17. 2590 2660 (+ 70) 2753 (+ 93)
18. 2590 2655 (+ 65) 2749 (+ 94)
19. 2580 2650 (+ 70) 2743 (+ 93)
20. 2575 2650 (+ 75) 2736 (+ 86)

T: 52535 53885 55449
Av: 2626.75 2694.25 2772.45

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.