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I did some data mining of the CFC ratings for Victoria, Ottawa, and Vancouver to look at what effect, if any, the rating boon in 2007 and subsequent addition of participation & bonus points has had. Full details are at: http://www.victoriachess.com/misc/ratingstats.htm
Executive summary: Ottawa has gone up by ~100 points, Victoria by 0, Vancouver by some amount <=50
It seems reasonably clear that there is some differential regional effects of the rating system. Explanations for this might be:
- participation points inflate regions with more activity
- potentially some effect due to large numbers of junior events in BC (essentially no cfc junior events in ottawa)
- actual changes in skill.
Other observatons:
- BC has a huge number of people who have played recently (~750 vs the number of actual cfc members is ~250). The vast majority of these are juniors playing in junior only events which do not require CFC membership or tournament membership, pay only a rating fee of $0.50/player, and are rated below 1000. (Ottawa has no corresponding activity - presume it is CMA instead) Considering that the governers voted to double the adult tournament membership fee to $20 and not have a membership model based on allowing occasional players to play cheaply, this is all surprising. It also follows that most of the data entry time for ratings is for events for which the only revenue if $0.50/player. It has never been clear to me what the correct cost of rating is, I sure hope $0.50 is not a loss leader.
80%-90% of CFC life members are inactive. Sure some of these are involved in organization but most are unfamiliar names who are disengaged from the CFC and perhaps even dead. Suggesting that the CFC active membership is ~1900 people (http://www.chess.ca/MemStats.shtml) probably overstates the case by 300 people. Governerships are allocated are allocated on a per membership basis - including all life members in this calculation is probably not quite appropriate.
Executive summary: Ottawa has gone up by ~100 points, Victoria by 0, Vancouver by some amount <=50
It seems reasonably clear that there is some differential regional effects of the rating system. Explanations for this might be:
- participation points inflate regions with more activity
- potentially some effect due to large numbers of junior events in BC (essentially no cfc junior events in ottawa)
- actual changes in skill.
Other observatons:
- BC has a huge number of people who have played recently (~750 vs the number of actual cfc members is ~250). The vast majority of these are juniors playing in junior only events which do not require CFC membership or tournament membership, pay only a rating fee of $0.50/player, and are rated below 1000. (Ottawa has no corresponding activity - presume it is CMA instead) Considering that the governers voted to double the adult tournament membership fee to $20 and not have a membership model based on allowing occasional players to play cheaply, this is all surprising. It also follows that most of the data entry time for ratings is for events for which the only revenue if $0.50/player. It has never been clear to me what the correct cost of rating is, I sure hope $0.50 is not a loss leader.
80%-90% of CFC life members are inactive. Sure some of these are involved in organization but most are unfamiliar names who are disengaged from the CFC and perhaps even dead. Suggesting that the CFC active membership is ~1900 people (http://www.chess.ca/MemStats.shtml) probably overstates the case by 300 people. Governerships are allocated are allocated on a per membership basis - including all life members in this calculation is probably not quite appropriate.
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