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Reasons to believe there's FIDE rating "inflation"?
I regularly hear people say that that FIDE ratings are inflated, but I've never heard a reason to believe it.
I not only don't believe it, I think it's actually more reasonable to believe that FIDE ratings are deflated. But then I've never heard any reasons to believe that FIDE ratings are inflated, so maybe I'm not fairly considering the whole case.
My guess is that people say there is rating inflation because they can't believe that the great players they grew up admiring did not play as well as today's highest-rated players. For example, in the early 1980s only Karpov and Kasparov were over 2700, but now there are 50 players over 2700, and some chess fans find it hard to believe that today's 2700s play as well or better than the giants of the past.
I admit that it seems silly to say that today's Vachier-Lagrave or Mickey Adams plays as well as World Champion Karpov in 1980 -- but I think there are good reasons to believe they both play better. [So as not to skew the discussion, I'll post my reasons for this claim later. The only assumption my argument makes is that FIDE-rating calculations are close to zero-sum, which is not true of CFC ratings.]
Defining "inflation"?
At first I thought it might be helpful to have a definition of "rating inflation"; but now I suspect "rating inflation" is a misleading phrase because it prompts people to think about the analogy with economic inflation, and there's no chess equivalent of the economists' basic basket of goods which would allow us to compare prices at different times (e.g. nothing like the Economist magazine's "Big Mac index").
Whether we use the term "inflation" or not, I think the fundamental issue is that people who claim there is "rating inflation" are trying to explain why they think that 'a 2700 rating isn't what it used to be'. That is, people see that today a 2720 rating gets you a Vachier-Lagrave, but think that's not nearly as good as when it got you the world #1 Karpov, so clearly each rating point is worth less than it used to be because it doesn't move you as high up on the ordinal scale of world ranking. It is true (and obvious) that a 2700+ Elo rating gets you a lower world-ranking than it used to, but it's not clear that it is due to rating inflation or to a widespread increase in the strength of their rated opponents.
Enough from me for now.
Here's my request:
post your best argument for the claim that today's players with FIDE-rating of nnnn (whatever) are not as good as the players with that same FIDE rating from the past.
I not only don't believe it, I think it's actually more reasonable to believe that FIDE ratings are deflated. But then I've never heard any reasons to believe that FIDE ratings are inflated, so maybe I'm not fairly considering the whole case.
My guess is that people say there is rating inflation because they can't believe that the great players they grew up admiring did not play as well as today's highest-rated players. For example, in the early 1980s only Karpov and Kasparov were over 2700, but now there are 50 players over 2700, and some chess fans find it hard to believe that today's 2700s play as well or better than the giants of the past.
I admit that it seems silly to say that today's Vachier-Lagrave or Mickey Adams plays as well as World Champion Karpov in 1980 -- but I think there are good reasons to believe they both play better. [So as not to skew the discussion, I'll post my reasons for this claim later. The only assumption my argument makes is that FIDE-rating calculations are close to zero-sum, which is not true of CFC ratings.]
Defining "inflation"?
At first I thought it might be helpful to have a definition of "rating inflation"; but now I suspect "rating inflation" is a misleading phrase because it prompts people to think about the analogy with economic inflation, and there's no chess equivalent of the economists' basic basket of goods which would allow us to compare prices at different times (e.g. nothing like the Economist magazine's "Big Mac index").
Whether we use the term "inflation" or not, I think the fundamental issue is that people who claim there is "rating inflation" are trying to explain why they think that 'a 2700 rating isn't what it used to be'. That is, people see that today a 2720 rating gets you a Vachier-Lagrave, but think that's not nearly as good as when it got you the world #1 Karpov, so clearly each rating point is worth less than it used to be because it doesn't move you as high up on the ordinal scale of world ranking. It is true (and obvious) that a 2700+ Elo rating gets you a lower world-ranking than it used to, but it's not clear that it is due to rating inflation or to a widespread increase in the strength of their rated opponents.
Enough from me for now.
Here's my request:
post your best argument for the claim that today's players with FIDE-rating of nnnn (whatever) are not as good as the players with that same FIDE rating from the past.
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