We are in the process of implementing another ratings system, for online slow chess (ie, regular time controls). Any online event with a valid time control that is 30 minutes per player or slower (MM+SS) will be included in these ratings.
While we probably won’t be able to rate any events until early June and the first ratings supplement that could include these ratings will probably be the July list, we are starting to modify some of the data pages to display this additional rating as it becomes available. The MSA main tab and the MSA thin client interfaces have already been updated.
Will online events with a “total playing time” of 30-65 be dual rated in the online regular and quick rating system? Right now there is confusion as to what time controls the online quick rating system encompasses. The announcements on the US Chess website says the online quick system goes up to 29 but the rating system document says it goes up to 65.
On a players MSA page, the rating changes and links to the crosstables of online quick and blitz tournaments show up under the “Tnmt. Hst” tab and OTB quick and online quick events show up in the same column and OTB blitz and online blitz events show up in the same column. This can be a bit confusing and isn’t as nice looking. What do you think about having a separate tab that shows the results for the three online ratings (since there likely isn’t room to make three more columns on the tournament history tab)?
No, there will be no dual rating of online events that have a total time of 30 minutes or slower per player, they will only be rated in the online-slow system. The EB was very explicit in this, so that overrides any previous motions on the issue. The sections in the rulebook dealing with ratings systems and time controls will need to be updated at some point.
Based on my experiment earlier this year, I’m now of the opinion that dual rating should be abandoned completely. It would probably be too time-consuming to completely unwind dual rating, mainly because there was a period of over two years where we were giving different event IDs or section numbers to dual-rated events, so they’re in the system as two separate events, we’d have to review several thousand QR events to decide if they were actually dual-rated events, which would leave continuity gaps in quick ratings, but we could eliminate it for events after the rerate window (2004) rather easily.
Separate columns for ONL and OTB events, ie, a total of 6 column, might not be too bad if they’re not as wide, there’s some white space that could be eliminated.
In the short term, Online-slow will probably go in the same column as OTB-regular, but the MSA layouts should be modernized at some point. One possibility would be to use separate pages for OTB and Online events, but there may be other ways to handle it. That’ll be up to the design team that does that work.
Because dual rating didn’t work, IMHO. Also, the majority of the players who were in dual rated events were kids in G/30 events who have expressed little or no interest in their quick ratings.
There are a number of players (mostly adults) who regularly play in QR-only events, so there is interest in having a separate quick rating system. In fact, the number of OTB quick-only events annually outnumber the number of OTB blitz events, though the number of blitz players is larger than the number of quick-only players.
The main justification for dual rating back at the 2000 meetings was an insufficient number of quick rated games. Adding more (slower) games does not appear to me to have made quick ratings more reliable. Since then, we’ve created 4 additional ratings systems, all of which may have the same problem of not having very many games, but there has been no expression of concern over that.
Hooray. Yes, this creates an inconsistency between OTB and online, but it is my not-so-secret hope that dual ratings will go away on the OTB side as well.
Aha, you’re thinking the same thing. Great minds think alike.
Indeed.
That would be good enough.
That would be ideal. Another possibility would be 2 rows (OTB and online) and 3 columns (regular, quick, and blitz) for each player:
[size=150][code]
Regular Quick Blitz
Fischer, Robert J. OTB: 2700 2600 2500
Online: 2710 2610 2510
Spassky, Boris K. OTB: 2650 2550 2450
Online: 2660 2560 2460
You need to allow space for both the pre- and post-event ratings, and possibly the provisional game counts too. Sometimes that can currently wrap to a second line.
Showing a provisional rating as 1234/15 rather than 1234(P15) should save a little space.
If someone has only an OTB regular rating and an online blitz rating, will it be obvious which is on which line?
Yes, this creates an inconsistency between OTB and online, but it is my not-so-secret hope that dual ratings will go away on the OTB side as well.