Missing FIDE information in player-rating lookup

Running Chess Tournaments
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If you look up a player using U.S.Chess player-rating lookup, usually you will find, near the bottom of the ‘General’ tab, three items of FIDE data about the player: FIDE ID, FIDE country, and a link to Latest FIDE rating.

Occasionally, though, this information is missing, even for a player who has a FIDE ID and a current FIDE rating. My question is, who can we contact to get the missing information added?

I know of a player with a FIDE rating who only recently started playing in the USA, and who has now played in three events, the last of which was also FIDE-rated. Yet that player’s FIDE data is still missing in the U.S. Chess player-rating lookup.

In this particular case, this omission has caused a problem with the player’s initial rating. Normally, if I understand correctly, when a player new to the U.S. already has a FIDE rating, that rating is used to initialize the player’s U.S. Chess rating, using a specific pre-announced conversion formula.

In this case, though, the player’s existing FIDE rating was not used, and the player won all his games in his first tournament. As a result, his rating was initialized at 400 points above the rating of his highest-rated opponent. That opponent was rated over 2100, so our newbie’s rating after his first event appears as over 2500. This seems excessive, since his FIDE rating is only about 2090.

Of course, this player’s rating will eventually gravitate to something more reasonable, but in the process, his future opponents will end up with inflated ratings.

Can something be done to add this player’s FIDE information to the U.S. Chess database? And, once this player’s tournaments are re-rated, will his opponents’ ratings be adjusted as well?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Bill Smythe

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Adding a player’s FIDE ID is something that US Chess first needs to be informed about. During the initial membership entry it would have been good to have grabbed it (I think that can be done if a TD does it as a membership batch and puts in the ID) but asking US Chess to link to a FIDE ID that it was never informed about is a somewhat unreasonable complaint. Whether or not a re-rate would take into account a finally initialized new rating is a question somebody else would need to answer.

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Bill, to answer your questions,

You can contact US Chess to have their FIDE information added to their US Chess record. I believe the best emails to use for this are either fide@uschess.org or ratingsmgr@uschess.org.

If a player’s initial rating is changed (for whatever reason), the re-rate system takes this into account and all of the player’s events are re-rated. The opponents’ ratings will be adjusted from this, opponents of the opponents’ will have their ratings adjusted from this, etc., and any future event any affected opponents played in are re-rated, etc.

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Note, though, that a weekly rerate might not address a newly added FIDE ID, that’s why we do a full rerate once a month ahead of the next rating supplement generation.

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Thank you, Micah! I have contacted the addresses you provided. U.S. Chess doesn’t seem to like to publish such addresses too readily.

Bill Smythe

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I’m not sure why the group email addresses aren’t promoted better, that’s an issue I’ve raised with Ranae Bartlett, our interim ED, as well as with Dan Lucas and Boyd Reed. The concept of group email handling, especially making sure that emails are all responded to, may need some updating. I’ve suggested that we may need an incident tracking system for this.

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I agree. It makes little sense to have the FIDE issues point to a specific person’s e-mail address, rather than a generic one. It looks like the TD certification is the only activity that has a generic listing.

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No comment, is where I stand.

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Given this type of thing is normally part of a TDs regular duties, it is certainly included in the Tournament Director page at Tournament Directors | US Chess.org. See the “Contact Information” section at the bottom of the page.

I’ll also note that it shouldn’t be possible for a player without a FIDE ID to play in a FIDE-rated event in the USA that is also US Chess rated, Information on FIDE Rated Tournaments in the USA | US Chess.org.

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I am happy to report that both problems have now been solved with this player. His FIDE data have been added to his U.S. Chess record, and appropriate re-rates have been done.

Bill Smythe

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