Uhh, what also bugs me is why is a Upper 1900s guy playing in the U1800 section?
Not long ago, when I lived in a larger city, the local police dept. announced that they would no longer engage in “hot pursuit” of some types of offenders because the likelihood of injuries to bystanders was too great to be justified just to allow certain types of offenders to be caught.
I know that we’re not risking killing innocent chess players, but be carefull we don’t move too far and kill some of the enjoyment out of the game.
If this “grandbagger” was such a notorious example, why hasn’t he had his right to play in tournaments revoked because of his intentional rules violations? (losing a game on purpose IS against the rules!) If the current rules aren’t being enforced and people aren’t making use of the resources that are available now, the answer isn’t to add more procedures and rules! (That’s the job of congress, not the USCF 
).
BTW I’m not ignoring the problem. I am deciding that the rare (unseen by me personally) instances of sandbagging are not worth the extra effort that it would take to completely eradicate the problem. IF I were convinced that the problem was more widespread, THEN I might change my mind. So far, I haven’t seen the evidence. Please, feel free to post a such information.
I assume you are referring to Heussenstamm. The short answer is that, because of the two-month cycle, his rating hadn’t caught up. The longer one is that, if you look at his rating history, it is obvious that he has improved steadily over the last five years, and is, in fact, the very opposite of a sandbagger. (Quite a few of those tournaments were mine, by the way.) Do you really want to penalize becoming a better player? (Of course, that’s really what those horrendous class prizes do, but most organizers don’t like to put it in those terms.)
If you are talking about the person that won the tournament (12779933). His official rating for the April 2005 was 1762. The tournament was from 05/18/05 - 05/22/05. The April 2005 official rating ran from 04/01/05 - 05/31/05. The director did use the offical ratings not the web ratings.
And see how Kreitner blew away the Experts in Vegas: uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlTnmtHst.php?10118492
???
Steve,
I don’t understand the rating change for Kreitner… Obviously he had a floor or 2000 and was just barely staying on it. Why did he go up to 2200? Definitely not a sandbagger…
By the way, more on the subject – was the player in question (the original subject of this discussion) discussed or his winnings questioned? Just wondering…
Steve was being facetious.
Ilan Kreitner is an OLM, but his skills have eroded with age.
However, Steve has uncovered a problem (though I’m not sure if that was his intent.)
Ilan’s floor was lowered from 2200 to 2000 earlier this year, but apparently there’s a bug in the ratings program and his floor got bumped back up to 2200 when this event was rated. I’m making some other corrections to the ratings programming today as I finish the changes for segmented rerates, if this bug hasn’t been fixed yet I’ll try to track it down tonight.
UPDATE: This bug had already been fixed (along with several other floor-related issues) in the latest version of the ratings program that I’m about ready to install. Ilan’s post-event rating should have been 2000 not 2200. That’s what it will be when this event gets rerated in the next day or two. (That means he’s back on his floor again.)
Moreover, Kreitner would have been one of the innocent bystanders thrown to the wolves in the Open Section, if there WERE an ironclad rule requiring the use of one's "peak" rating, as had been recommended previously.
I wonder how common this is.
I did this, although it was by accident at first. Like many, I stopped playing tournament chess after high school due to finding other things to spend time on as a college student. But I continued to play chess casually, and I made substantial improvement.
After I finished college, I realized I had a very low rating and could probably use that to my financial advantage. So I waited a few years, and then I heard about HB Global, and thus ended my “retirement”.
It isn’t unusual for someone to take several years off from tournament chess. I did it when I was in grad school, for example. When I resumed playing, I had a couple of good years, hitting my all time peak rating.
IMHO, we’re seeing more problems related to scholastic players who return to chess as in their late teens or as adults. This can create some serious rating imbalances, because a lot of those kids had ratings of well under 1000 when they were 10 and now are quite a bit stronger. Under ‘once rated always rated’ they keep their old ratings, and it isn’t unusual for these returning players to have gains of 500 or more points in their first year back.
As one (although not the first) who was recommending the publication of peak ratings, let me clarify that I was NOT recommending an ironclad rule, just that peak ratings be readily available so that organizers could use them (in an ironclad way or otherwise) if they wished.
Of course, I can’t speak for everybody who was recommending the idea.
Bill Smythe
How much prize money did you win at the HB Global?
Bill Smythe
I won the $20000 first prize in the U1600 section.
As a result of that tournament, I now have a 1747 USCF rating and a 2000 CCA minimum rating.
– And a USCF floor of at least 1600, I would hope.
Bill Smythe
I guess I am confused as to how the CCA minimums work. Shouldn’t it be a 1600 minimum since you won a U1600 section? A floor 2 classes up from the win seems a little extreme to me.
No, I wasn’t even suggesting he should be punished at all. I know he’s not sandbagging. I just thought the organizer might have placed him in the wrong section thats all. But now I see its because of the lagging nature of the USCF published ratings system.
And yeah todd, how did you end up with a 2000 CCA floor?
I suspect the only one who can explain why Todd wound up with a 2000 CCA floor is Bill Goichberg. Bill (or any other organizer) is certainly free to place minimum ratings on players.
I wonder if Bill uses something similar to the old USCF ‘performance rating’ formula. Using that formula and the post-event ratings for Todd’s opponents, his performance rating was around 1960.
What you call the lagging nature of the official published rating is the best way to stop sandbagging. If someone wants to drop their rating, it can take 12 weeks or longer before the new published rating would show the sandbagging rating. If the director does not send in the tournament before the cut off date, it is going to take a lot longer before the sandbagging rating becomes official.
If someone wants to drop their rating, you have to drop the rating at a tournament around 4 months or more. Just to be sure the lower rating will be official at the tournament you want to be in. That is a long time … as you can say you are going to a tournament 4 months before the start date … the week of the tournament life can change.
I don’t understand this either. A 1900, playing his “normal” game, should be able to go 7-0 against players rated in the 1500s but that does not make him a 2000. Maybe a mistake by the CCA…or maybe since the prize was so big, they want to make sure it does not happen again. Who knows… Certainly, it is no reward, as someone else put it! Heck, the guy who won the U2200, a friend of mine by the way, also won $20,000 but his CCA floor is 2200 not something higher.
I don’t know if Todd will be inclined to play in any CCA event again, with that rating. Maybe just for, as someone else put it, the enjoyment…
Does Bill Goichberg really have the authority to assign arbitrary floors like that? Like franclg said, a 1900s performance, but why a 2000 floor?
Also, the HB Global wasn’t even organized by the CCA. So does this mean the CCA can assign floors for any member of the USCF regardless of whether they have played in a CCA event or not?