In my neck of the woods, an annual grudge match is coming up between the cities of Austin and San Antonio. The format is 2-game matches board by board, with regular time control. Board 1 for San Antonio plays Board 1 for Austin a 2-game match, and so on for Board 2 down. Substitutions are not allowed, so if someone can only play one game, the other game counts as a forfeit.
We have a player in Austin who recently moved here from South America, Daniel Rodriguez (USCF ID: 15428404). His USCF Regular rating was initialized based on converting his FIDE rating as P10. He has only played 3 USCF Regular rated games so far, but is expected to play more between now and the date of the match (July 19). Here in Austin, we obviously would very much like to field him on our team.
My first question is: does he need to play only 15 games to get rid of the P or the full 25?
My second question is: if he is still provisionally rated by the time the match comes around, what does it mean? Would the rating report for the whole team match be rejected? If not, how will his 2-game match be rated? Is there a way to have him on our team without breaking any rules and have the team match rated?
I don’t know the answer to these questions but there are two additional things here:
The question has come up previously on the forum as to whether a 2-game team on team match should even be restricted by the match rules. Mike Nolan sent this question to the EB. See BINFO 201300322. Any update on this?
Mike also sent a proposal to the ED (Bill Hall at the time) and ratings committee chair that provisionally rated players should not be restricted by the match rules (50 point gain or loss, etc.) if they are in an event that is forced to be coded as a match. Any update on this?
According to Mark Glickman, the predictive power of multiple games against the same opponent is equal to the square root of the number of games. That’s one reason why 3 or more games against the same opponent makes those players ineligible for bonus points. But even 2 games against the same opponent reduces the predictive power by over a half game.
Whether some portion of the ratings formula (ie, ‘effective N’ or K) could be easily adjusted to lower the ratings impact of multiple games against the same opponent has not been investigated yet.
About 40% of the Blitz games are in double-RR or double-Swiss events.
If the issue as to whether provisionally rated players should be restricted by the match rules is still under consideration, why wasn’t it mentioned in the 2014 ratings committee report? glicko.net/ratings/report14.txt
Mike, we have had similar questions coming up with the Red River Shootout I think for at least two
of the last three years. We have had to wait until Monday to get the office to over-ride. it sounds
to me like such would apply in your case. I would contact Walter Brown, but really I do not believe
there should be issues with this.
I don’t think the ratings committee was working on the match issue at the time the report was written, over a month ago. They were recently asked to review a specific proposal on this issue. I haven not heard back as to the status of their deliberations.