The subject of this was almost ‘time-odds blitz questions’, but the main point that I want to ask about concerns ‘quick’ ratings.
I directed a competition with an average of 5 min. per player/game, but with more time for the lower rated player and less for the higher. At first it seems obvious that the ‘quick’ USCF ratings are more appropriatre than ‘regular’ ones for games this fast, but I think that overall the regular ratings are a better indicator of each player’s relative strength! This is because, at least in the group that we had, the players’ ‘quick’ ratings are still catching up to their ‘regular’ ones, and that is because they have played in more ‘regular’ events than ‘quick’, or at least played in ‘regular’ ones more recently.
As the notes there say, all of the players had ‘quick’ ratings lower than their ‘regular’ ones, and the gap was a function of age. It wasn’t just a trend - in all 4 cases, the younger a player was, the larger the gap between their two ratings was. I know that only 4 players is a very small statistical sample, but this relation held for every one of them without exception.
Also, it just seems wrong to put any delay on time-odds games…
I don’t think anyone really knows why most people have a quick rating lower than their regular rating.
Several explanations have been suggested, along with several possible corrections, some of which have no theoretical or mathematical underpinning and could actually make the problem worse.
The Ratings Committee is working on designing a series of tests to be run on a backup server starting later this summer. Each test is likely to take 2-3 days to set up, perform and analyze, and there are likely to be quite a few tests, as there are several issues other than the regular/quick issue to study.
It also isn’t clear whether those lower quick ratings are ‘inaccurate’. (After all, if in order for quick ratings to be accurate they need to be the same as regular ratings, what do we need quick ratings for?)
They don’t have to be the same, but they should be about the same on the average, for reasons other than accuracy. If a bunch of players are 100 points lower in quick than in regular, there should be an about equally-sized bunch where the reverse is the case.
Why is that true? Isn’t it generally agreed that the longer you’re given to think about your moves, the better your play? It’s always made intuitive sense to me that my quick rating should be lower than my regular rating, if only because the player I am when I take my time would generally beat the player I am when I play hastily.
Imagine a player who has the ability to think extraordinarily fast – he can carry out the same calculations at a G/20 pace that a normal player is capable of at a G/60 pace. But this is at the limit of his chess ability; he’s no better a G/60 player than he is a G/20. If you put 60 minutes on your clock and 60 minutes on his, the expected result would be exactly the same as if you put 60 minutes on your clock and only 20 on his. His quick rating, it would be reasonable to expect, would be equal to his regular rating. The rest of us might be able to beat him x percent of the time in a G/60 match but significantly less often in a G/20 match, because our thinking is limited by the faster time control, while his isn’t.
In any case, this doesn’t strike me as something that needs to be “corrected.” It strikes me as the natural way of things.
Almost every pair of ratings I’ve ever seen has the Quick lower than the Regular. I’m curious what percentage of people have Quick higher than Regular (for established ratings)…
They bounce around but currently my quick is 14 points above my regular (the last time my quick was higher was from January of 1998 to August of 2000).
My son has been a scholastic player long enough to get a regular rating back in 2006 (last year passing the milestones of 50 regular wins and 50 quick wins). Over his lifetime he has lost 39 points in tournaments that were regular-rated only (6 in one regular-only event since 2006). Over his lifetime he has gained 80 points in tournaments that were quick-rated only (he’s plus 112 in the past two years). His quick rating is currently 36 above his regular rating (until June it was lower but he picked up 48 points in quick-only events in the past two months), not the 119 difference that would be supported by the non-dual-rated events (and in March his quick was 12 lower even though the non-dual-rated events skewed the difference 71 in favor of the quick rating). He’s had individual events where he is +12regular/-3quick, +28R/+40Q, +38R/+25Q, -26R/-13Q, etc.
There are 12,433 players who have played at least 25 regular rated games and at least 25 quick rated games since 1/1/2009. (Those could be the same games if they were all in dual-rated events.)
Of those players, 370 currently have the same regular and quick rating, 9208 have a higher regular rating and 2855 have a higher quick rating.
Of the 9208, 7051 have a regular rating that is within 100 points of their quick rating,
1641 have a regular rating that is 100-199 points above their quick rating, 441 have a regular rating that is 200-299 points above their quick rating and 102 have a regular rating that is 300 points or more above their quick rating.
Of the 2855, 2628 have a quick rating that is within 100 points of their regular rating, 193 have a quick rating that is 100-199 points higher than their regular rating, 25 have a quick rating that is 200-299 points higher than their regular rating and 9 have a quick rating that is 300 or more points higher than their quick rating.