Unfortunately some vocal scholastic folks, who say they speak for many who are less vocal, do not like it at all. The last time I mentioned this idea to fix the rating-floor and deflation problems of scholastic rating, Rob Jones objected by quoting Honest Abe: āA house divided [against itself] cannot stand!ā main.uschess.org/forums/viewtopi ā¦ 28#p162828
The point you raise here, that a high-rated scholastic player currently has reason to avoid rated scholastic play, is yet another reason for a separate scholastic rating system.
The data suggests that scholastic players are not āunderrated as a groupā.
If we look at how players do against other players, player with low ratings are not significantly outperforming players with much higher ratings. In other words, a player facing someone 400 or points higher than him is going to have about the same performance whether thatās a 400 player, a 1200 player or a 2000 player. (The 2000 player is probably going to have more draws than the 400 player, but thatās true in general of higher rated players, and is offset by the 400 player having more wins.)
Yes, there are outlier cases that people keep citing, but most of those are rapidly improving players (or ones with very old and thus no longer accurate ratings), and they self-adjust after a few events, in part due to the bonus formula.
The ironic thing about raising the house divided argument is that that is exactly what we have. The scholastic players stay isolated in their group. It is a side effect of their isolation (house divided) that makes them appear to be underrated as a group when someone like my son occasionally makes an appearance.
The jokes about adding 1000 points to eveyoneās rating have be fun. But it highlights the worthlessness of ratings in general when compared to the bigger picture. Statistical arguments about how well a 900 will do against a 1400 are worthless if the two groups never meet. I wonder what is really behind their isolation? My guess is they are intimidated by the rating differences outside the safe scholastic world.
Before you counter all my arguments with solid statistical analysis - who does not see the isolation? (perhaps āisolatedā is not the best word? Maybe separateness?)
Adjusting ratings may not be the answer, but I am curious if this is noticed by others? It feels like I am taking my son to a tournament full of sandbaggers!
Also thinking about what I said about ālikingā a separate scholastic rating system. I think this may only solidify the isolation. I would want to see more kids continuing Chess as adults without thinking adult tournaments are the major leagues - so to speak.
But ā¦ the adult tournaments are the major leagues, at least as compared to scholastic events. Since itās true, I would not try to prevent kids from realizing it. Maybe I misunderstood your meaning about this.
And as long as scholastic tournaments exclude adults but the āadultā tournaments allow kids to play, the responsibility for any isolation falls mainly on the scholastic side, including the kids who are invited to play in adult tournaments but do not.
If the kids are under-rated, all they have to do is enter some adult tournaments and prove it. When I was a young player, there was no rated scholastic chess, and there were a few junior events, but mostly I played adult tournaments. Whether the kids are currently under-rated or not, I do think the better ones would improve faster if they played in adult events too.
This is an excellent point; I cannot agree more.
In our club there are a handful of kids, ranging in age from about 10 to 15. In general they are somewhat disruptive, but thatās just because theyāre normal. (Throwing a ball in the hall; kibitzing loudly; banging pieces down, etc.) We are happy to have them and pay the small price of their disruption; I only wish my own kids had the interest, which I have failed to motivate.
But they are the minority - most kids avoid the āadultā tournament play. As there are only barriers in the OTHER direction, and if our club is typical, adults are welcoming the kidsā¦ Artichokeās point is spot-on.
I have not observed these kids being underrated. Most come in with a rating in the range of, say, 500-1000. And these kids really take their lumps, playing adults that are rated (as low as) 1100-1200. In time they gain experience - the main ingredient needed is PATIENCE - and then one day, they beat one of these guys. Itās a happy day and a great achievement for them.
We have two young players in the general rating range of the original posterās son. These kids (one 1700+, one 1800+) have earned these ratings and play accordingly. They are not mis-rated, and neither are their less-skilled friends. (And all of them act like normal kids, which is refreshing.)
To call these kids āsandbaggersā might have been tongue-in-cheek (I hope), but if you put yourself in their position or in the position of their parents, you will see how it would be off-the-mark, and possibly offensive.
The rating system works, and I cannot get around it by picking a demographic (kids, seniors, women, whatever) with the hope for an easy ride to 1600, 1800, or whatever. It must be kept intact to retain that consistency.
But they do meet. (Iāve been working on building head-to-head results tables for MSA, so I have data thatās fairly easy to pull.)
In 2008, 2.4% of the regular rated games played by 900 players were against 1400 players, the same percentage as the number of games by 1700 players against 2200 players. (There were 1130 games by 900 players against 1400 players and 1042 games by 1700 players against 2200 players, so even the raw numbers were similar.)
BTW, the 1700 players did a bit better than the 900 players, winning 4% of those games and drawing 9.4%, while the 900 players won 3.9% and drew 3% of the games. Perhaps that means that as a group 900 players are somewhat overrated?
FWIW, for players rated 400 or higher, 1300 players were the ones most likely to play someone rated 500 points higher, about 3.8% of their games. (They won 4.1% of those games and drew 6%.)
There was a big drop off in games against players rated 500 points higher starting at 1800 (0.9% or less of their games), probably due to the relatively small number of higher rated players, especially in sections with non-masters in them.
Heck, kibitzing loudly (whether playing or watching) and banging pieces down is still my favorite chess environment. And itās something that you canāt get online!
Well, Iād be more inclined to agree if you could tell me what percentage of the 900 players are scholastic players. My issue wasnāt whether lower rated players meet higher rated players, it has to do with the vast majority of scholastic kids (btw, I think 97.6% constitutes a vast majority) who donāt go to Adult tournaments. Scholastic tournaments in MO can attract as much as 600 players, while adult tournaments in the same state barely muster 50. Of that 50, 20% may be kids (although I have only my own experience to tell), and of that 20%, a number prefer adult tournaments for various reasons. Of the scholastic kids who brave the tougher waters of adult play, some will learn they love the game more than for just the pleasure to win.
Perhaps this is the way it should be. After all, I appear to be in the minority so it doesnāt seem to matter to most because the scholastic world is happy, and the adult world is happy. I just represent the odd ball group that occasionally crosses that divide. And, well, thereās not many of us I guessā¦
Those 1130 games were played by 832 different players. 381 of those were 12 or younger, another 140 were 13-15, 122 were 16-19, 25 were 20-24, 150 were 25-64 and 21 were 65 or older.
I donāt know where you draw the line on scholastic players.
Iām going to be able to pull all sorts of interesting statistics from this new table. (The trick will be to make it possible for members to pull a similarly wide range of statistics from it without making it too complicated to use.)
Looking at regular rated games played in 2008 by adult members (25 or older, including seniors), 11.5% of them were against players who were 12 or younger. Another 8.4% were against players in the 13-15 age group and 7.4% were against players in the 16-19 age group.
In other words, those adults played over 25% of their regular rated games against younger players. Thatās pretty consistent with the data I came up with in 2002, which as recall was that around 7% of the players in āadultā events were under 13 and another 20% were teenagers.
I can understand the OPās concern about when his son plays in a scholastic tournament where he out-rates the number two player by almost 400 points. Unless he scores 5-0 heās going to lose points. If a player like that wants to play with other kids either he accepts the fact that heāll need to be perfect in section of lower rated kids, or find scholastic tournaments where there are sections for higher rated kids.
In terms of the isolation factor; a lot depends where players live. In the NYC metro area kids have lots of opportunities to play with adults. Many kids take advantage of those opportunities, but I find for the most part kids rated under 1000 donāt play in tournaments with adults unless there is an Under 1000 section. Outside of the big class events run by the CCA how many āadultā tournaments offer under 1000 sections? Even if those sections are offered, how many kids under 1000 play in them? How many kids rated under 700 would play in such a section?
Kids who are improving rapidly tend to out grow scholastic events. After awhile it becomes āHow many trophies do I really need?ā Some scholastic organizers have over 1600 sections for kids where there are nice merchandise prizes given out instead of trophies. These sections draw a lot of strong kids to them. One organizer gives free entries to kids rated over 2000. I wish I could play in that tournament!
There are organizers who run scholastic tournaments, but have a section open to adults and kids rated over 1400. One such organizer draws about 4 to 6 grandmasters to her events. Many high rated kids who went through her program and played in her scholastic sections show up and play in this tournament. Hereās an example of adults coming to a primarily scholastic event.
The organization that I direct for typical runs 20 scholastic events during the school year. For the 2009-2010 school year, 8 of our events will offer an over 1600 section open to youth and adults. The first one drew 8 players, two who were adults. Hopefully as word gets out via Chess Life TLAs and other sources we will draw more adults into the events.
There have been many discussions of why kids stop playing at a certain point, what can be done to retain such kids, and whether separate organizations or rating systems would be beneficial or not. The OP makes an interesting point about adult tournaments being viewed as the āmajor leagues.ā Is that how āadultā chess is really perceived? Is that a terrible thing? Do the majority of players feels there should be this line drawn between scholastic and adult?
I donāt think youāre part of an odd ball group. But perhaps more needs to be done on the scholastic end to welcome playing adults to the young chess playerās world.
We run primarily adult events, but also typically have an U900 scholastic section. What we do differently is that we allow teams of players over all the sections. So a school might have 1 player in the Open, 2 in the U1600 and 3 in the U900 Scholastic - with the team prize being the sum of the top 4 scores regardless of section. (In SwisSys, just merge all the sections and do the teams on the merged section.)
In IL there is a February scholastic event with 9 different rating sections in each of the 3 grade divisions, and with team trophies at the divisional level. As in SwissSys, in WinTD you just have to merge the sections to get the team standings. I do that every round so that team standings can be posted during the event. You do have to save the pre-merge file so that you can go back to it.
I wish I had Swiss-Sys back when I directed a scholastic tournament with team scores coming from all sections. At the time I was using Pair Plus, and would keep track of the teams on an Excel spreadsheet. Though even if I did, I probably would not have thought to merge the sections and keep track of the scores that way.
It would be interesting to put the shoe on the other foot, and discover what percentage of younger playersā regular-rated games were played against adults. Iām betting it would be less than 5%.
- who does not see the isolation? (perhaps āisolatedā is not the best word? Maybe separateness?)
