Discussion on future season(s) of Thematic Endgames: rated or unrated?

This topic aims to prepare the future next season of the Thematic Endgames (even if it won't start before some months). For context, season 1 was "rated", some admins expressed concerns after the parameters were announced, but we couldn't reach a consensus before the season started. Ideas was to have Open and U1400 rated and an additional U1600 unrated, another option would be to have all unrated, to which some admins expressed their preference for all rated.

Extract from today's notes (triggering the discussion):

McSlash1

8 min ago

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I fully agree with my teammate and friend @Kookaburrra

Padaq

8 min ago

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I can give my opinion?

mlongpre2

40 min ago

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I would prefer unrated games, but I like too much practice the endgame not to join.

Kookaburrra

47 min ago

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I always said it should be unrated and my clubs never entered because of it. It’s just a part of a game and to lose or gain the same rating for that just part of a game doesn’t seem great to me and hard to justify to club members.

Ximoon

2 hrs ago

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Thanks for the feedback. We'll definitely have some debate with other admins before next season. For the current one there was some admins expressing this concern but we couldn't converge in time.

Chris_E_S3

2 hrs ago

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I shouldn't say "my club". I mean from the same club as me, namely - King of the Hill Team -

Chris_E_S3

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Christophe, Three people from my club think that the thematic endgames should be unrated. I thought I would give you this feedback for next season (?). The reason is that some of them are easy to draw and some of them have a good chance of a 1-1 split (one win each) even if there is a rating difference of over 100. In short, higher rated people are losing rating. A couple of people told me they really enjoy them. One person told me he doesn't want to play standard chess, only these endgames.

In most competitions, I prefer rated activities (e.g., team matches or vote chess games).

However, one thing I have noticed in Season 1 of the Thematic Endgames competition is that there is sometimes a wider disparity between the ratings of the players on the various boards than in other team matches. This causes a problem because the starting endgame positions are much closer to being "drawn" than games that start at the beginning. So, aside from the pleasure of playing the position itself, there is no incentive for higher-rated players to sign up if the opponent on the same board is rated 400 points lower. It is much easier for the lower-rated player to earn the draw in the endgame position than it is from the initial position. So, the higher-rated player is more likely to lose rating points in this scenario.

My suggestion is to experiment with both a rated section and an unrated section of the competition and analyze the "rating spreads" between the various team rosters. My hunch is that there will be more of a willingness for higher-rated players to register in the unrated sections.

Unrated. I won’t enter any clubs into rated. I can’t ask club members to lose or gain the same number of rating points for just a little bit of a game. And as has been pointed out draws are way more likely which I hadn’t thought of.

Those are very good points indeed. I have to say I tend to balance in favor of a whole unrated competition because of that. I don't want a solution that would be too complex to set up a and manage.

But I'd like to hear also the admins, if any, that wouldn't play if unrated.

Maybe alternate the seasons. Rated one season. Unrated the next and that way everyone gets to play.

See which is more popular because regardless of what people say they will do. The actual amount entering will be a better indication. Many people don’t say anything.

Ratings should be based on a level playing field. Including thematic games with standard games is like including 960 with standard chess. They are a different starting position and have a different mind set. Daily you are choosing an opening and a defence based on personal experience and bias; the rating is a reflection of that (you are trying to play to strengths) and would be distorted by including thematic. If you want to rate thematic then I recommend it be done separately (aka ask chess.com to include it separately) as they do with 960. Until then unrated. I want my rating to reflect my standard chess capability for my preferred openings.

I agree with a season 2 unrated and compare season 1 and season 2

I agree.

I would like to play it rated.

But if there would be an unrated section, it is also okay.

I agree with @Dugite295 too.

I agree it's not ideal to have custom positions rated the same with classical and separated from 960. You could setup a valid 960 start position using a custom FEN and it will count as classical, which makes little sense.

At some point I wanted to start a 960 tournament where all teams would have the same setup, but there's no way to make it happen using 960 ratings. That's something to improve.

In France-Deutschland Group there was not single comment questioning the rated endgame tournament.

If the next tournament will be unrated, I prefer to skip the tournament ... instead of risking comments about the lack of competition in unrated games.

Thank you for your feedback.

Beautiful Romania is for rated, in anithing format.

Agreed.

I usually do not play any unrated games, however, decided to play an unrated club game with end game thematic, where the lower rated person played negative from the begin asking for draws. We eventually ended up in draw position and now for his punishment I have been moving all over the board refusing accepting a draw and making sure there is no repetition moves. We are beyond 100 moves. So I agree with Kookaburrra, I will not take part in a rated end game theme with lower rated players which can force a draw nor will I try and convince club members to take part.

Especially for the endgames I vote for unrated games . On the other hand I am for rated games related to openings as the matches are comencing from 1st move

I vote for unrated. And I believe they are in the majority.

For unrated, would you say only one open division would do (as it's unrated, that's the whole argument) or a split between open and U1400?