I Need to Tell New Chess Players This Desperately

ATTENTION 400 RATED CHESS PLAYERS! LISTEN UP!

In the last decade, there has been this really annoying clickbait YouTuber named "@GothamChess". He has these videos called "guess the elo", named after Professor Arpad Elo. He created his own rating system, with one main aspect:

Key Aspect: The rating gap between players dictates how many points they can win or lose, with higher-rated players expected to win against lower-rated players, but not receiving many points for a victory against a much lower-rated player.

This sounds great right? Yes, it is a very good system with lots of genius behind it. However it has one major flaw.

"With the Elo system you have to assume that everyone's rating is just as sure as everyone else's rating. So my rating is as accurate as your rating. But that is just not true. For example, if this is your first game on Chess.com and you start at 1200, how do we really know what your rating is? We don't. But if I have played 1,000 games on this site, you would be much more sure that my current rating is accurate. So the Glicko system gives everyone not only a rating, but an "RD", called a Rating Deviation. Basically what that number means is "I AM 95% SURE YOUR RATING IS BETWEEN X and Y." (Nerd Fact: In technical terms this is called a "confidence interval".) If this if your first game on Chess.com I might say, "I am 95% sure that your rating is somewhere between 400 and 2400". Well that is a REALLY big range! And that is represented by a really big RD, or Rating Deviation. If you have played 1,000 games and your rating is currently 1600 I might say "I am 95% sure your rating is between 1550 and 1650". So you would have a low RD. As you play more games, your RD gets lower. To add one extra wrinkle in there, the more recent your games, the lower your RD. Your RD gets bigger over time (because maybe you have gotten better or worse over time - I'm just less sure of what your actual rating is if I haven't seen you play recently). Now, how does this affect ratings? Well, if you have a big RD, then your rating can move up and down more drastically because your rating is less accurate. But if you have a small RD then your rating will move up and down more slowly because your rating is more accurate. The opposite is true for your opponent! If they have a HIGH RD, then your rating will change LESS when you win or lose because their rating is less accurate. But if they have a LOW RD, then your rating will move MORE because their rating is more accurate."

From @eriks article about ratings from 2007 https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-ratings---how-they-work

Did you guys hear get that? Basically with the Elo system, you can be away from chess for a very long time, come back, lose or win, and have only a slight rating boost or decline like when they played chess for a while. While with Glicko, you gain more RD the more you stay away from playing. (We all have those moments where we just say, WHY DID MY RATING DROP -40!! I know I have) The lower your RD, the more accurate your rating is the less (or more) rating changes.

In conclusion, new players, if you here the word elo used in a sentence with chess, they are wrong. The system used by most of the world (including chess.com) is Glicko, end of story.

Please, hearing the word "elo" said by 700's at otb events just drives me up the wall, ahhhhhh!

from Gotham to glicko...

Troll comment? or actually participating in the topic

idk but I thought the topic would be about Gotham lol

but it's interesting

and why is it called elo

They named it after the proffesor

ok

Good point. Whenever somebody says elo at my next OTB event, I'll direct them to this blog.

Should I have made it a blog?

yes