Should Adults Starting Out Get Rated?

Hi, I played in a rated tournament today.  I drove to the site it was being held just before it started.  I wanted to ask some questions and just observe.  

However, they were doing quads and only had 7 people, but needed 8.  Some of the lower rated folks didn't even want to play if all their games were paired in a higher rated pool.  My agreeing to participate made a lot of people happy.

Out of 3 --1 hour time control games, I actually won one!  That felt nice.  I think he was a 1450 ish player.  I was a little shocked when I had a clean board with a rook and king vs his king in time pressure and he expected me to play it out.  Fortunately that was not a problm.  I did have to stop writing down the moves and play automatically or risk losing on time.  Do you actually lose the game if your time runs out but he has insufficient material to mate you, or is it a draw?

Thanks again for all your encouragement.  This was a great experience for me.

Brian...

That's right.  And since I'm sure the women in women only tournaments also play against male rated players there are not separate pools in FIDE.

If all her opponents only played women, and Pogonina herself only played women, then that would be a separate pool... something like a woman's FIDE rating lol... which doesn't exist of course.

200 points at that level is tremendous... much more than something like 1600-1800 or 1800-2000.  I have to disagree.

It's not a trollish statement at all.

Consider a small club of 4 players. 1 player is weak, but plays in several other clubs around the area. 2 others are weak, and they only play in the club. The last player is quite strong and also only plays in the club.

The strong player wins 99% of their games, and is walking away with points. The two players who only play in the club are losing all of their rating points to the person who continually beats them. The weak player is the only person bringing rating points into the club.

In the current situation of world chess, women ratings trail behind men by and large, but a significant amount.

My statement is simply an observation about how the rating system works. If someone is a strong player, and is picking their battles against weaker opponants, they will end up with an artificially heightened rating.

I choose to think that many women do not develop as strong chess players because they tend to play in women-only events and thus they do not challenge themselves. The alternative is to presume that the dirth of strong women at the top level is because women aren't capable of playing chess at that level. I don't accept that contention. Rather, I attribute the observed lack of female top GMs to sociology.

That is true if and only if women play men in the same percentage as the membership demographics. That is, if the membership is 70% male and 30% female, than each female needs to be playing 70% of their games against males (and likewise, males need to be playing 30% of their games against females).

I am not at all certain that this actually does happen.

The ratings pools are not seperate, but I am not at all ready to buy that there are not gender differences in ratings driven by individual choices that effect rating distributions within the demographic groups. If even a fair minority percentage of women are playing in women's only tourneys, they can have a fairly significant impact. I am aware of more than one local woman who only plays in women's tournaments. If that is happening at the higher levels it is the easiest (and frankly, most PC) explaination for the observed lack of strong women GMs.

I vaguely recall from the USCF formula something about always gaining at least 1 point from a perfect tournament. I could be wrong and maybe FIDE doesn't have the same rule.

@daw55124

Seems like you're trying to have it both ways.  You say women are weak because they avoid male tournaments but say women are equally capable of playing chess at a high level as men.

If women aren't inherently worse then why is there a difference besides a smaller pool meaning a skewed rating?

But I have heard this before (that women would do well to play in more open events) so I wonder if it's that women aren't willing to work as hard?  Or maybe playing against men is difficult if the woman doesn't think she fits in due to gender?  (The whole point of female-only events right?  Encouraging women to participate?)

 There is no such thing as someone who is "not good enough" to play in a tournament, rated or otherwise.

I know someone who started playing chess at the age of 60, became a CM at 65 and a FM at 66.

Never say that you're too old to play chess.

And Morphy was IM strength within a year or two of playing.

Don't pretend these super-exceptional cases are the norm

Awesome, I missed this post because of that side topic crap.  Congratulations on first tourney win! :)

 If she can't do it in chess, she isn't any kind of GM in my humble opinion.

The level of play is raised when you practice playing against people rated higher than yourself. If women aren't taking advantage of the full pool of players, then they are limiting their competitive chances. That would reduce their opportunities to improve.

First, in my example, I noted that there was one player bringing points into the club.

Second, I didn't ever state one could artificially raise their level to any arbitrary value (though you could, but at some point it would begin to require collusion.) And during the USSR era, it should be noted, intentional manipulating both ratings and results was known to be rather common.

Indeed, congrats! Now keep working on tactics and basic opening ideas and go get your first class win!

I don't think he was referring to me, Reb is a sensible person.

In fact, I have met the requirements for becoming an IM many years ago. There was no sense in applying for it though since WGM usually entitles one to equal conditions with GMs and higher than IMs (WIMs get the same conditions as IMs). Also, as I was over 2500, it makes sense to wait until I also get the norms, and apply for GM. However, as I have already mentioned before, that is not so easy since most of my tournaments are top-notch female ones, where there are technically not enough title-holders to get a GM norm. Maybe I should change my tournament planning principles...

My example is simply to show that artificial rating changes will happen if you limit a pool. I stated that I didn't know if the effect over the population of women in chess would be as much as 200 points.

And it will in fact work. You can simply do the math yourself.

I merely brought up the historical fact that various organizations did in fact fix ratings by selecting either results or opponent. The same effect can be had by someone self-selecting their opposition, though the net impact will be less without collusion.

There are mathematical issues with the ELO system, even as modified by USCF and FIDE (the ways they modify it are different).

 He was indeed, referring to you, and as long as you just play against women, there are going to be those on here who say you couldn't play at the same level against men.

Find some players with ratings and rate yourself first, then find out how to get a rating.

I would like to register for a rating (I think it can cost money) however I don't have a local club.