The pools in FIDE are not the same, an English player could get to to 2600 just playing and beating UK based players, a US player could get to 2650 in North America. If they play against each other, even though the 2650 player is supposed to be better, how could you possibly predict who would win, given they have never played a common opponent?
So much for Elo ratings
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Yes, but they play opponents who have played each other over long periods of time.
Of course, if it were the case that they were isolated populations that never played each other, than the ratings would not be commensuarate. But it also would not be a problem, since they never play each other. Catch 22.
This is hardly controversial. If you have some alternative, please delineate it.
Odds change based on a singular event all the time.
If we are playing a hand of hold em poker and I have three eights and you have three kings and there are still two cards to come I have roughly a fourteen percent chance of either getting another eight or a card to match one of my kickers.
On the next card an eight comes up. I now have a 98 percent chance of winning.
Is the entire game of poker invalidated because the odds swung so mightily based on a single card?
Poker stats are based on pure Mathematics, theres nothing subjective about the numbers. ELO ratings are just an opinion reflected in numbers, they can't possibly predict with 100 percent certainty what will happen in an individual chess game. My argument isn't really with the number per se, just how it is used to support arguments that cannot be resolved, e.g player ability in different generations.
This is all wrong.
1. ELO ratings are not an opinion based on numbers. The number is derived from results against other rated players. Your opinion doesn't change the number.
2. Of course they cannot predict anything with 100% certainty. Neither can odds in poker. Thats why they are called odds. If you have a method that can do better than ELO, (let alone one that can work with certainty) please elaborate.
3. The fact the ELO cannot be used across generations is well known. They are only viable within a pool of players. You can't even compare ELO of players in the same generation, if they are from different pools, for example, it is useless to compare USCF rating to chess.com rating.
So this is a straw man.