USCF Rating System

Before a tournament, I was rated around 1530. Not provisional by any stretch.

I played four games against four A-Class players who averaged a rating of 1880. I won two, drew one and lost one. Oddly, my best played game was the one I lost :) (I lost it due to time pressure in an equal ending). All the training is starting to pay off.

I expected a rating bump of maybe 60 points. The most you can win in one game is 32, so I figured 55-60 for the two wins, another 15 or so for the draw and 5 or so loss in the loss. Round down for pessimism, and my drive-back estimate was 60 points up. Nice.

Instead I find that my rating went up over 120 points. That is the equivilent of four wins against people 400 points above me.

How is this right? Can anyone explain?

I've heard that USCF increased their K-factor recently - let me see if I can find the link. That would cause more dramatic rating changes.

Here it is: http://www.chess.com/forum/view/livechess/the-curse-of-the-last-round?page=2

Read the comments by the 2000+ guys (JMB, Abishek, etc.) about the K-factor on this page.

Thanks, I will take a look at it. I did see on uschess.org about the k factor change, but I don't see how it could cause a doubling of the rating change. No one else in the tournament went up by even a quarter or what I did (in the Open section anyhow).

Bonus points baby!

I just looked this up, and I think you have the answer. My expected performance was between 0.5 and 1.0 wins. Instead I got 2.5 so I got a nice healthy bump in my rating.

I noticed that uschess' calculator shows bonus as well, and 47 is attributable to this bonus.

Thanks for the info!