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- The tournament director of each tournament sends all the results for the
- tournament to the USATT rating chairman Dan Simon. Dan processes the
- tournaments in the order they were played. After processing, he sends a
- report back to the tournament director that gives the new rating for each
- player who played in the tournament. So, you may get your new rating from
- the tournament director several weeks after the tournament.
-
- Here is the rating chart which gives the number of rating points that the
- winner of each match wins and the loser loses.
-
- ---------------------------------------
- Rating | Higher rated | Lower rated
- difference | player wins | player wins
- ---------------------------------------
- 0- 12 | 8 | 8
- 13- 37 | 7 | 10
- 38- 62 | 6 | 13
- 63- 87 | 5 | 16
- 88-112 | 4 | 20
- 113-137 | 3 | 25
- 138-162 | 2 | 30
- 163-187 | 2 | 35
- 188-212 | 1 | 40
- 213-237 | 1 | 45
- 238- | 0 | 50
- ---------------------------------------
-
- However, the calculation of the ratings involves more than just this chart.
- The first problem is unrated players. Dan looks at the results of each
- unrated player (including the number of points the player scored). Using
- this information, he assigns a rating to each unrated player. From now on
- he treats unrated players just like rated players using the newly assigned
- rating. So, you do win and lose points when you play an unrated player.
-
- To finish calculating the post-tournament ratings, Dan makes two passes
- through the results. The first pass is a screening pass to identify players
- whose ratings should be adjusted. Dan uses the rating chart to calculate
- how many points each player would win for the tournament. Any player who
- would win at least fifty rating points has his rating adjusted up. This
- means that Dan replaces his pre-tournament rating with a new adjusted
- rating which is used as his rating for the second pass. In the second pass,
- Dan uses the rating chart again to calculate the post-tournament rating for
- each player.
-
- So, from the point of view of the rating system, there are actually three
- ratings for every player in a tournament. The first rating is the
- pre-tournament rating which is the rating the player has going into the
- tournament after all earlier tournaments have been processed. This is not
- necessarily the same as the rating used at the tournament since Dan
- processes the tournaments in the order they were played.
-
- The second rating is the adjusted pre-tournament rating. This is different
- from the pre-tournament rating for two classes of players:
-
- 1. unrated players,
- 2. players who have their ratings adjusted.
-
- No one has a zero adjusted rating, since all the unrated players are given
- a rating. If the player was rated and he is not being adjusted, then his
- adjusted rating is the same as his pre-tournament rating. The third rating
- is the post-tournament rating.
-
- To summarize: the pre-tournament rating is the rating before the tournament
- is processed. The adjusted rating is the rating after unrated players are
- given ratings and after the first screening pass. The post-tournament
- rating is the player's new rating that will be published in the next issue
- of TT Today.
-
-
- DATA
-
- Dan graciously sent me the results from eight tournaments played in April
- and May 1989. Here are some statistics of the number of players and matches
- in those eight tournaments.
-
- ---------------------------------------------------------
- Category | Players | Matches
- |------------------------------------
- | Number Per cent | Number Per cent
- | of total | of total
- ---------------------------------------------------------
- all | 459 100.0 | 1510 100.0
- unrated | 49 10.7 | 225 14.9
- adjusted | 49 10.7 | 417 27.6
- unrated or adjusted | 98 21.4 | 609 40.3
- ---------------------------------------------------------
-
- The row labeled "all" is all the players and all the matches. The row
- labeled "unrated" is those players who were unrated going into the
- tournament and those matches in which either player was unrated. The row
- labeled "adjusted" is those players who had their ratings adjusted and
- those matches in which either player was adjusted. The row labeled "unrated
- or adjusted" is those players who were either unrated or had their ratings
- adjusted and those matches in which either player was unrated or adjusted.
-
- In case you were wondering, the number of "unrated" matches plus the number
- of "adjusted" matches doesn't equal the number of "unrated or adjusted"
- matches because there were 33 matches in which an unrated player played an
- adjusted player. It is interesting that 40.3% of the matches involve
- unrated or adjusted players. This and the fact that you don't know the
- pre-tournament ratings is why you can't exactly calculate your own
- post-tournament rating.
-
- Which set of ratings should we use to construct a handicap chart? Well, in
- principle we should use the pre-tournament ratings since these ratings are
- closest to the ratings that are actually used at the tournaments. Rather
- than make a decision, we'll construct charts using each of the three sets
- of ratings.
-
-