Thursday 14 December 2023

Junior Jeopardy

RECEIVED the following comment from Joe Skielnik re this month's Benidorm congress.

Teenagers run amok in Benidorm!
It seems harder to gain rating points these days. I just did a quick survey of performances. 15 players gained over 100 rating points and they were all under 16 years old (apart from 1 aged 19). This included an under 8 year old who gained 184 rating points. Fairly understandable I suppose, but from whom did they take these points? (Are they not taught to respect their elders?) The road to chess improvement clearly involves a journey in time rather like "Going back to the future".

4 comments:

  1. A couple of interesting links related to this
    https://www.chess.com/news/view/fide-set-to-implement-drastic-rating-changes
    https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/fide-rating-system-flawed

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  2. The answer, for some of them, is probably nobody. If a junior has a k-factor of 40 and the opponent has a k-factor of 20, then half of the junior's gain is new points added to the rating system.

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    Replies
    1. This is true. The problem, as I understand it, is many juniors leave chess in their mid/late-teens, taking a lot of rating points with them, and this is apparently a cause of deflation.

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