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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