Sunday 20 February 2011

Changes to Australian Ratings

In a somewhat low-key announcement, the Australian Chess Federation is changing some aspects of the way ratings are calculated in the country. After 24 months of testing the changes (to improve predictive accuracy), the system has undergone some minor changes (What exactly they are hasn't been stated).
What the ACF have also done is to run the modified system over the data from December 2000 to December 2010, recalculating all the ratings in this period. The net effect on ratings is an average increase of 73 points over the list published for December 2010. The ACF is not publishing an updated list for December 2010, instead simply publishing the scheduled March 2010 2011 list with the new ratings.
While improvement to the accuracy of ratings is good, in the short term this will cause some difficulties for tournament organisers. Some tournaments that are run in sections (eg Doeberl Cup/Grand Prix) have already advertised there tournament conditions and a number of players may find themselves moving upwards, to a higher section. On the plus side, there would be some players who may not have been eligible for some tournaments (Australian Championships, Doeberl Cup Premier) who now qualify, despite not lifting a piece for a year or 2.

1 comment:

OzChess.com said...

All these upgrades to everyone's ratings (this is the second one in recent memory I can recall) is further evidence of how broken the ACF Glicko Rating System is.

The majority of Australian chess players, if given the choice, would likely vote for a return of the ELO rating system.