Thursday 24 October 2019

The massive rating jump

Under the current FIDE rating regulations it is now possible to see ratings increase by quite a large amount, especially if you are a junior player. Looking at some of the performances from the current World Junior, there are more than a few players looking to gain 100+ rating points from this event.
However, this pales in comparison  to picking up 335 points in a single rating period, from only 2 events. Hikaru Oka (formerly AUS, but now JPN) did so recently, playing in two tournaments in Serbia. Starting with a rating of 2068, he picked up 190 and 145 points from each event, and is now the highest rated player in Japan. His rise to the top has been quite meteoric, as 2 years ago he was rated in the 1600's, but trips to Serbia (and Montenegro) have seen a huge improvement.
It will be interesting to see if he can maintain this form, but if he does, he may well b the top board for the Japan team at the next Olympiad.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It seemed strange how many GMs and IMs in Serbia gave Oka a draw in 15 moves or less. In fact almost all of his games finished in under 20 moves. Extra strange given that his ACF rating is about 1,450.

Xoyepa said...

Well spotted by Anonymous. He has gained a large amount of fide rating points from every tournament he’s gone to in the past 2 years, none of them being open tournaments (https://ratings.fide.com/hist.phtml?event=3227367). His drawn games last very few moves, and in the ones he wins his opponent plays abnormally bad moves (https://chess-db.com/public/pinfo.jsp?id=3227367).

Anonymous said...

Does this have anything to do with buying games?
"The only people who I truly dislike are those who buy and sell games, ratings and titles." [titled players who participate in fixed matches in order to "sell" norms, ratings points and titles to non-titled players]
https://www.chess.com/article/view/ian-nepomniachtchi-chess-interview

Anonymous said...

There is something here that is very odd. Oka's latest two tournaments, where he gained 250 points and scored two IM norms, were rated just now but were played a year ago. Are FIDE even allowed to rate tournaments that are so old? Why weren't they rated immediately after they were played?