02 Aug '19 09:08>3 edits
Hi @Russ / @Chris, hope you are well 🙂
Just an idea, i have seen this implemented on other sites. If a player doesn't play a rated game for 'X' time, then their rating becomes provisional again. Not sure what the correct amount of time should be, but I feel it would be a good addition.
From a purely personal perspective, I haven't played seriously on RHP for quite a long time now. When i left, i was timed out in about 100 games, so consequently my rating is somewhere around 1200. My actual strength is probably somewhere around 19-2100 on this site. I have tried to come back a few times to play some serious games here and try and improve my openings against some good players, but unfortunately I am stuck having to play some 100-150 games before I am eligible for the higher rated tournaments.
There are a number of reasons this is undesirable from a site perspective.
1. The people I beat will lose a lot of rating as my grade is so low, which isn't really fair.
2. I could easily enter lower banded tournaments, which is also not really fair
3. If my grade becomes provisional, i cannot enter banded tournaments (which i wouldn't anyway, but generally would resolve some sandbagging issues)
4. Any weird rating inflation/deflation issues would be minimised as big timeouts are not uncommon here in my experience.
What do you think? If someone leaves for a year, it is unlikely their rating would be unchanged. Either they would be a lot better or a lot worse, depending whether they have spent that year playing or taking a break.
Perhaps and alternative would be to allow a player to choose whether to make their grade provisional again, after a period of inactivity. Either way would be better than the current system, as I really can't motivate myself to play 150 games against much lower rated opposition. It's not so fun for them and it's not so challenging for me either (no disrespect to lower graded players intended). To complete that many games at a normal game load of say, 30 concurrent games, can literally take years.
Just an idea, i have seen this implemented on other sites. If a player doesn't play a rated game for 'X' time, then their rating becomes provisional again. Not sure what the correct amount of time should be, but I feel it would be a good addition.
From a purely personal perspective, I haven't played seriously on RHP for quite a long time now. When i left, i was timed out in about 100 games, so consequently my rating is somewhere around 1200. My actual strength is probably somewhere around 19-2100 on this site. I have tried to come back a few times to play some serious games here and try and improve my openings against some good players, but unfortunately I am stuck having to play some 100-150 games before I am eligible for the higher rated tournaments.
There are a number of reasons this is undesirable from a site perspective.
1. The people I beat will lose a lot of rating as my grade is so low, which isn't really fair.
2. I could easily enter lower banded tournaments, which is also not really fair
3. If my grade becomes provisional, i cannot enter banded tournaments (which i wouldn't anyway, but generally would resolve some sandbagging issues)
4. Any weird rating inflation/deflation issues would be minimised as big timeouts are not uncommon here in my experience.
What do you think? If someone leaves for a year, it is unlikely their rating would be unchanged. Either they would be a lot better or a lot worse, depending whether they have spent that year playing or taking a break.
Perhaps and alternative would be to allow a player to choose whether to make their grade provisional again, after a period of inactivity. Either way would be better than the current system, as I really can't motivate myself to play 150 games against much lower rated opposition. It's not so fun for them and it's not so challenging for me either (no disrespect to lower graded players intended). To complete that many games at a normal game load of say, 30 concurrent games, can literally take years.