sanctions against cheaters

Originally posted by Kranium
Never heard of 'chess' inflation, economic - yes...prices, cost of living, etc., but ratings?

Ratings inflation has been a problem for all rating systems for decades. When I started playing chess in the 1970's the top grandmasters were rated between 2600 and 2700. There were only a handful of players over 2600 and they were called "super-GMs". Nowadays there are hundreds of such players.

Likewise with this site. When I joined in 2002, Schliemann and Sintubin were fighting for the top spot with ratings under 2000. The next players below them were rated in the 1800's. Nowadays, nothing special.

The reason why there's this inflation is because of the thousands of new players who enter the system every year. I don't think there's anything that can be done about this.

Originally posted by David Tebb
Ratings inflation has been a problem for all rating systems for decades........
The reason why there's this inflation is because of the thousands of new players who enter the system every year. I don't think there's anything that can be done about this.

If we had points of reference, ie some external reference point to calibrate to, then I think it would be a fairly simple process of reducing the starting rating, of players, by increments until reference points line up.

So new players could start at 1175, and their interaction with the existing members would cause a ripple of downward adjustments throughout.

Originally posted by The Swine Down Hope
If we had points of reference, ie some external reference point to calibrate to, then I think it would be a fairly simple process of reducing the starting rating, of players, by increments until reference points line up.

So new players could start at 1175, and their interaction with the existing members would cause a ripple of downward adjustments throughout.

Actually probably scub this on second thoughts: the phenomenon is likely to do with the spreading of ratings rather than the average increasing, ie sd not mean.

The rating system would be interesting to simulate to observe the dynamics *scientifically*, maybe after i've got no work to do, chess to play, chess to learn, i'll get round to it - (ahh never then!)