Hi,
I've thought this for a little while now, and had the opportunity to discuss it with a strong local master at the Ontario Open. These participation points, which were put in place to offset potential junior invasion and combat minor deflation, are now doing damage in the wrong direction. Most of the 1900s I knew from 2 years ago are now 2000s, and most 2200s are now 2300s. 2300s still beat up on 2000s, the point difference remains more or less the same, and clearly we're not all getting so much better at chess.
I am at an all-time personal high of 2116, and even though capable of performing at that level on occasion, I don't believe I went from 1900 all of a sudden to 2100 strength. I probably improved a little bit in the past 2 years, but don't expect it to be 200 points. The master who I conversed with similarly went from high 2200s to 2400, and claims he didn't improve at the game.
Looking around me, everyone who's active enough seems to be going up significantly. When we compared to USCF ratings, we're no longer deflated, and are maybe a bit on the inflated front. We used to be inflated compared to FIDE by 100 points, and now it's closer to 150 or 200, where players' CFC ratings are 150-200 points higher than FIDE.
So why are we still doing this? It's awesome to think we're all getting better, but that's just very nice crap. Even if chess players hate to admit that they're not so skilled.
Personal example at the Pan-American Intercollegiate competitions that my colleagues from University of Toronto and I have been to: we don't hold our own. To make matters worse, the TDs there (USA) insist on boosting our ratings up by 50 points (using the deflation adjustment from 4-5 years ago). At the 3 Pan-Ams I've been to, 20 out of 24 players (8 each year) underperformed significantly. We can whine about the traveling & sleep deprivation and this and that, but 200-300 points?
What will happen if I play a friendly match against people like Daniel Abrahams, Kit-Sun Ng, Haizhou Xu or Geordie Derraugh, friends and University colleagues who have a similar rating to mine? We split 5-5 in a 10 game match, and we both go up 10 points. So here were are, boosting the pool by 20 points, 20 points that came out of nothing. Why if my rating is 2116 and I perform at 2110 in a 10 game match, my rating goes up?
Now take into account that at the average Hart House open tournament, 100 players play 5 games each. We've just injected 500 points into the rating pool, out of thin air, regardless of the results. All because we get participation points.
Every month that goes by, we're injecting way too many points into the system, way more than a flood of juniors can possibly slowly chew off the "established" players.
Clearly you'll have a whining festival if you start taking people's points away by fixing the system, because "my rating is accurate, I am *that* good". But please stop these participation points' nonsense, the more time that goes by, the worse it'll be.
Shouldn't CFC's goal be to have an accurate rating comparable to FIDE (and to a much lesser extent USCF) ?
What is the purpose of all this? To have the most inflated rating system worldwide?
Alex Ferreira