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All sports in the world have their independent ratings; similarly expertise in the game of chess is measured through one’s chess rating. The experts in chess have chess ratings that range around 2800 while the chess ratings of average chess players are around 1600. Sometimes, chess rating is referred to as Elo rating, in remembrance of the inventor of the chess rating system.
When competing in chess competitions, the players with the same rating have equal chances of winning when competing against each other. Players having different chess ratings, with the same difference in the chess ratings, have similar chances of winning at a game of chess. This means that two chess players having chess ratings of 2100 and 1900 have equal chances of winning in a game of chess as two players with chess ratings of 1300 and 1100 as the difference in chess ratings in both cases is 200 points. However remember that the chess ratings that different agencies offer need not be the same or comparable with each other.
Chess players usually use their chess ratings when introducing themselves when meeting each other for the first time. It was Garry Kasparov who was the first player to break the 2800 barrier in the year, 1989. This was in comparison with the other players; both current and historical.
The criterion employed in a chess rating system seems to be rather mysterious, but a chess rating is basically based on statistics of the players in their previous matches and chess playing expertise. In 1959, the USCF rating system in chess used 2000 as the upper level chess rating level for strong club players. These chess ratings then had divisions of 200 points that helped assign the different players in different classes of players. Elo had developed these measures as he thought that they were steep in the tradition of chess playing.
There are lots of calculations associated in getting a chess rating. The game results of a chess game naturally play an important part in the calculation of the chess rating. When calculating the chess rating, the expected percentage of the results of a game and the difference with that expected result is taken into consideration. Along with this, the number of wins, losses and draws against the opposition in the chess games too are taken into consideration.
With all this information, it is possible to calculate the initial chess rating for a new and previously unrated player. However, the higher is the results of numerous games in the calculation of chess rating, the more accurate is the initial chess raging. The chess rating is a very important factor determining the expertise and prowess of a chess player in a chess competition.
The players in a chess competition are usually matched against each other, after taking into consideration their individual chess ratings. This is why it is important to work at improving your chess rating by playing as many chess games with chess players having similar, if not equivalent chess ratings.
ELO CHESS RATING
The most widely used chess rating system that is in use today actually is of fairly recent origin. In fact, organizations like the United States Chess Federation and similar types of organizations and associations around the globe implemented what has become known as the Elo or the ELO system beginning in the early 1960s.
The so-called Elo or ELO system (hereinafter “ELO” for ease of reference in this article) was the creation of a gentleman born in Hungary but who was a physics professor in the United States named Arpad Elo -- hence the moniker Elo or ELO. The chess rating scheme oftentimes if signified in all capital letters although it really is not an acronym.
The ELO chess rating system actually was created in order to improve the overall chess rating system that previously was in place. In time, ELO has been used in many other arenas beyond chess rating. In addition to chess rating, ELO can be used as an appropriate rating system for any competitive game situation that involves multiple players, including computer games. Indeed, the ELO chess rating scheme has evolved so far as to be applied to such sports as international football, U.S. football and U.S. Major League Baseball.
At the heart of the ELO chess rating system was the substitution of statistical estimation in place of a system that is based upon competitive rewards. Rather then subjective evaluations based on so-called “greatness” in relation to game related or play related achievements. An easy to understand example is to consider a chess tournament. Previously, chess rating could be based upon a rather arbitrary determination that one chess tournament is three times more important than a less competition. Therefore, “points” would be awarded to the winner of this more significant chess tournament in a more significant proportion under this subjective system of chess rating.
On the other hand, the ELO chess rating system engages a purely statistical model that considers the actual game or tournament results to underlying variables that are intended to reflect the actual abilities of a particular chess player. Of course, competitors can still contend that the ELO chess rating scheme still rewards success and failure in a particular situation; however, many experts in the field of chess rating believe that this system more accurately evaluates and reflects the actual abilities of a chess player. The contention is that the ELO chess rating system is a much more reliable chess rating scheme than anything else that has come before or anything else that might be available for utilization today.
In developing the ELO chess rating system, ELO operated on the basic premise that the performance of each and every chess player in any particular game is what technically is known as a “normally distributed random variable.” At the heart of the normally distributed random variable is the conclusion that while a chess players performance will vary from one game to the next, sometimes even significantly, the mean or median “value” of a particular chess player’s performance over time in fact would change only slowly.
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