Guess your ACF rating

[Just2Good]

If the only variable was the rating differential that might be useful.

MOZ made a comment earlier about a certain bunch of "younger players" caring only about their FIDE rating as their interest was in playing OS tournaments.
I think you may find a much larger group of perhaps even younger players who have totally lost interest in ACF ratings as they are simply not transparent and changes seem to have no relevance to actual tournament performance.
Glicko2 may , in theory, present more accurate results however these "advantages" are lost by the secretive nature and constant tinkering of the ACF rating system in general.
FIDE you can calculate , you can set targets and you know how it works. The end number may not be as "nimble" in reflecting your current strength however you always know what a win is worth and what a draw or a loss will cost you. For anyone who likes playing with the numbers or competing against them selves looking for a PB performance it simply works.

The current ACF rating system however is shrouded in secrecy, is not consistent and there is simply no way to calculate what the end result will be. At various times certain "officials" admit to there being variations such as different K factors for juniors and selective "adjustments" being made to "keep the system accurate". It would seem that any mathematical formula that may be used is quite often overridden by "official" tinkering to the point where the system become one mans view on what each players rating should be.

No real point in talking about fair but perhaps it is more a matter of a system that has no system (or at least does not even follow its own system) has perhaps become pointless.
Unfortunately for the finances of chess in Australia (I agree sending money to FIDE is pointless) i believe that the ACF rating system in its current format has become, and will remain irrelevant, until its processes are made transparent.

The normal response that making the information available to the chess public will only confuse them and cause more arguments is simply disrespectful to the players paying good money for a irrelevant product and increasing the pace at which younger players are loosing interest in the ACF system and turning to the logical alternative in FIDE

Terrific post Ninja!

No, what is pointless is you talking about the system as if you understand it when you don't, and doing so on a forum where you're not likely to encounter those who do.

If you want to participate in an intelligent debate about ratings, and are willing to have your factual errors corrected and learn, then you need to do it over here.

Why should he? He got you to quote him, and respond to him, by making his post on OzChess (just like you would have done if he had posted on CC).

[phild707]

Terrific post Ninja!
Why should he? He got you to quote him, and respond to him, by making his post on OzChess (just like you would have done if he had posted on CC).

I don't get it.
Kevin seems to be a member here and even is logged on now, i think?
Why is he not posting responses here?
Sorry if I'm missing something obvious.
Phil.

[Just2Good]

Why is he not posting responses here?

He says he is afraid that his posts would be tampered with if he posted on OzChess. But it is probably for the best. With the inter-forum acrobatics, there is delay, and time for everyone to cool down before responding to each others posts.

[phild707]

He says he is afraid that his posts would be tampered with if he posted on OzChess. But it is probably for the best. With the inter-forum acrobatics, there is delay, and time for everyone to cool down before responding to each others posts.

...and are his concerns justified?
have any of his posts been tampered with?
If so, was it done openly and with reasons for doing so provided?

[Just2Good]

...and are his concerns justified?
have any of his posts been tampered with?
If so, was it done openly and with reasons for doing so provided?

I am not of the opinion that his concern was justified. Although different people might have different views on that.

When the issue was last discussed he pointed to a post made by his mate Bill Gletsos where one word of that post went missing. The reason for this still eludes me, but the error was discovered and promptly corrected. Then some cloak and dagger nonsensical conspiracy theories came out on Chess Chat, with Kevin declaring he would never post on OzChess - except possibly by using a hydra. While I haven't checked lately, it wouldn't surprise me if he does use a hydra to post here. But on this forum, that isn't against the rules. Several posters have hydra accounts, and we don't disclose the identity of those accounts because we respect people's rights to privacy.

I stand to be corrected on this, but apart from Kevin and Bill I don't recall any other poster on OzChess ever claiming their post was tampered with.

[Ninja]

Terrific post Ninja!


"Originally Posted by Kevin on CC
No, what is pointless is you talking about the system as if you understand it when you don't, and doing so on a forum where you're not likely to encounter those who do.
If you want to participate in an intelligent debate about ratings, and are willing to have your factual errors corrected and learn, then you need to do it over here. "

Why should he? He got you to quote him, and respond to him, by making his post on OzChess (just like you would have done if he had posted on CC).

Kevin seems to have missed the point.
Firstly I was responding to a post made by MOZ.. I don't believe I can respond to MOZ posts on CC as for some funny reason he does not post there ??

Secondly Kevin has totally misread my post. At no time was I trying to post as if I understood the "system" (presume he meant Glicko2 ACF style). The main point of my post was that it was a totally useless waste of time and resources (that was turning young players away in droves) simply because it could not be understood due to the secrecy and the active "tinkering" being undertaken.
If it was possible to be understood then I would have nothing to write about. ie, from my original post; make it so "you can calculate , you can set targets and you know how it works" and the problem (mine anyway) goes away.

[Just2Good]

At no time was I trying to post as if I understood the "system" (presume he meant Glicko2 ACF style). The main point of my post was that it was a totally useless waste of time and resources (that was turning young players away in droves) simply because it could not be understood due to the secrecy and the active "tinkering" being undertaken.

I know, and I agree with you.

...and are his concerns justified?

Hi Phil,

Kevin has requested that you come to CC to view his post in response to your's above. As mentioned, opinions vary on this subject and mine is quite different from Kevin's. But if you want to save yourself a trip to CC, I think Kevin's post can be summarised as follows: Alex prefers to get his coffee at Gloria Jeans, and Kevin likes to get his at Star Bucks. I don't think there is much more to it than that.

[Firegoat7]

Kevin seems to have missed the point.

Agreed.

Kevin has missed the point.

How else can he explain the 17% error rate between Glicko 1 and Glicko 2 on my December rating. Those 6 points I was supposed to gain just disappeared into thin air. It seems mathematically implausible that there would ever be much more then an error rate of 1% between the two systems.

So I have to agree with you Ninja, Kevin misses the point about the Glicko system.
Furthermore, he misses the point about posting on this forum when he was the person who banned Moz and Myself from posting on the unofficial "official" site.

[phild707]

I know, and I agree with you.



Hi Phil,

Kevin has requested that you come to CC to view his post in response to your's above. As mentioned, opinions vary on this subject and mine is quite different from Kevin's. But if you want to save yourself a trip to CC, I think Kevin's post can be summarised as follows: Alex prefers to get his coffee at Gloria Jeans, and Kevin likes to get his at Star Bucks. I don't think there is much more to it than that.

Hi Alex,
Sorry I've been a bit slow to respond, it's been a hectic weekend.
I was blocked from the ChessChat forum quite a long time a go.
I respect the wishes of the people in authority on that web page and I therefore tend to view it sporadically. Mostly when there is a local event on as there is no other source of info on these, (as far as I am aware?).

However I think more to the point it would seem to be clearly sub-optimal to carry on a discussion by porting bits and pieces of information wily-nily from one chat site to another.
It's certainly a practice that I personally would prefer not to get involved in.
I would suggest that in the interests of harmony, it would be beneficial to assure all forum users that it is not the policy of the OZChess forum tamper with posts under normal circumstances.
Users of the forum could also be reminded of their obligation to keep the material posted responsible and respectful?
What do you think?
Cheers
Phil.

[Just2Good]

Hi Alex,
Sorry I've been a bit slow to respond, it's been a hectic weekend.
I was blocked from the ChessChat forum quite a long time a go.
I respect the wishes of the people in authority on that web page and I therefore tend to view it sporadically. Mostly when there is a local event on as there is no other source of info on these, (as far as I am aware?).

However I think more to the point it would seem to be clearly sub-optimal to carry on a discussion by porting bits and pieces of information wily-nily from one chat site to another.
It's certainly a practice that I personally would prefer not to get involved in.
I would suggest that in the interests of harmony, it would be beneficial to assure all forum users that it is not the policy of the OZChess forum tamper with posts under normal circumstances.
Users of the forum could also be reminded of their obligation to keep the material posted responsible and respectful?
What do you think?
Cheers
Phil.

No worries Phil. Sometimes we all get busy. As for policy of OzChess, I think most members already know that that sort of thing seldom (if ever) happens on OzChess. There is no need for policies or rules regarding it. That is the CC way, to have endless rules, sub-rules, and policies. On OzChess we just do as we feel, free from the shackles of the oppression we fled. But that doesn't mean we abuse our freedom. In fact, OzChess was founded on the very shores of civility.

While you were gone a virus came and completely debilitated our site. It was down for about a week. I was, thankfully, able to get it back on its feet by upgrading it and hopefully obliterating the virus. Now, keeping the lights on here is my main concern.

Contrast this to the other place:

I had this frustrating problem last week trying to post the following sentence as part of a much longer post:

B2: Gary allowed his opponent to create a protected passed pawn deep in his territory and, fromthere on, he was fighting for a draw.

If you put a space between the "from" and "there" the 'Don't have permission to post' error occurs. Obviously, without the space there is no problem.

The word "create" is frequently involved in this problem.

Apparently there are a number of words there, where if a poster uses them in a post, the post won't work, or they will get a forbidden message, or they will have to edit their post merging two words into one, etc. That sort of stuff doesn't happen here. So, assuming you were able to post on CC, where would you rather post? Somewhere where the software is so outdated and dodgey that posts ends up in the Bermuda Triangle? Or on OzChess, where that sort of thing just isn't a problem?

[phild707]

No worries Phil. Sometimes we all get busy. As for policy of OzChess, I think most members already know that that sort of thing seldom (if ever) happens on OzChess. There is no need for policies or rules regarding it. That is the CC way, to have endless rules, sub-rules, and policies. On OzChess we just do as we feel, free from the shackles of the oppression we fled. But that doesn't mean we abuse our freedom. In fact, OzChess was founded on the very shores of civility.

While you were gone a virus came and completely debilitated our site. It was down for about a week. I was, thankfully, able to get it back on its feet by upgrading it and hopefully obliterating the virus. Now, keeping the lights on here is my main concern.

Contrast this to the other place:





Apparently there are a number of words there, where if a poster uses them in a post, the post won't work, or they will get a forbidden message, or they will have to edit their post merging two words into one, etc. That sort of stuff doesn't happen here. So, assuming you were able to post on CC, where would you rather post? Somewhere where the software is so outdated and dodgey that posts ends up in the Bermuda Triangle? Or on OzChess, where that sort of thing just isn't a problem?

Hi Alex,
I hear where you are coming from and can understand your point of view.
Cheers
Phil

[MOZ]

hi Phil

You will see by reading my original post that I have changed to the vernacular used by Kevin.
From my Melbourne-speak when I say official response the meaning was the simple,... a response made by an official; but it seems that Tasmania-speak requires the simpler >
official's response ("not in an official capacity").



-------


My turn to quibble now. And it is about the word 'contradictory'.

It seems that there is no dispute by KB that

• the ACF system is a better and more reliable product, and
• we should make changes to make the local ratings look good rather than having them lag the FIDE equivalents. (because that is clearly what our chess playing population hankers for: .. MOZ insertion)

But what KB does provide as new information is that the FIDE list has compression factors at various points that make the task of re-scaling our ACF list, to be closer to the scaling of the FIDE list, a mathematically insolvable problem, unless we are prepared to have large ACF_FIDE differentials at the top of the list.
Now, this may be true.
It has not been revealed before as a public issue.
And it certainly would be a showstopper if it was a correct assessment of the intractability of re-scaling lower ACF rating echelons <probably the bottom 80% I presume)> to match closely the equivalent FIDE echelons.

So, let us pause to see if 'contradictory' can be expunged and replaced by the technical mathematical term 'intractable'.

Then we can press on and get a good mathematician like Barry to comment on how to do a rescale within these parameters

• ACF bottom echelons up,
• ACF top echelons sacrosanct at current level vis-a-vis FIDE upper-middle echelon
• compression factors gently introduced into ACF profile.

As we say in Mathematics seminars "one man's intractable is the next man's challenge."



In the mean-time I will think how I am going to explain at the next CV AGM why

• Australian top players have some sort of parity for their ACF and FIDE ratings, but newbies to the FIDE scale in the lower echelons should stop their thoughts of revolution.

Still waiting for 'contradictory' to be replaced by 'intractable'.
There can be no patch-ups while KB has this loose end to re-phrase.

[MOZ]

Still waiting for 'contradictory' to be replaced by 'intractable'.
There can be no patch-ups while KB has this loose end to re-phrase.

Intractable is the correct mathematical term.

Contradictory in the context was just plain wrong.

Up to KB whether he admits the error and rephrases; it is not that hard to do. There have been some good examples close to home recently.

But to not engage in a debate over this is odd but not unknown.

[Sobriquet]

Vega software licences reported to be available to Australian users (Clubs) by the end of September 2016.

[Kamdautle]

Guess Buckykatts Rating

Rules
- The object is to guess what rating Buckykatt will give a movie.
- Everyone starts with 10 stars. All guesses must be in 1/2 star increments.
- Each round, players lose the number of stars equal to the error in their prediction.
- On double feature rounds, the points you lose are calculated differently, using this formula: Error for movie 1 Error for movie 2 Error for movie 1 x Error for movie 2

Also:
- Youre responsible for checking your score to let me know if I got it right.
- At the beginning of each round, I will post a deadline for the next round, a movie title, and scores from the previous round. You have until that deadline to post your guess for what you think Buckykatts rating will be. To join the game, all you have to do is post a rating.
- Currently, were planning on two movies per week with the occasional double feature, with deadlines on Mondays and Thursdays. The deadline will usually be around 8pm GMT. You may sometimes have until later than that, but I will never close a round earlier.
- If we reach a point where only one person has a positive number of points, they will be declared the winner and will be the player whose ratings are guessed in the next game. If no players with positive points remain, the player with the highest score i.e., closest to 0 will be declared the winner. If there is a tie for the player with the highest score, a tie breaker will be played.
- If you do not post a guess in the round, you will be given the maximum error penalty; i.e., you will lose as many points as the player who gives the farthest-off guess. If anyone misses 3 rounds in a row, theyre automatically disqualified.
- All rules can be modified e.g., for special rounds like double features, etc. at any time by me and will be done so by a post here.

Heres how Buckykatt. sums up her rating style:
Buckykatt