NZCF Rating Recalculation

With Congress starting later today, the most recent NZCF ratings have been calculated and provided by Rowan Wood, NZCF Ratings Officer in time for round 1. These are not yet published on the NZCF website but will be published when the webmaster has time to complete the work (noting that he is playing in Congress!). Rowan has identified an issue with inflation compared to FIDE ratings, particularly of higher ratings. NZCF Rating Regulations 2.4 states “The rating scale should correlate closely with the FIDE rating scale.” That is not currently the case at the upper end of the scale, and after significant analysis (NZCF will publish more from Rowan later), the main cause has been identified and corrected.

Additionally, the FIDE rule “If an unrated player has a standard rating at the beginning of a rapid tournament, their standard rating is used for rating calculation” has been implemented. This applies to established standard rated players. Rating of rapid tournaments in New Zealand started in 1991. Standard ratings were used as rapid ratings but with an arbitrary cutoff point from which players were then considered unrated. Some players took some time to start playing in rapid tournaments and were handled as unrated, which is not ideal. A standard rating is much better indication of likely rapid strength so FIDE’s rule is a definite improvement.

These changes have been retroactively applied as is normal with technical changes that have been made over the years.