20-01-2013, 01:14 PM
Not enough reference to facts in this thread and too much hot air!
1. Can someone please definitively say (maybe Alex Macfarlane!?) whether there is or isn't an "80 rating points" discretionary rule in regard to setting team orders? I and I think most others have always thought there was. Is it some (long) past discretionary addition (say by a past Home International Director) to the apparently somewhat vague existing rule "requiring" teams to follow "current strength" (or does it lurk somewhere else in the existing rules)?
2. If there isn't one, however, we should surely have one! Teams seem to set board orders in accordance with it and don't seem to infringe the "80 point" definition in doing so ... for very good reasons ... Ratings are simply not precise markers of strength and come as everyone knows with enormous dollops of statistical margins of error .... and the fewer the actual recently rated games the larger this "error" becomes.
3. Any existing or new "80 point rule" probably needs to be clear that it refers to CS and / or FIDE rating - I'd say it should nowadays probably be either. It also needs clarification as to whether the base rating used for any player is the "published" rating or the adjusted rating as it changes within rating periods.
Points 2 and 3 are offered for debate. But surely someone can nail the facts on point 1 ... no one has done in any of the above so far.
1. Can someone please definitively say (maybe Alex Macfarlane!?) whether there is or isn't an "80 rating points" discretionary rule in regard to setting team orders? I and I think most others have always thought there was. Is it some (long) past discretionary addition (say by a past Home International Director) to the apparently somewhat vague existing rule "requiring" teams to follow "current strength" (or does it lurk somewhere else in the existing rules)?
2. If there isn't one, however, we should surely have one! Teams seem to set board orders in accordance with it and don't seem to infringe the "80 point" definition in doing so ... for very good reasons ... Ratings are simply not precise markers of strength and come as everyone knows with enormous dollops of statistical margins of error .... and the fewer the actual recently rated games the larger this "error" becomes.
3. Any existing or new "80 point rule" probably needs to be clear that it refers to CS and / or FIDE rating - I'd say it should nowadays probably be either. It also needs clarification as to whether the base rating used for any player is the "published" rating or the adjusted rating as it changes within rating periods.
Points 2 and 3 are offered for debate. But surely someone can nail the facts on point 1 ... no one has done in any of the above so far.