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Llandudno Chess Club | home
WHY PLAY CHESS? | MANHANDLING; | BOARD MEETINGS | ACHIEVEMENT SCORING; | DESCRIPTIVE NOTATION; A LOST ENDGAME? | THE CHESS UNIVERSE PART 1 | THE CHESS UNIVERSE PART 2 | CHESS COMBAT | THE REAL MATRIX
ACHIEVEMENT SCORING; AN ADDED TWIST FOR CLUB COMPETITION?
By H.T.Dearden
Chess is a war game, and one of the more galling features that it shares with warfare is that there is no glory in coming a close second! The score remains 1-0 (or 0-1). Similarly, should you be the victor, there is no recognition in the score of the quality of your win i.e., the quality of the opponent you have defeated. The grading systems do account for the quality of your performance in aggregate, but of course this does nothing for your ungraded games and provides no measure for most club competitions and social chess.
In order to overcome this problem and hopefully add interest to personal or club activity, I propose an auxiliary scoring scheme be used to provide better discrimination in scoring based on the quality of wins. Note that an auxiliary score is proposed; the `true' score will remain, but be conditioned to provide an auxiliary score that provides additional discrimination. Players may then be ranked on the basis of their auxiliary scores (as well as their true scores) and prizes or plaudits offered as appropriate.
A simple system is required. An overly elaborate scheme that is difficult to administer is not likely to succeed. Essentially, if a player rated 50 beats an opponent rated 100, this win needs to be scored higher than if both players were rated the same. Correspondingly, if the 100 player beats 50, this win should be scored lower than if both players were rated the same.
To accommodate this requirement I propose that the ratio of the player's gradings be used;
If a high graded player is rated H, and a lower graded player is rated L
H win scores L/H
L win scores 1 + (1 - L/H), which simplifies to; 2 - (L/H)
Draw scores half of win score
The point of the (1 - L/H) is that it is complementary to L/H (L win scores as much above 1.0 as H win scores below).
If the ratio L/H is greater than or equal to 0.95 (if the difference in grades is less than half of 10% of the higher grade - an easy mental calculation) then it may be assumed to be 1.0 i.e., no conditioning applied. This avoids worrying over marginal differences in grading e.g., 100 plays 104. However, if the calculations are done in a spreadsheet for a competition it would be simpler to disregard this provision.
For example;
Fred (50) beats Ginger (100); Fred scores 2 - 50/100) = 1.5 Ginger scores 0
Ginger (100) beats Fred (50); Ginger scores 50/100 = 0.5 Fred scores 0
Fred & Ginger draw; Fred scores 1/2 x 1.5 = 0.75, Ginger scores 1/2 x 0.5 = 0.25
I choose to term this auxiliary score `achievement', which for present purposes might be defined as;
`Score, from qualifying games, after conditioning for the quality of the wins'.
All sorts of objections might be raised against this system, but bear in mind that no grading system is perfect and the objective is to provide a simple system for ongoing measurement of `achievement'. It would be good to have some system that recognised the quality of your losses (coming a close second!) but I believe this is impractical.
One virtue of this approach is that it provides a measure of relative performance; a player with a low grading may still be a high achiever. A player that consistently plays above his rated level will achieve more. If you consistently enjoy high achievement, your grading will rise accordingly. When measured in terms of achievement, players are placed on a more equal footing without introducing any handicaps.
This achievement score can be used within a given competition to add some spice; after all there is little surprise when the strongest player in the club wins the club championship, but there might be a real fight in terms of achievement rankings.
The achievement score might also be used across the club year; a player that attends the club regularly and plays a larger number of qualifying games will tend to `achieve' more than a player that only attends intermittently.
A ranking in terms of `average achievement' might also be used, whereby the achievement score is divided by the number of qualifying games.
The club would need to decide what would constitute a qualifying game and might well include league matches and tournament games as well as social games. I would suggest that qualifying games should have score sheets completed and be subject to specified minimum time controls. This might be useful in countering any tendency towards more superficial chess, played without score sheets and with fast time controls, or none at all.
A running total of achievement scores might be maintained on the club board to allow members to monitor their progress. This might be an interesting alternative to the more usual club ladder.
As an example of the application of this approach, the table below shows the achievement scores for the Surrey Classic Top Scorers as reported in CHESS in July. This event used a 3-1 scoring system (3 for a win, 1 for a draw) as a means of providing a disincentive for accepting a draw.
I make no claims that achievement scoring will revolutionise the game, but it may provide a little more discrimination in scoring and hopefully add interest and fun.
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