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Chess ranking system

Started by Arek the Absolute Oct 16, 2003 at 1:22 PM 3 replies 450+ views

Original Post

Oct 16, 2003 at 1:22 PM

I''ve been asked by a teacher at my local high school if I could make a quick ranking program for the school''s chess club. Now, although I know how to play and all, I know almost nothing about how these sorts of thing usually work. I went to Google and tried to find anything I could on chess ranking systems, and I can''t seem to find any detailed description of a system I can actually use. From talking with the teacher, he wants the a program where you can enter a list of student names, and adjust rankings according to wins and losses, (meaning, nothing more detailed than wins and losses) and where the student''s rating can be adjusted according to the rank of the person he played against. That is to say, if a low ranking student beat the top ranked student, it would give him a better boost than beating the student at the bottom. My question here is, does anyone know of some ranking system that accomplishes this, or will I have to devise my own? Obviously, the ranking system need not be specific to chess so long as it still works. Thanks in advance! -Arek the Absolute

Stonicus

Oct 16, 2003 at 1:26 PM

Elo Rating System

5010

Oct 16, 2003 at 1:31 PM

Just have them switch places.

If the worst player beats the best player, then the worst deserves to bask in the glory of #1 and the best needs to taste the shame of utter defeat to last place!

Or the best player can do the Bobby Fischer move... switch schools abruptly

Russell

Oct 16, 2003 at 2:57 PM

Use the ELO system. You can find ELO calculators on the net for free. Basically you''ll start by giving everyone some default rating. Maybe 1000 or 1200. Then you input the data into a calculator (such as this one) and you get the new rating for a person. A win is 1 point, a draw is 0.5 points, and a loss is 0 points.

For instance, if you gave everyone a default rating of 1200, and you played 4 games (won 3 and lost 1), then using the rating calculator, you would get a "New Rating" of 1400 if you haven''t played any games before (in the same rating pool, not "before in your life ever"). Don''t worry about the age in that calculator. It''s for real tournaments where you might have an 8 year old playing a 50 year old.

fredizzimo

Oct 16, 2003 at 3:50 PM

ELO and Glicko based system are the most popular.

If you are from the USA then using the USCF rating system would probably make most sense, it''s based on the elo system and a complete description of how it works can be found here

Both FICS and ICS, two of the major internet chess systems use glicko based systems, but with slighly different parameters. The inventors homepage can be found here. You can find technical descriptions of how it works a bit down on that page.

The advantage of the glicko system is that it takes the player''s history into account. How regulary and how much you have played, that makes it much less likely that a strong player that have played too little and don''t have an accurate ranking messes up your ranking too much. Or the other way, that you don''t gain too much by beating a weak player that have had some lucky games, and therefore a much higher ranking than expected. However I would still recommend going with some ELO based system, because it''s much simpler to implement.

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