Chess Express Rating System

[samsloan]

There is a lot of concern about the Chess Express Rating System, which
Susan Polgar has been publicizing on her blogspot, as being in
competition with the USCF Rating System.

However, I am not concerned. Competition is good and these alternate
rating systems come and go.

Also, Chess Express is essentially a parasite system. A new player on
Chess Express is started off with his USCF Rating. USCF Ratings are
constantly used to calibrate Chess Express Ratings. If there were no
USCF Ratings, Chess Express would have difficulty producing accurate
ratings. Akso, the Chess Express Rating System has only a few hundred
players. The USCF Rating System has ratings on over 400,000 players.

[quote="nolan"]I don't honestly know how many current and former
members have a rating.

I know we have records in the computer of about 375,000 players who
have appeared in a rating supplement dating back to mid 1992, though
that includes a number of duplicate IDs and deceased players.

We have about another 90,000 players with some kind of regular rating
in our computer records but no activity since June 1992.

However, I don't know how many players there are ratings cards for who
haven't played in many years. Some people have estimated that number
at 100,000, others think it is much higher than that.

We recently crossed the 700,000 mark for current and former members in
our database (that number also includes duplicate IDs, non-member
records, deceased players,etc.) including those who apparently never
had a published rating.

Mike Nolan [/quote]

Thank you very much for this useful information.

So, when I said that we had ratings for 600,000 players I was
mistaken. What we have instead is information on 700,000 present and
former members but about a third of them have never had a rating.

I am trying to think of ways to turn this into a useful service for
our members which also produces some revenue for the USCF (if I ever
get elected again).

One idea is that facebook and myspace have millions of members who
exchange instant messages all the time. We already have that
capability through the forums but few members know about it or use it.
If I want to communicate with another USCF member I have no way to do
it, unless I find out that he is active on the forums. Most registered
members of the forums are not active and thus will never know about
it. I have instant messages that I sent over a year ago here but have
never been picked up because the member never logged in.

Sam Sloan