Normativa de puntuaciones: el factor K

Fuente: Noticias ChessBase

Tras la publicación de las nuevas normas de puntuación, que entrarán en vigor a partir del 1 de julio de 2009, varios jugadores y organizadores han expresado su preocupación. Durante la visita de trabajo de diez días del Presidente ejecutivo Georgios Makropoulos a Singapur con el Secretario General Ignatius Leong, se pusieron de manifiesto y se recomendaron los siguientes aspectos:

1. Que en especial para las competiciones del más alto nivel, los organizadores normalmente tendrían una lista de jugadores invitados en función de su puntuación Elo en el momento de la decisión e invitación. Los organizadores normalmente tendrían un contrato con los jugadores invitados, a veces incluso con un año de anticipación. Algunos jugadores podrían haber aceptado participar debido a las puntuaciones de los demás jugadores invitados. El factor dinámico K=20 podría tener un efecto importante en las puntuaciones de los jugadores invitados un año más tarde.

2. Las listas Elo se emplean para ordenar a los jugadores en el ciclo del campeonato mundial (Torneos de Candidatos, Copa del Mundo, etc.) El cambio radical en el factor K es una preocupación importante entre los jugadores más destacados. Se lamentó que no se calculasen listas en paralelo antes de adoptar la decisión de los nuevos factores K.

3. El cambio radical en el factor K para jugadores con Elo por debajo de 2400 también causa seria preocupación ya que podría conducir a una inflación para las categorías de las normas y a efectos de las titulaciones. La inflación potencial entre los jugadores con Elo inferior a 2400 también causará un efecto de onda expansiva, a medida que más jugadores suban y crucen el nivel 2400. Sería necesario un estudio y una revisión de las normas sobre titulaciones, como resultado del nuevo factor K (Las escalas de puntuación puede que deban incrementarse)

4. El Presidente de la Comisión de Calificaciones y Administrador de la Puntuación FIDE Mikko Markkula elaborará una clasificación en paralelo que emplee los nuevos factores K (30 y 20) para los informes de torneo remitidos para la lista Elo, comenzando el 1 de abril de 2008 hasta el 1 de julio de 2009. La FIDE publicará 2 listas el 1 de julio de 2009: la lista normal, con los factores K sin cambiar (25, 15 y 10) y una lista paralela (conocida como lista K) empleando los factores K (30 y 20). La lista K solo se empleará como comparación.

5. Hasta el 1 de julio de 2010, la FIDE continuará publicando dos listas, con lod distintos factores K. La FIDE entonces revisará ambas listas después del 1 de julio de 2010, basándose en las recomendaciones de la Comisión de Calificaciones. Luego la FIDE decidiría si ampliar las pruebas, anularlas o adoptar los nuevos factores K con efecto 1 de julio de 2011 como Clasificación Elo.

	Existente K	Nuevo K
Menos de 30 partidas	25	30
30 partidas o más,. Elo <>	15	30
Alcanzando Elo 2400 y luego manteniéndose o bajando	10	20

Georgios Makropoulos Ignatius Leong Presidente Ejecutivo de la FIDE Secretario General de la FIDE

Aprobado por: Kirsan Ilyumzhinov Presidente de la FIDE

Macieja: el incremento del factor K es imprescindible Ayer informamos que la FIDE había decidido, no solo cambiar el factor K en el cálculo de las puntuaciones, sino además publicar durante un año dos listas en paralelo: por un lado la clasificación normal, con los factores K sin cambiar (25, 15 y 10) y por otro, una lista paralela (conocida como lista K) empleando los nuevos valores (30 y 20). Hoy recibimos una apasionada solicitud del GM Bartlomiej Macieja, pidiendo que no se aplace la decisión y que se aumente el factor K inmediatamente, ya que las comprobaciones de la influencia que pueda tener la tan traída y llevada K pueden hacerse de forma retrospectiva.

Comentarios acerca del reciente anuncio de la FIDE con respecto al factor K

Por el GM Bartlomiej Macieja

El reciente comunicado de la FIDE con respecto al factor K fue una gran sorpresa para mi.

Primero, durante el Congreso de la FIDE en Dresde, la Asamblea General decidió incrementar el valor del factor K a K=20 (K=30 para jugadores que nunca hubieran superado los 2400 puntos Elo). Dicha decisión no puede ser puesta en entredicho ahora ni por el Presidente Ejecutivo de la FIDE ni por el Secretario General, incluso aunque la acción fuese aprobada por el Presidente de la FIDE, ya que según el artículo 4.1 de los Estatutos de la FIDE, la Asamblea General, al ser la máxima autoridad de la FIDE, ejerce el poder legislativo.

Además, el aumento de valor del factor K ha sido recomendado ya desde hace muchos años como corrección necesaria para el sistema. Por ejemplo, el estadístico Jeff Sonas propuso K=24 ya en 2002. Con cuatro listas al año, el aumento de valor del factor K es esencial, tal y como demostré en mi informe y en las notas ampliadas sobre el Congreso de la FIDE de 2008. Si se publican seis listas al año, no cabe la menor duda de que es necesario un aumento. Aún así, el Comité de la FIDE de Títulos y Valoraciones mencionó en Dresde un factor de K=25. La Comisión de Calificaciones bajó el valor a K=20 y este fue aprobado en la Asamblea General, sin ningún tipo de objeción.

Un valor más alto del factor K hará que las puntuaciones cambien más de prisa, pero hay mucha gente que exagera demasiado dicho efecto. Solo para los jóvenes y para los jugadores muy viejos (o, para ser más preciso, para los jugadores que mejoran o empeoran rápidamente) tendrá el cambio un efecto importante: sus puntuaciones pronto se corresponderán con su nivel actual. ¿Pero es malo eso? Para la mayoría de los jugadores, la diferencia no será significativa a largo plazo, solo aumentarán las fluctuaciones, así que los jugadores que esperen superar fácilmente los 2800 pueden sentirse desilusionados: seguirán teniendo que aumentar su nivel.

Los motivos para el retraso facilitados por el Sr. Makropoulos y el Sr. Leong están lejos de ser convincentes. En vez de esperar uno o dos años para mostrar las consecuencias del cambio en el valor del factor K, es mejor y más rápido calcular los resultados de los los últimos dos o incluso cinco años usando el nuevo valor del factor K. Dado que los informes de los torneos están en formato electrónico, para la FIDE es casi tan fácil de recalcular todo como hacer un clic.

Para juzgar lo serio del argumento sobre los organizadores y las invitaciones anticipadas, echemos un vistazo al tenis. La norma básica del sistema de clasificación ATP es que los jugadores pierden los puntos de clasificación ganados hace más de un año. Eso significa que los organizadores se encuentran con problemas mucho más grandes que en el ajedrez, porque un líder de la clasificación ATP invitado puede incluso casi carecer de puntuación al año siguiente, lo que no sucede en el ajedrez. Sin embargo, la práctica muestra que eso no afecta a los torneos de tenis, que se organizan sin sobresaltos.

Teniendo en cuenta el motivo formal (las decisiones tomadas por la Asamblea General no pueden ponerse en entredicho) y también que un aumento del factor K es absolutamente necesario desde el punto de vista estadístico, pido al Presidente Ejecutivo y al Secretario General de la FIDE que retiren su anuncio y que sigan la decisión de la Asamblea General.

Saludos cordiales, Bartlomiej Macieja 28 de abril de 2009

Traducción no oficial: Nadja Woisin, ChessBase

FIDE: We support the increase of the K-factor 29.04.2009 – Yesterday we published a letter by GM Bartlomiej Macieja asking the World Chess Federation not to delay the decision to increase the K-factor in their ratings calculation. Today we received a reply to Maceija's passionate appeal from FIDE, outlining the reasons for the actions. In addition interesting letters from our readers, including one from statistician Jeff Sonas. Opinions and explanations.

Singapore, 28th April 2009 GM Bartlomiej Macieja Dear GM Macieja,

We refer to your email to FIDE and the open letter which was published on ChessBase on 28th April 2009 concerning your comments on the K-factor.

Firstly, in order not to create any misconception, we would like to assure you that we are in support of increasing the K-factor. However, in view of such a radical change, we would like that all players especially the top players, understand the consequences of the change. We believe that a full proposal from the Qualification Commission should also include changes in the title regulations if necessary, but unfortunately there was no mention as to whether this was necessary. Moreover, the proposal on K-factor was not even highlighted during the verbal report of the QC at the General Assembly of Dresden 2008.

In Dresden 2005, a resolution was made that when the General Assembly/Executive Board could not discuss reports in detail such reports are referred to the Presidential Board to further decide. Attached (below) is the said resolution “Dresden 2005 Resolution Commission Reports”. Hence our decision to delay the implementation is not “to challenge” the reports made at the General Assembly.

We foresaw a problem when FIDE was informed that at the Amber tournament in Nice, France, that all the top players who were participating there had agreed to sign a protest letter (a draft was already prepared) to the FIDE President concerning the change of K-factor. Surprisingly, among these top players were several young players who supported the protest. This proved that the top players had not been duly informed nor consulted on such important changes.

We understand that publishing a list by calculating past years is an indication to the players. However, we felt it was even better to publish a list which includes events of 2008 to 2009. At the same time, from July 2009, to publish the parallel list using the new K-factor so that the players would be better able to understand and feel how they would be progressing in present time than just in the past. Don’t forget Mr Macieja, FIDE and the Continents use the Rating List to qualify players for events which are included in the World Championship Cycle. With the change in K-factor, some players would be in and some would be out. We want to give the players time to realise how the change could affect their career. This decision offers opportunity to all players, federations, organisers and rating experts to give relevant input and comments.

Even if FIDE has the power to force such changes, we believe it was not the best way forward if we are unable to convince the greater majority particularly so since this serious change would affect the lives and career of especially the top professional players.

The comparison of our top chess tournaments with tennis is not relevant. Most of the top-level chess tournaments are round-robin events where a small group of players are invited. Henceforth, any fluctuation in the ratings of the invited players could adversely affect the category of these top-level chess events. In tennis, most players are invited and any fluctuation in their rankings does not affect the event.

In conclusion, we reiterate that both FIDE and the undersigned are in favour of the change. FIDE as well as the ACP should communicate these changes and convince the national federations and players.

We take this opportunity to commend you for your efforts and that what you have contributed towards rules and regulations in FIDE have been positively considered. Best Regards,

Signed : Georgios Makropoulos, FIDE Deputy President Ignatius Leong, FIDE General Secretary

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Annex 48 (1 page)

Proposal for the Executive Board following approval by the Presidential Board

1. Proposals tabled at the Annual Congress without due notice shall be subject to appraisal at the first Presidential Board meeting following the Congress. The Presidential Board shall not have the power to rescind the decision, only to delay implementation until the proposal is further studied at the next Congress.

Reason: Each year at Congress we face situations where papers from Committees and Commissions are presented for approval without adequate time to digest the full statutory or financial implications of any proposals in the documents. There ought to be a mechanism to allow further reflection. Committee Chairmen should be encouraged to table an agenda for their own meeting at Congress in time for it to be circulated with the full Congress agenda issued by the Secretariat. They could highlight any proposals that they intend to have discussed that might have financial implications or require changing regulations. This would give adequate notice of potentially contentious issues and allow the Treasurer to have some input where there were budgetary consequences.

Extract of minutes

Mr. Jarrett said that the second proposal relates to the fact that in all meetings of the FIDE Congresses, we receive many papers and it is not possible to fully digest and understand all the consequences. The request is that all decisions passed can be referred to the next Presidential Board to be properly examined. This does not give the Presidential Board a right to waive the decision taken, but it will have a chance to present a different angle for the next General Assembly.

Mr. Makropoulos said that the issue is about the late submissions, coming from Committees and Commissions during the Congress.

Executive Board approved the proposals of Mr. Jarrett.

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Letter from chess statistician Jeff Sonas

I was interested to see the recent announcements regarding official changes to the FIDE rating system. My analysis in 2002 recommended four significant changes to the FIDE rating calculations:

1. Using a more dynamic K-factor (24 instead of 10) would result in ratings that more accurately predict players' future results, and thus I would call those ratings more "accurate".

2. We should discard the existing arbitrary scoring probability table (see FIDE Handbook, 10.1.b) that is used to recalculate players' ratings, in favor of a simpler linear model that does not discriminate against higher-rated players.

3. Including games played at faster time controls, although at a lesser weight than regular games, would provide additional useful information for a more accurate rating calculation.

4. Calculating the ratings more frequently than just quarterly is easily done and would presumably improve the accuracy of the rating calculation.

It appears that FIDE has decided to move in the direction of my recommendations #1 and #4, since they are going to use a K-factor of 20 (or 30 for players who have never reached a rating of 2400+) instead of 10, and they are going to release official rating lists six times a year rather than four times a year. In both cases, my 2002 analysis recommended a more significant change, but nevertheless I do like the direction this is going.

From the notes published by GM Bartlomiej Macieja, I see that there is some controversy regarding:

(a) the impact these changes would have on rating inflation (b) what difference it makes mathematically whether ratings are calculated yearly, quarterly, monthly, etc. (c) the decision-making process for how the rating calculation process will change.

The question of rating inflation is a very difficult one and really the only way to tackle it is to look at actual data and see the result of various approaches. I believe that with a more accurate rating formula, such as what I have suggested in my analysis, you could see significant rating inflation, even more than we currently have. The natural inflation in the Elo approach is currently being offset by biases in the Elo expectancy table against the higher-rated players. So the current formula does limit inflation, but at the expense of players who play against lower-rated opponents. There are fairer approaches you can take to halt inflation, such as periodic small reductions to everyone's rating by the same amount. That would take some getting used to, but would eliminate inflation fairly if that is indeed a primary concern.

I have been limited in my past analysis by not having the official FIDE historical data that was used in the past to recalculate ratings. All I can do is to analyze against a test dataset of games taken from a source like TWIC or ChessBase's Mega Database. This provides very useful information but doesn't necessarily give you the whole picture about the impact on all players, including lower-rated players. If FIDE would like to provide me with the official data used in the past historical calculations, going back at least 5-10 years, I would be happy to perform another analysis, in hopes of helping to understand better these questions about rating inflation and frequency of rating calculations. I'm afraid I can't help much with the problems about the decision-making process, nor do I have any interest in tackling that! But I'm sure I could help answer questions about the mathematics of the rating formula, if anyone is interested...

Jeff Sonas

Jeff Sonas is a statistical chess analyst who invented the Chessmetrics system for rating chess players, which is intended as an improvement on the Elo rating system. He is the founder and proprietor of the Chessmetrics.com website, which gives Sonas' calculations of the ratings of current players and historical ratings going back as far as January 1843. Sonas writes that, "Since the summer of 1999, I have spent countless hours analyzing chess statistics, inventing formulas and other analysis techniques, and calculating historical ratings." He has written dozens of articles since 1999 for ChessBase.com and other chess websites.

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And while we are at it, here are some letters we received in reaction to Bartlomiej Macieja's article:

Brian Carson, Toronto, Canada Comments on the ratings calculations by GM Bartlomiej Macieja is nothing more than a voice of reason in a frothy sea of emotional irrationality. I wholeheartedly agree, increase the "K" and start enjoying reality, life is too short to pretend you are something you are not. Many epitaphs may read "he was briefly a 2700 player" but reality always wins. It is called checkmate.

Gerd Lorscheid, Boeblingen, Germany The slowdown of the rating change shown by Macieja is correct. But it happens only if the player wins rating points in all his tournaments. On the other side there is a risk with K=30. If a player with rating 2350 needs 2400 to get the IM title, he can do the following: He lets drop his rating to 2200, play in one period 40 games with a performance of 2350. His next rating will be 2425!

David Fournie, New York, USA Macieja's comparison with Tennis for invitation to tournaments makes no sense because the ATP points won by participating in a tournament does not depend on the ranking of the other players (to be more precise, the number of points you earn in function of the tournament stage in which you are knocked out is fixed in advance at the time the tournament is announced, independently on who plays in the tournament). For a chess tournament, the rating points you gain or lose for a given score depends on the average rating of the opponents hence a player would always lose points if he plays in a tournament with a much lower rated opposition. This is why ratings fluctuation should not be to wide (and hence K-factor not to big), so that when one accepts an invitation almost a year in advance he is pretty confident about the average ELO of the opposition.

Fuente: FIDE

Traducción no oficial: Nadja Woisin, ChessBase

Comments by GM Macieja

The recent FIDE announcement regarding the K-factor came to me as a huge surprise.

First of all, during the FIDE Congress in Dresden, the General Assembly decided to increase the value of the K-factor to K=20 (K=30 for players who have never reached 2400). The decision cannot be now challenged neither by the Deputy President nor by the General Secretary, even if the action is approved by the FIDE President, as according to the Article 4.1 of the FIDE Statutes, the General Assembly, being the highest authority of FIDE, exercises the legislative power.

Moreover, the increase of the value of the K-factor has been recommended for already many years as a necessary correction to the system. For example, a statistician Jeff Sonas proposed K=24 already in 2002. With 4 rating lists published per year, the increase of the value of the K-factor is essential, as I have proved in my report of and the extended notes on the FIDE Congress 2008. With 6 rating lists published per year, the necessity of the increase is not under any question. Even so conservative FIDE Titles and Ratings Regulations Committee mentioned in Dresden K=25. The Qualification Commission decreased the value to K=20 and passed it through the General Assembly, without any objection.

The higher value of the K-factor will make changes of rating quicker, but the effect is far exaggerated by many people. Only for young and very old players (or, to be more precise, for fast improving and fast regressing players) the change will have a serious effect - their ratings will closer correspond to their present level. But, is it bad? For the majority of players, the difference will not be significant in a long term, only fluctuations will increase, thus the players hoping to easily exceed 2800 may get disappointed - they will still need to increase their level.

The reasons of delay provided by Mr Makropoulos and Mr Leong are far not convincing. Instead of waiting for a year or two in order to show consequences of the change of the value of the K-factor, it is much better and faster to calculate results from last two or even five years using the new value of the K-factor. As tournament reports are in electronic format, it is almost as easy for FIDE to recalculate everything as one click.

To judge how serious the argument with organisers and invitations sent in advance is, let’s look at tennis. The basic rule of the ATP Ranking System is that players lose ranking points gained more than a year earlier. It means that the organisers encounter much bigger problems than in chess, because an invited leader of the ATP ranking list may be even almost unrated the following year, which is not the case in chess. However, the practice shows that it doesn’t effect tennis tournaments, which are organised smoothly.

Taking into account the formal reason (decisions taken by GA cannot be challenged) and also that an increase of the K-factor is absolutely neccessary from the statistical point of view, I call the Deputy President and the General Secretary of FIDE to withdraw their announcement and to follow the decision of the GA.

Best regards Bartlomiej Macieja 28th of April 2009