The American Checker Federation

I’m glad to hear that there are additional details about title norms that are in writing somewhere. The information currently on the website is too vague. I think this discussion about ratings has gotten a bit off track. I think I may have inadvertently given the impression that titles should be awa...

But what is a grandmaster "norm"? As far as I can tell, the by-laws don't specify. However, doesn't it involve performing sufficiently well against a field that is sufficiently strong? I'm not sure how "sufficiently well" is defined, but isn't the rating of one's opponents used t...

Comparing chess ratings with checker ratings, I do wonder if expected score is influenced by the high percentage of draws (at least at upper levels). I know how the math works, and the numbers given above are what the formulas tell us. Would a GM really beat a master 9 out of 10? Would it be more l...

Based on the current formula for expected outcome: The expected score for two players with the same rating is 2-2, as expected. The expected score for players that are separated by 200 rating points is about 3.04-0.96, or roughly better than a win and a draw for the higher rated player. The expected...

I know one of the main things we agreed with in the e-mails is a more proper "range" Such as Expert being more like 2000-2200, Master 2200-2400 and Grandmaster being 2400+ instead of the very tight and narrow range we have now. Thanks for sharing this, Clayton. The next thing to decide is...

Clint, good work with the new ratings page! I agree with some of the concerns you’ve raised too; thanks for getting the discussion started. As far as different styles of play having different distributions of outcomes, I think the simplest solution is to use different functions for expected outcome,...

People constantly make the same mistake - there is no game in 3-moves or 11-man ballot events. There is ballot - minimatch. If I play World title match, 40 games, it doesn't matter I won 21 games, or 1 game and 39 draws. In both cases I won match. First of all, games are sometimes the correct units...

Maybe I was unclear in making my point. I'm not advocating for one scoring system (by game or by round) over the other. Each system has its merits, and I hope both remain in use. I think it's nice for different events to have their own rules; it adds some variety and gives events a unique character....

This time, I'll throw in my two cents on computer pairings (and tournament structures). There isn't a clear-cut solution for handling pairings, because there are surely many different viewpoints on what should be emphasized. The one thing I can say confidently is that it would be relatively easy to ...

I like the discussion; thanks for getting the ball rolling here, John. There are a lot of good ideas here. I'd like to comment on a few of them, but I'll split this up into several posts to avoid a ridiculously long post. I'll start with the issue where the solution seems most clear-cut to me: the r...

Hello Kef, I'm glad to see that you're perusing our message board. You raise some interesting points in your posts, particularly the one about measuring difficulty using the probability of making a good move. Unfortunately, I know far too little about chess to make any comparison between chess and c...

I'll be there too.

Ted, you have to keep in mind that the master's division at nationals is much stronger than the master's division at most tournaments. This has a sort of trickle down effect: the major's division is stronger than most major's divisions (though the difference is not as pronounced as for the master's ...

Wayne, I do think there's something really fun about what you suggest; it sets up a sort of "regular season" building up to nationals. However, it doesn't accommodate international players who sometimes play in nationals and certainly need to play in the masters division, though they proba...

Hey everyone. First, I'd like to say that I like the idea of promoting division winners the next time they play in the same event. I think this helps deal with the fact that different events attract fields of different strength, and therefore the same rating cutoff might not be appropriate for every...