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I think that the rating inflation debate has concluded that there isn't that much inflation. Compared to the old 2600 generation, the 2700 people now are just t

I think that the rating inflation debate has concluded that there isn't that much inflation. Compared to the old 2600 generation, the 2700 people now are just that much better. An analysis here: https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-elo-ratings-inflation-or-deflation https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-elo-ratings-inflation-or-d... It claims that a 2500 player now is better than a 2500 player in 2000. So in that sense it's actually been a deflation. Also https://www.playmagnus.com/en/news/post/rating-inflation-myth https://www.playmagnus.com/en/news/post/rating-inflation-myt...

epolanski 4y ago
But that's my point: elo distribution has nothing to do with how good players are, it merely tracks your win/lose status against opponents with a different elo. If you take, e.g. two unranked players that are very bad at chess or two unranked masters they are still going to end up with a +16 and -16 elo change. And you can keep adding great or bad players to the pool, and elo is still going to only look at the outcome not how players play. The point with elo is that if there's only 2 players it is basically impossible to reach a 2000 elo, because even if one consistently wins at some point he's not gaining any point by beating the same opponent, thus to go from 1700 to 1800 he'll need to face an opponent that has a similar elo. The more people slightly below his skill the more he'll rise in the elo distribution, this trickles down all the way up and down. Of course it is very likely that modern 2500 players are better as they have better tools than players of 20 years ago, but the same applies to people lower and higher in rating. Thus, at the end of the day, the only factor that matters in an elo distribution and how wide it is, is the number of games and players. If tomorrow there will be an influx of another million ranked players the distribution will get a bit wider and this would also inflate in the long run ratings of the highest rated players.
- JacobThreeThree 4y ago
  >elo distribution has nothing to do with how good players are Nothing to do with it? That's a bit much. It's not a perfect system, nor is it a trivial problem to solve, but elo definitely highly correlates to how good the player is.
  - PebblesRox 4y ago
    I think the point is it's a relative rather than an absolute measurement and you can't compare across time because the number of players in the system influences the scores.
  - epolanski 4y ago
    > but elo definitely highly correlates to how good the player is. it only measure how good a player is compared to the other ranked players.

epolanski 4y ago

But that's my point: elo distribution has nothing to do with how good players are, it merely tracks your win/lose status against opponents with a different elo. If you take, e.g. two unranked players that are very bad at chess or two unranked masters they are still going to end up with a +16 and -16 elo change. And you can keep adding great or bad players to the pool, and elo is still going to only look at the outcome not how players play. The point with elo is that if there's only 2 players it is basically impossible to reach a 2000 elo, because even if one consistently wins at some point he's not gaining any point by beating the same opponent, thus to go from 1700 to 1800 he'll need to face an opponent that has a similar elo. The more people slightly below his skill the more he'll rise in the elo distribution, this trickles down all the way up and down. Of course it is very likely that modern 2500 players are better as they have better tools than players of 20 years ago, but the same applies to people lower and higher in rating. Thus, at the end of the day, the only factor that matters in an elo distribution and how wide it is, is the number of games and players. If tomorrow there will be an influx of another million ranked players the distribution will get a bit wider and this would also inflate in the long run ratings of the highest rated players.

JacobThreeThree 4y ago
>elo distribution has nothing to do with how good players are Nothing to do with it? That's a bit much. It's not a perfect system, nor is it a trivial problem to solve, but elo definitely highly correlates to how good the player is.
- PebblesRox 4y ago
  I think the point is it's a relative rather than an absolute measurement and you can't compare across time because the number of players in the system influences the scores.
- epolanski 4y ago
  > but elo definitely highly correlates to how good the player is. it only measure how good a player is compared to the other ranked players.