From: Larry Kaufman WIZARD NET> Date: 15 mar 2001 Subject: Re: handicap in the ladder At 08:53 AM 3/15/01 -0000, you wrote: >2200 ELO is quite a low rating. I bealive you start the ELO at about >2100.... > That's a rather odd way to look at it. It's true that the minimun ELO on the International Chess scale (FIDE) is 2000 (not 2100), so 2200 is perhaps a bit below average there. But players who compete internationally are the cream of the crop. A 2200 rating should put a player somewhere around the 98th percentile of tournament players on a national level (at least in the US), and since tournament players themselves are far above average, I would say that less than one chess player in a thousand is of 2200 strength. In fact I believe that FIDE is planning to drop the bottom way down to something like 1000, in order to include vastly more players. The player in question, Mr. Chapman, was once ranked third among British Junior players, behind two who became grandmasters. Larry