From: "Stouten, Pieter [R&D/0467]" <pieter.stouten <at> PHARMACIA <dot> COM>
Date: 12 dec 2002
Subject: Re: Elo ratings and grades

On Thu 12 Dec 2002 12:11 +0900, "bogin" <bogin <at> YAHOO <dot> CO <dot> JP> wrote:

> So, it's confusing now that FESA has not yet
> recognized this promotion as well.
>
Agreed. Nobody had brought the matter of Gert's promotion up on the FESA
list yet. The only feeble excuse I can offer is that a tiny group of people
does all the work for Shogi and there are many things to do.

> If the JSR views Mr. Schnider to have earned
> this rank then why should FESA as well?
>
My personal view is that Gert has every right to carry his 5-dan grade, but
I don't think NSR as such makes any statement about earning a grade. They
simply had decided to award the winner of the ISF a 5-dan grade irrespective
of his route to the ISF or the strength of his opponents.

I believe in chess there are national and international Elo lists. Also,
chess players can get various national and international titles.
Analogously, one notion about NSR grades can be to consider them titles,
like Elo-based grades, but awarded via a different mechanism. If anybody has
an NSR grade higher than his Elo-based FESA/USSF grade, this NSR grade can
be listed on the Elo list in addition to his FESA/USSF grade. I am not
arguing this is the best option; I am only saying there are more, maybe
better, solutions than simply deciding to accept all NSR grades and to end
up with a mixture of NSR and FESA/USSF grades.

> Whatever, a players rank is it seems that
> FESA tournaments are paired according to
> a player's numerical rating.
>
Correct.

> So, I can't understand how recognizing any
> JSR rank at all can affect the running of a
> tournament.
>
It does not.

> It seems pointless to not recognize Mr.
> Schnider's achievement.
>
Everybody recognizes Gert's achievement and quite a few people have
expressed the opinion that his grade should be accepted. However, we are
talking about recognition of NSR grades in general, using Gert only as a
clear example. The discussion so far has shown that people attach a lot of
significance to grades. In fact, you yourself demonstrated that by
questioning Artem Kolomiyets 2-dan grade compared to Tao Jiming's 3-dan. If
the correlation between ratings and grades dwindles, people will start to
think that grades (or ratings or both) mean little or nothing. I think we
should avoid that and, therefore, we should be careful with awarding or
recognizing grades.

Ciao,

Pieter