Michael Holmes wrote:At least they are here! Funny though, I won 2 tournaments last year(1 over the World Champ) and came in 2nd in the other 3 tournaments-2 of them the world Champ won and the other one GM Webster won. My rating still went down to 2318. At least Moiseyev is back on top(regardless that he loss to me-although it should have helped me?) as the rightful # 1!
Hi, Michael ! I've done some research on this, because I also thought your rating shall go up.
First of all - new rating is based only on "half 2009" events, starting July. I already was punished for my worse performance in the beginning of 2009
Here are my statistics in the second half of 2009:
Event #108. IN State, Shipshewana, August 28-29. 14 games recorded. Score: +13-0=1
Event #109. OH State, Medina, September 12-13. 13 games recorded. Score: +12-0=1
Event #110. 3 moves WCM 2009 vs R. King (Barbados), Medina, OH, October 5-15.
40 games recorded. Score +4-4=32
Event #111. AL State, Holeyville, November 14-15. 12 games recorded. Score: +7-0=5
Number of event comes from my book AMG (ALL MY GAMES) and this numerization starts in 1996 (Event #1 - OH State, September 1996, Massilon).
As you see - from 4 events I drew only WCM and in fact this only helped me with rating (ha-ha), because Ron had it higher. In all other 3 events I didn't lose any single game and won all events with very good margin.
The fact you took 1st or 2nd place means nothing. The main question is - how many games you won, drew or lost. You can win 3-4 games and take 1st place, but ... still lose rating. This happened with me all the time.
As higher your rating goes, as higher are expectations on your performance. Having rating in zone 2,350-2,400 forces you to win sometimes almost all games in some state tys !
My "shaken rating" which one time went down 80 points and 6 months later jumped up 120 points only proves well that this system is not perfect and it doesn't like very active players and punish them !
Michael, you are probaly the most active player in USA after myself. Be proud of this and don't care anything else - rating is just a number on the paper. If you don't want your rating go down - stop playing !
If rating is only number on the paper - you know how to use this paper
