ratings

  Chess ratings serve two purposes: (a) they tell you your relative ability,
and (b) are useful means for identifying and playing opponents of roughly your
same ability.

  This server utilizes the Glicko rating system developed by Mark E. Glickman
(with assistance and corrections by Dmitry Dakhnovsky and server
implementation by Vek and Hawk).  The full explanation of this system is given
in the "glicko" help file.

  In general, your rating will be adjusted by several factors: (a) the result
of your game (win, loss, draw), (b) your opponent's rating, (c) the stability
of your rating, and (d) the stability of your opponent's rating.  If you want
to determine how your rating might change after a match with a given player,
use the "assess" command.

  At present, there are separate ratings for these kinds of chess: Blitz,
Bughouse, Lightning, Standard, Suicide Chess and Wild.  Odds games and
nonstandard games are unrated by default.  Your current rating is available
on your "finger" file.  Ratings are given in "games", "history" and "journal"
displays.  Once you have an established rating (RD <80) in a given type, your
highest established rating to date will also be displayed.  Players with
established ratings will also have their ratings listed on several ranking
lists (see the "best", "hbest", "rank" and "hrank" help files).

  By default, the "who" command lists logged on users in order of their blitz
ratings.  This way, you can identify and match players of certain ratings. 
Ratings can be used in (a) your "formula" for filtering out match requests
from other players, (b) "availmax" and "availmin" settings in order to modify
which players you will be notified about, and (c) the "kiblevel" variable in
order to filter out kibitzes and whispers.  The "provshow" variable can be
used to display a player's rating type (such as provisional or established);
read "help v_provshow" for details.


TRANSFERRING RATINGS FROM ANOTHER CHESS SERVER

  It is possible to transfer your rating from another chess server to this
server.  Contact an admin concerning which admin should process your request
since different admins are on different chess servers.  In general, you will
need to email your request to that admin.  Please use the subject line
"Request for ratings transfer" and in the body of the email tell the admin
your handle(s) on both chess servers.  Also be sure to "message" the admin on
the other server so the admin can verify that you are the person you claim to
be.

SPECIAL NOTES:

(a)  In the case of adjourned games that are resumed, ratings are adjusted by
the users' ratings at the time the match is concluded rather than the ratings
they had when the match was started.

(b) Users who abuse the ratings system in one way or another will be
penalized.  Penalities may include being placed on the abuser list (see "help
abuser"), being prevented from playing rated chess games, and/or being banned
from the server.

See Also:  abuser  assess  blitz  best  bughouse  finger  formula  games 
glicko  hbest  history  hrank  journal  kiblevel  lightning  message  rank 
standard  suicide_chess  v_provshow  who  wild

[Last modified: July 9, 1997 -- Friar]