Suggestion for FIDE: K-factor ‘holiday’

With increased focus of staying at home and going online, many young players in Asia went online to learn chess from GMs and IMs around the world! They also took part in various online simuls globally! Parents are even willing to pay up to 100 pounds Sterling per session of online coaching with top GMs from Europe!  

14 year old FM Poh Yu Tian from Malaysia, at the prize-giving ceremony of the Penang Open.

Poh Yu Tian famously defeated GM Ftacnik at the 2022 Olympiad besides also beating GM Jan Gustafsson at the 2022 Bangkok Open.

These kids and teens – collectively, young woodpushers – have truly gained a huge leap of strength and this was evident in the final rankings of this Penang classical chess event – with outstanding performances by FM Poh Yu Tian, CM Xie Kaifan, Dinh Nho Kiet, CM Anderson Ang Ern Jian, Yeoh Yuan Hui, Darshan Revinthiran, Ng Sheng Feng, Nguyen Vuong Tung Lam, Uzair Shahar, Ernest Yek Zu Yang, Lin Jie Xun, Kavin Mohan and Genivan Genkeswaran amongst others! 

Under-rated Young Guns!

Many of these young guns are severely under-rated – their playing strengths have increased considerably during the years when OTB tournaments were not allowed – and they added huge amounts of rating points by drawing or beating higher rated opponents at the tournament! 

Qualitatively-speaking, Darshan Revinthran, Uzair Shahar and Ernest Yek added over 100 rating points each, with Ernest gaining the most at 151 points! CM Xie added 89 points while Dinh added 80 points! Nguyen and Lin Jie Xun added over 60 points each! And, Genivan also added 53 points.

Zooming in using quantitative analysis of the full results spectrum of the Open category at the Penang event, we built the following table to better strengthen our argument here:

Out of a total of 355 games played across the 9 rounds, 56 of them were won by the weaker player, while another 84 of them saw the stronger player only drawing against their lesser counterpart! What this means is that on average, roughly 15 games (out of ~40 games per round) in every round saw the lower-rated player (with the exception of 4 unrated players in that field) gaining some amount of rating points off their more illustrious opponents!

Different Tournament, Same Story

This phenomenon is not unique to Penang Open alone, but have been seen in recent months from other events, as well! To illustrate this point, we built a similar table as above from another recently-concluded event: the 7th Johor International Chess Open 2022. 

In the table below, from the 349 games played over 9 rounds, 50 of them were won by the weaker player! Another 101 were drawn by the lower-rated exponent. On average, 16 games per round saw the lower-rated player (with the exception of 6 unrated players) gaining rating points from their higher-rated opponents.

By the end of the event in Johor, Vietnamese talent, Huynh Le Minh Hoang, added over 140 points. Fellow Vietnamese, Nguyen Manh Duc, added over 120 rating points while his compatriot, Dinh Nho Kiet, gained over 80 rating points. Teens, Genivan Genkeswaran and Yee Hao Loong of Malaysia, shone in the event with the additions of around 100 points each. Not to be outdone is Filipino, Ivan Travis Cu, and his addition of close to 80 points and Marcus Chen of Singapore with his increase of roughly 50 points. 

GM-slayer Genivan

While these young woodpushers gained in strength, the more matured players dropped points as their strength in the game decreased. Thus, a young gun’s 1500 rating is deceiving, as is an older player’s 2300 rating might probably not be reflective of his actual strength. Interestingly, the then 1576-rated Genivan Genkeswaran was probably under-estimated by some of his titled opponents in Johor! During that event, he scalped GM Nguyen Van Huy while drawing GM Alexei Barsov and IM Pavel Shkapenko. The games whereby he succeeded in slaying or drawing these titled players are given in the games section below in this article. 

Genivan Genkeswaran is the boy on the left-most in this photo, with his thumb up, in this picture taken of the entire Selangor state team at the 2022 Malaysian Schools Chess Championship (MSSM) in Kota Kinabalu. Photo shared by David Yek

A Proposal for FIDE

With such a huge discrepancy in ratings of players and their actual strengths, I would like to suggest to FIDE to implement a kind of K-factor ‘holiday’ over a period of 1 year from now with a larger factor applicable for all rated players throughout this period! As a recap, the K-factor is the development coefficient used to calculate the ratings of the players worldwide.

The current K-factor rules by FIDE are as follow:

    • K = 40 for a player new to the rating list until he has completed events with at least 30 games
    • K = 20 as long as a player's rating remains under 2400
    • K = 10 once a player's published rating has reached 2400 and remains at that level subsequently, even if the rating drops below 2400
    • K = 40 for all players until their 18th birthday, as long as their rating remains under 2300
    • K = 20 for RAPID and BLITZ ratings all players

The suggested K-factor ‘holiday’* I am proposing here is as follows:

    • K = 40 as long as a player's rating remains under 2400
    • K = 20 once a player's published rating has reached 2400 and remains at that level subsequently, even if the rating drops below 2400
    • K = 50 for all players until their 18th birthday, as long as their rating remains under 2300

*This proposal does not cover the Rapid and Blitz ratings due to the recent updated ratings’ regulations announced by FIDE on 1st Oct 2022. 

This proposal will enable under-rated players to much more quickly gain points during this period and rise in their rankings soonest, while fixing the problem with inflated or over-rated players! Additionally, this will also spur greater participation of chess players back to OTB play as the chances for a rise in rating is high and this will be a welcome for classical chess tournament organisers worldwide who are looking to jumpstart their activities again after years of hiatus! 

Perhaps this is something that Arkady Dvorkovich and his team at FIDE might want to consider for the year 2023? I welcome comments to this article and debate, besides any effort by anyone worldwide to start an online petition to FIDE to look into this option!