CHESS
NUMERICAL CHESS RATINGS
The chess I encountered in my teenage years was an openended arena for discovery and achievement.There were no putative a priori limits placed on what might be accomplished.
But then came the ELO rating system which assigned a numerical rating to individual games and total lifetime performance. Everyone who played chess in the U.S. was now rated and ranked.
Those who were sufficiently brave thrust aside these shackles. No number was going to limit their aspirations and performance.
Their ambitions remained open-ended.
But many players began to define themselves in terms of the numbers assigned to them, hoping at most to improve them incrementally.
The system was institutionalized, in part, by organizing tournaments with designated purses for discrete rating categories (depending on the number of entrees at that particular level).
Following the money, some individuals deliberately lost games so as to qualify for a rating category where the financial reward was greater. These individuals, thankfully, were few.
Despite its drawbacks and our nostalgia, ratings were a historical boon to chess.
They both structured and encouraged competition and the growth of the game beyond its original narrow confines.