Glossary

Current Winker  A rating is only considered valid if a winker has played 30 or more rated games in the last 12 month period. (12 months is an approximate term - the actual definition is the period between a tournament being held from one year to the next - e.g. if the ETwA Pairs in held on the 24th April one year and the 27th April the following year, the twelve months I refer to is the period from 24th April in the first year to the 27th April in the second year.)

 

Eligible Tournament A tournament is eligible if it is an "open" tournament. That is, if players can play in the tournament based on ability. Inter-club, inter-university and international matches are explicitly included in this definition - although these are not open to all, they are open to at least two clubs/ universities/ countries and no-one from those clubs/ universities/ countries is excluded other than on ability. World singles and pairs matches are also in by this rule because they are open to anyone who can achieve the appropriate qualification in another open tournament. It may be easier to note which matches are excluded: invitation events are excluded.

 

Rated Game A game has to satisfy two criteria to be rated. It needs to be a game between two rated players and it must be a game in a elligible tournament.

 

Rated Player A player is rated is a player with a rating. All players start unrated. When an unrated player starts to play, he or she is assigned a temporary rating of 2,000 for the purposes of working out what his or her rating should be. The tournament is then analysed and a rating for the player is calculated based on what rating they would need to have had to have scored whatever they did score in the tournament. At this point the 2,000 rating is discarded, and replaced by the calculated rating. The process is repeated with this calculated rating. The repitition is necessary, because other players will have had their ratings affected by calculations based on the assumption the new player was rated 2,000. The reptition recalculates the other players ratings based on the newly rated players rating. The process is repeated once more before ratings are set.

 

Rating  A winker's rating is a 2,000 based number which provides a means of ordering winkers by their performance over a twelve month period. A difference of 100 ratings points, suggests that the higher ranked player ought to be able to beat the lower ranked player by a score of 4-3. A 300 point difference relates to an expected score of 5-2 etc.

Last updated on April 02, 1998