How about lucky punch, lucky 3 pointers, lucky pucks, lucky charm.

What I am trying to say is that there is no absolute reflection of result without taking into account <luck> which plays an important rule during competition.

<JoergWalter>

1) i'm finally a member of the 10,000 club - of those who have kibitzed on cg.com from a plane at an altitude of 10,000 feet or above

2) new fide rating record of 2054

Are you certain about this, <frogbert>? In the University South Zone tournament I took part in recently here in India, there were no such requirements. Besides, one rule explicitly stated something of the following sort: The team captain may ask the player to accept/offer a draw, but the player may decide whether or not s/he would follow the captain's orders.

i don't think fide or anyone *requires* you to follow such procedures, but the entire purpose of having a team captain is to allow one person to "control" the team's choices so as to do what's best for the team. and while the team captain indeed is allowed to make suggestions about offering/accepting draws for one or more of his/her players, *no other* player/person might do anything like that; this is essentially what's covered by regulations.

<there is every likelihood that relations between you and the captain would be strained, to put it mildly, if you don't follow the orders and you may not even get to play the further rounds, but that's another issue, isn't it?>

i guess that's more about how you look at it as anything else: the team captain can't stop you from blundering your queen on purpose either, if you want to sabotage; similarly, not following your team captain's orders is equivalent to resigning from the team.

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thanks, bv - your additional comments were very useful in complementing my response; sometimes i happen to take things for granted that i really shouldn't.

on second thought i now better understand where octavia's misunderstanding probably is rooted: the term "inflation" makes people think of money & currencies; what you get (goods, services) for a certain amount expresses essentially the *value* of your currency, and it diminishes when there is inflation. hence, the difference in value of a *fixed* difference in the currency becomes smaller. or, in the flawed analogy, the diff in strength (value) becomes smaller with a fixed rating gap (diff in the relevant currency).

however, the "currency" of the rating system is *not* actually the rating numbers: <the currency is rating *differences*> for all practical purposes. rating diffs translate to diffs in results and vice versa - and this relationship is fixed and not subject to any kinds of inflation.

fide's own use and talk of the rating system is misleading, too, as they try to impose a (persistent) mapping from skills to rating numbers, thereby turning the number itself into the currency, but rating numbers only describe results within a given pool of players, over a *limited* time span; at no point are "chess skills" measured directly.

as long as the "systemic inflation" (my term) is very moderate, which it is, people can use rating progress as a measure of improvement for themselves, within a limited time span; i.e. not much more than ca 5 years, after which *other external changes* are starting to have potential impact. hence, moderate systemic inflation is no problem for the two tasks a purely *result-based* rating system possibly can offer:

1) provide a quite reliable ranking of current (contemporary) players according to the skills *currently* required to be successful

2) provide a decent measure of improvement for developing players (seen in a reasonable short-term perspective)

I saw an historical rating list a little while ago (it annoys me I can't find it again, even though it is in one of my Sahovski Informators!) where players had some sort of ELO rating and then a three digit number expressing rating stability. Do you know that list?

I thought the 3 digit number interesting. 200 would indicate low rating stability. Players like Kasparov, Fischer. Leko had numbers around 150ish, ie. more stability. It corresponds to my impressions, especially because Ivanchuk had a high number, which simply rings true because of his "ability" to play a brilliant tourney one week and then have a disaster within weeks in another.