visayanbraindoctor: <ketchuplover: I think the creation of chess rating systems has been at least slightly detrimental to the PURE enjoyment of chess>That's right. Elo ratings did not exist for most of the history of chess (up until the late 1960s), yet chessplayers still gave us wonderful games, and the WC cycle went on as normal.
I hate it when kibitzers go about citing rating this and rating that, when praising the chess playing skills of their favorite. The ratings have nothing to do with his skills.
Ratings can be abused.
1. Ratings can be manipulated. Much has already been written on this.
2. Manipulated ratings may be used to get into the higher tiers of the WC cycle.
3. Ratings are being used by tournament organizers to promote a tournament for their own benefit. Oh yeah, this tournament has the highest average rating ever, and so is the strongest in history (not necessarily true); so come and watch it and advertisers put on your money here!
4. Fanboys politicize the ratings system in order to promote their favorite players.
5. Rating centered culture does a great injustice to chess players who were active in the eras when there were no ratings.
6. Rating centered culture will do more injustice to all past chess players, including present ones decades from now when rating inflation will have pushed up the top ten players' ratings higher and higher (say up to the 2800s).
Even now, there are absurd statements, like 'Nakamura is a stronger chessplayer than Fischer; his ratings prove it.' No offense to Naka; he is a very strong chessplayer, but not in Fischer's level. I imagine that the same fanboys today proclaiming WC Carlsen as the greatest ever based solely on ratings will be the first to whine when 50 years from now all of the top ten players will have ratings higher than 2800; and so will have been 'proven' to be stronger than Carlsen.
7. Rating centered culture results in present day beginners getting discouraged from studying games of pre-WW2 masters.
8. Rating centered culture discourage chessplayers from studying and learning from excellent games if they happened to be be played by low rated players.
9. Rating centered culture fosters an elitist culture that prevents strong and deserving players that happen to have low ratings because they come from a place where ratings have not equilibrated with the European and Russian zones from getting invited to strong international tournaments.
Kibitzing
