13-10-2011, 11:44 PM
The junior addition works reasonably well with most juniors - it assumes the junior's grade will increase by about twice the addition for his/her age over the course of a season, so that if games are spread evenly over the season the average disparity will be roughly the amount of the junior addition, and on average the junior's opponents will get appropriate compensation. The values of the junior additions (+120 points at ages up to J12, declining to +20 at J20) were set decades ago, and I think they are still realistic enough to continue to be used.
The problem concerns those talented juniors whose grades are rising far faster than the rate assumed in the junior addition. Already this season, in the space of only 3½ months, three players (Kai Pannwitz, Euan Gray and Andrew McCusker) have triggered the "200-up" rule, meaning that their current grade is no longer linked to and constrained by their start-of-season published grade. They have, effectively, achieved a full year's expected improvement in under four months. And there are quite a few other juniors who will soon go 200-up.
Where the 200-up rule kicks in, opponents will (at the end of the season) be considered to have played against these juniors at their end-of-season grades rather than at their start-of-season grades, which will be more beneficial (or less damaging) for the opponents than the normal operation of junior additions would have been. But even under the 200-up rule, some junior grades will be seriously understated, because early-season results will still be given the same weight as late-season results - if a player starts the season playing at a strength of 1000 but finishes at a strength of 1500, and the numbers of games played early and late are about equal, the grading system will give the player a grade of 1250 at the end of the season. The player will therefore go into the following season with a published grade of 1250, but a true strength of 1500+ and rising! Even the maximum junior addition comes nowhere near bridging that gap.
In the long term, players' grades do generally reach a level that is a fair indicator of their playing strength, but it is probably not good for the grades of some (even if not all) juniors to lag far behind their true strength.
Publishing juniors' grades twice a year rather than once would reduce the discrepancy between published and actual strength, and might ensure that published grades caught up with actual grades more quickly. Another approach might be to use only a junior's most recent 30 (or even 20) games in calculating his/her grade. How easily such calculations could be incorporated into the CS grading system is another matter.
The problem concerns those talented juniors whose grades are rising far faster than the rate assumed in the junior addition. Already this season, in the space of only 3½ months, three players (Kai Pannwitz, Euan Gray and Andrew McCusker) have triggered the "200-up" rule, meaning that their current grade is no longer linked to and constrained by their start-of-season published grade. They have, effectively, achieved a full year's expected improvement in under four months. And there are quite a few other juniors who will soon go 200-up.
Where the 200-up rule kicks in, opponents will (at the end of the season) be considered to have played against these juniors at their end-of-season grades rather than at their start-of-season grades, which will be more beneficial (or less damaging) for the opponents than the normal operation of junior additions would have been. But even under the 200-up rule, some junior grades will be seriously understated, because early-season results will still be given the same weight as late-season results - if a player starts the season playing at a strength of 1000 but finishes at a strength of 1500, and the numbers of games played early and late are about equal, the grading system will give the player a grade of 1250 at the end of the season. The player will therefore go into the following season with a published grade of 1250, but a true strength of 1500+ and rising! Even the maximum junior addition comes nowhere near bridging that gap.
In the long term, players' grades do generally reach a level that is a fair indicator of their playing strength, but it is probably not good for the grades of some (even if not all) juniors to lag far behind their true strength.
Publishing juniors' grades twice a year rather than once would reduce the discrepancy between published and actual strength, and might ensure that published grades caught up with actual grades more quickly. Another approach might be to use only a junior's most recent 30 (or even 20) games in calculating his/her grade. How easily such calculations could be incorporated into the CS grading system is another matter.