Arpad Elo is credited with the creation of the current ELO rating system for chess, where a beginning tournament adult in the US Chess Federation might be at 1000, an average one at 1500 and an expert at 2000. In the WA scholastic tournament world, a beginner (sometimes a bit cloudy on the rules) is arbitrarily assigned a minimum rating of 400, and 1000 is considered to be a strong elementary school player, probably comparable to a USCF 1000 player.

The general concept is that a player gains or loses points based on actual versus expected results. If you defeat a player with a higher rating than you, you don’t necessarily get rated higher than that player, but you would gain more rating points than if you defeated a player rated lower than you. That is because the higher rated player is expected to win more than half but not all the games between them.

While Andrew was on his winning streak in the K-2 section as a second grader, his rating kept increasing but that was because he didn’t have enough near-equals in the area. He probably underperformed in the state championship tournament, winning 2 of 5 against opponents generally in the 700’s, which dropped his rating from the 900’s to the 800’s where he probably would have been had he played tournaments in the Seattle area.

In the first tournament of 2008-09, he won 3 of 5 but lowered his rating because his opponents had lower ratings. In the second, he won 4 of 5 and got a bit above where he started. In the Dec 6 tournament he took the pattern as far as it could go by getting 5 of 5 and winning the 3rd/4th section outright (he is on the left in the picture at the awards presentation). Unlike last year when there were several 4th graders with ratings over 1000, most of the leaders this year were in the 800’s (there is one strong 4th grader but he usually plays in the upper section with the high schoolers and middle schoolers). So Andrew was actually the second third-grader to win the section trophy. Because there were not higher-rated opponents, Gilbert was surprised to see this line on the tournament report the Tuesday afterwards:

1 CHAN, ANDREW AESDC899 864 1000/ 70 W38 W12 W4 W11 W2 5.0

The numbers in the middle indicate he had a starting rating of 864 before the tournament and exactly 1000 at the end.

Ratings can be fairly volatile and even one loss would drop him quite a bit but we congratulated Andrew on his first (hopefully only) reaching of the 4th digit.

(note: a "patzer" in chess lingo is a casual player, often used by experienced players to mean a weak one.  But it's a long way from being the top in this level to being a master, even if you get your first "grand".  Even a second "grand" in USCF is only an "Expert", it takes a 2200 rating to be called a "master", much less the overused "Grandmaster" of which there are only a few hundred worldwide.)