Rating leaping down

[chesseric]

Hi,

I saw some posts about a rating leap up in June. I think I noticed that one too. But now I've experienced a strong leap down during July, several 100 points. For instance, I have seen both me (the user) and the problem get a negative rating impact, when answering a problem correct. I'm pretty sure it has to do with a deliberate change to the rating calculation, but I couldn't find any post about it. Has anyone brought this up? Sorry if I missed it.

[richard]

Hi Chesseric,

Most people talking about rating increases after June are referring to their standard rating.  At about that time I also made some small tweaks to how time taken in blitz mode impacts rating outcomes (in order to get blitz ratings a little more in line with standard ratings, there were a few players getting over 3000 blitz ratings!).  You now get a little bit less of a bonus for getting problems solved quickly and a bit more punishment for taking too long.  There have also been a couple of GMs and a few IMs doing blitz problems since the start of July so it is possible that has made some of the harder problems a little lower rated than they were previously.

The instances where you see both the user and problem rating go down is not unusual, that is always how time taken has impacted ratings in blitz.  Essentially if you get the problem correct but take too long your rating can go down, but the problem's rating in blitz is treated independently of time so if you got the problem correct then the problem's rating will always go down (no matter how long you took).  There can probably be an argument made to take time into account on the problem's side, but this is not currently done.

Regards,
Richard.