A "weighted average of your pond performance" is not a rating. I came up with "p.a.s.s." as the acronym for it.

You can see that the range of values for your "p.a.s.s." designation will always be 1.0 as the best score possible, to whatever the limit is for the largest pond.

This is completely differnt that the range of a person's "rating", as, by default, I think a rating can never be below some arbitrary floor, such as 600 I think.

What does it mean when you are rated 2200? In the United States Chess Federation, this number is higher than 98% of the rated population, so this is the minimum threshhold for the Master Class.

It also means when pitted against someone 400 points or more below you, your chances of winning are functionally 100%. So, a 2200 player should be able to beat a 1799 player almost all the time.

This is an ideal situation, of course.

But understand the "rating" measures the likelihood of an outcome of one player versus another.

This is the definition of the term "rating".

In a pond game, you are not diametrically opposed to any one player. "Diametric opposition" is the mathematical framework upon which is built the concept of "ratings".

In the domain of computer science and mathematics, "ponds" would be described as a collective, parallel game of minimal elimination.

As such, it does not fit the defined parameters of what has been labeled "ratings".

We need a new working definition to underscore a player's performance in this group environment.

I offered one.

If you read and understand papers on mathematics, you would agree with me on the nomenclature.

It is not possible to assign an "Elo rating" to a game where there is more than two combatants.

Read this for more info:


http://www.glicko.com/glicko.doc/glicko.html

More papers on the subject:

http://math.bu.edu/people/mg/research.html