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Kenneth HarknessKenneth Harkness (byname of Stanley Edgar;[1][2] November 12, 1896 – October 4, 1972) was a chess organizer.[3] He is the creator of the Harkness rating system.[4] Life and careerHe was born in Glasgow, Scotland.[3] He was Business Manager of the United States Chess Federation from 1952 to 1959.[3] He was also the editor of Chess Review, which merged into Chess Life.[4] He had lived in Boca Raton, Florida. He became an International Arbiter in 1972. He was a member of the FIDE Permanent Rules Commission.[3][4] Harkness was responsible for introducing Swiss system tournaments to the United States, and also introduced the Harkness rating system, which was a precursor to the Elo rating system.[3] One method of tiebreaks in Swiss system tournaments is named after him.[4][3] In the Harkness Method, players tied on points are ranked by the sum of their opponents' scores discarding the top score and the bottom score.[4][3] For his services, Harkness is in the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame.[3] With Irving Chernev, Harkness co-wrote An Invitation to Chess. He was responsible for a number of the first American chess rulebooks.[4] Harkness died on a train in Yugoslavia, on his way to Skopje to be an arbiter at the Chess Olympiad.[4][3] Rating systemHarkness devised a rating system that was used by the US Chess Federation from 1950 to 1960. When a player competes in a tournament, the average rating of his competition is calculated. If the player scores 50% he receives the average competition rating as his performance rating. If he scores more than 50% his new rating is the competition average plus 10 points for each percentage point above 50. If he scores less than 50% his new rating is the competition average minus 10 points for each percentage point below 50.[5] Bibliography
See alsoReferences
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