Originally posted by iamatiger
I would contend that if you judge the goodness of a rating by its ability to predict the outcome of games before they are played, then the current rating would come out as a pretty good indicator and the average rating over 100 games as a rather worse one.
I think you're both right to an extent - a distinction though helps.
Where the player involved isn't particularly a frequent mover I'd agree with the tiger. The current rating is probably a better indicator (assuming sufficient number of games played).
I would say though that the Chickman has a point when it comes to the more frequent players. Regular movers with a certain rating (ie not 1800+ where it's hard to come by points) tend to have rather volatile ratings, whereby the current rating mightn't be wholly representative of their true strength, and that an average over 100 games might be more accurate.
Personally I'd be interested in turning the whole thing on its head, and would quite like to see in my profile some sort of average rating of the last 100 opponents I've played for example. There are some relatively very strong people that I've seen below 1400 (Tim Robinson and hypermo2001 for instance), resulting I suspect from a preference to play strong, fairly highly rated opponents.
T1000