I skimmed those AGA Tournament regulations. I think this part is interesting for the discussion:
Appendix F: Re Self Promotion and Assignment of Provisional
Ratings
The TD has broad discretion to assign players to appropriate ratings for the event. Players who feel their
ratings are lower than their actual playing strength often request to be assigned a higher rating for the
purposes of pairing the tournament. The TD may and should take any evidence into consideration to
determine whether or not to grant the request. The TD's discretion in this matter is absolute. Any
adjustment (even less than a whole stone) upward is permitted. Downward adjustment will be made only
in a clearly demonstrable case of disability, such as a stroke. Lack of recent practice no matter how long,
is insufficient.
The TD has the same discretion regarding players who do not yet have an AGA rating. Ratings assigned
in other systems are the ideal gauge, but results from casual play reported either by the player or others
may also be used.
If the initial estimate turns out to be clearly wrong after a round or two, the TD may make an adjustment to
provide appropriate competition for the remainder of the tournament.
So an AGA Tournament Director (TD) has the power to bump a players' ratings upward by any (small) amount that he considers appropriate.
The EGF doesn't have such regulations about ranks and the rating system. Instead, each national federation has its own regulations (some even have their own rating systems).
But regardless of national regulations, an EGF TD doesn't have many options to change a player's EGF rating.
1. He can set the intitial rating of an unrated player (in many cases this will just be the declared rank of the player, but there is a lower limit of 20k.
2. He can adjust a rated player's rating by bumping a player's rank upward by 2 ranks from his previous highest rank in the tournament file upload. This will bump the player's rating to the higher rating.
The reason for triggering this bumping mechanism (called a rating reset) will differ in different countries. I think self-promotion is usually accepted up to a certain rank. In the Netherlands, self-promotion is allowed up to 1k (higher promotions are awarded by a committee, but those are almost always by 1 rank only, not triggering a rating reset). I think in Belgium and France the self-promotion limit is lower, but I don't know the exact limit (10k or so?). In Germany there is no limit AFAIK (it's always self-promotion).
So the EGF system has no mechanism to bump a player's rating by a small amount. So after their first tournament, players generally have to "earn" all their rating points by taking them from their peers, unless a player's strength increases so quickly that a 2 rank promotion is warranted (but still, the TD may not allow the triggering of a rating reset depending on national federation regulations).
I suppose this difference in rating bumping policies could make higher EGF ratings tougher than their equivalent AGA ratings, even though the AGA rating system has higher winrate demands. But it still depends on the frequency by which AGA TDs use their power to bump players' ratings in practice. Is it common or exceptional?
