Tickets are non-transferable but bribery is still a thing, especially where demand far outstrips the supply.
Second, fake IDs are easy to make.
Third, it's impractical to enforce on the ground. Indian Railways is relatively open access compared to airlines. On average, trains begin boarding 15-30 mins prior to departure and have a very high number of passengers. With an avg of 16 coaches per rake, with each coach having 60-100 passengers, each train is carrying 960-1600 passengers. Some trains are even longer and most trains are over capacity because 2nd sitting has no reservation and people just pile on as far as there is room in the coach. It's pretty impractical to verify tickets of 1000+ people along with their ids. If you are departing out of a major city, its usual for TTEs to verify tickets after 2-3 hours (and after smaller stations have been crossed.)
Tickets have been hogged and scalped for a long time in India. I'm the first in my family who has no concept of bribing or buying scalped tickets or engaging an "agent." Everyone of the previous generation has plenty of stories about their experiences before. There is still a long way to go to improve access but I will also not deny that there has been a significant improvement compared to my parents experience.
So the government-run rail services don't provide enough capacity, the government's employees are corrupt, the government-issued ID documents are easily faked, and the solution is... to make government's train website slow and unreliable?
I don't recall a single instance of corruption with the Indian railways at the consumer level in nearly 2 decades including an instance when I was fined for not purchasing a platform ticket which would've been an opportunity for the officer to ask for a bribe but he didn't.
I don't think I'd faking or bribery are big issues with ticketing any more. It is most likely equitable access between the "internet haves" and "the internet have nots".
The original Microsoft BASICS as used on early PC's had a number of interesting aspects, that would shock a lot of todays programmers :-) (not that I want to go full four Yorkshire men )
Having to manually set the exit condition of a loop to avoid memory leaks
ELO ratings start at 600 for absolute beginner.
With a good amount of effort, a dedicated amateur can reach ~1500 without too much difficulty, and at that level you'll beat any casual player. 2000 is international standard. Best human player is around 2700.
Note - chess.com does not use ELO ratings - they have their own rating system which is more complex (includes an uncertainty factor based on how recently you have played), but is supposed to be roughly equivalent.
The author of the article is playing blitz chess (3 minutes a game) rather than standard chess, so the ratings are largely irrelevant to standard levels.
> With a good amount of effort, a dedicated amateur can reach ~1500 without too much difficulty
I read that kind of argument all over the place in the chess community, and that really strikes me as some kind of misplaced elitism.
ELO can be seen as a glorified indicator of where you stand in the distribution of a pool of players. Math aside, the ELO is a system that allows for the distribution of scores to evolve incrementally as matches are played.
All in all, if you want to interpret an ELO, you can always refer to the corresponding centile.
With an ELO of 1500 you are in the ~80 percentile of your pool (USCF). That places you as better than 80% of players (that are doing tournaments).
This requires a lot of work, and you would definitely not be a "regular amateur player".
The center of the distribution should be around 1200 ELO at the 50th centile.
Imagine what that would mean to be in the top 20% of all basket ball players that play tournaments.
I bet 2 years of daily effort and study would get most people to 1500.
How many people play for years without actual dedication, or join tournaments before they're at the 1500 level, or quit when they keep losing a lot to higher level people in tournaments, or whatever?
My definition of "dedicated" probably removes at least 50+% of the pool right away.
Yes the fact that I can check my phone in the morning for my commute and get an accurate (ish) bus time including delays is great, I can avoid a long wait for a bus at and have another cup of coffee.
Though as I live next door to a pub in my village it used to keep checking me in - google probably thinks I have a drinking problem :-)
