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If a player with only 10 games played and a provisional rating of 1600 beats a long-time player of rating 2200 (i.e. a 600 difference) What happens to each rating? Approximately?
Steve
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The 2200 rating stays the same. On Queen Alice, an established player cannot lose rating points to a provisionally rated player.
As for the provisional rating, the average of each game rating for the first 10 games is 1600, while the game rating for the 11th game is the loser's rating + 400 (2200 + 400 = 2600). So the new rating would be (10*1600 + 2600)/11 = 1691 ... the average of the 11 individual game ratings.
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Actually, the provisional player's score will remain unchanged as well, due to this rule:
"Special rule: if the opponent is rated 400 or more points below or 400 or more points above, then the rating will not be affected no matter the outcome."
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Yes...sorry. I skipped over that one. 
New elite players that want to reach their expected rating more quickly should only pick opponents that are within 400 points. Possibly one could choose opponents higher than that expecting to get "in range" when previously started games finish.
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Unfortunately, this "special rule", coupled with the bug that a player's first game is rated as if the opponent was unrated, too, cripples the provisional rating system. The point of provisional ratings is that they are supposed to rapidly converge to about the right value but the misguided "special rule" and the first game bug mean that provisional ratings here are often trapped at an artificially low level. 
Dave.
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I can't strongly disagree with richerby. For one thing, it means that the rest of us have to contend with much better players crawling over our backs to the top of the charts.
On the other hand, without the special rule, I can have an account that will rival Bergmam's rating in a few days without too much work. A silly extreme example that would leave an obvious trail, but the point is valid and serious when a player can choose their opponents (i.e. themselves). 
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