Author: Don Dailey
Date: 08:22:56 07/15/98
Go up one level in this thread
On July 15, 1998 at 08:13:21, Shaun Graham wrote: > >> >>Although I agree with you on the strength of Fritz, or more accurately >>that I disagree with Bob that it is nowhere close to GM strength, I >>think you're falling into the human perception trap. The way this works >>is that people often tend to make "binary" judgements. I think Bob >>does this a lot, it always seems to be all or nothing to him. Fritz is >>either GM strength or not even close. I don't know if he believes >>everything he says, or just feels compelled to exaggerate to make his >>points. >> >>But I think you're doing this too. You are, by construction, evisioning >>a scenario where Fritz is rolling over a bunch of 2300-2450 players. >>And you're saying that this might be enough to get it a GM norm. > >No i'm not constructing a scenario where this "might" occur I am stating that >(i would bet, of the course the calculation would have to be done and it would >be extremely difficult to do) the hypothesis is that in that period of time that >the ODDS are "high", that fritz would have the norm. >> >>Your making the assumption that since Fritz is better than 2300-2450, >>it should always win against these players > >I would definitely not posit that it would always win, but i think it would have >a high winning percentage, and i would think that the odds would predict that >indeed it would have some strong performances in the alotted time(5 years). Of course it would have a higher winning percentage against weaker players! That's why they are weaker! You're missing my point. I'm not saying this is an unlikely scenario, where it must play down most of the tournament. I'll grant you that. I'm saying it would not be easy to rack up rating points playing down like this, and you seem to feel that this is the key. Perhaps you don't understand how the ELO rating system works? It was designed to have the characteristic that is doesn't matter who you play, if you beat up on weaker players you get little credit for it and if you beat up on higher rated players you get heavily rewarded. The amount of difficulty in doing either is EXACTLY balanced against the amount of reward you get. You CANNOT say, give me a tournament with a bunch of weak players so I can rack up the rating points and have this make any sense. > (you didn't say this, >>but your example definitely implied it since you cite it as an example >>of how Fritz should be able to get a GM norm.) But I'm saying that if >>you can consistantly beat 2300-2450 ELO players, then you MUST be a >>pretty strong player, a GRANDMASTER! You might as well be playing >>the Grandmasters to get your rating. > >Well if you posit that fritz is just say 2450, well a computer 2450 is really >more consistent than a human 2450 wouldn't you think,( it never forgets it's >opening, doesn't get sick,isn't late, not in time trouble)? This greater >consistency is what makes up for a higher rating in my oppinion(i admit that >some test on that idea might need to be done) >> >>In your example you're also saying Fritz would only have to win about >>1 out of 4 against Grandmasters. So you are proposing a situation >>where Fritz is not really Grandmaster strength, but still gets a >>Grandmaster NORM by doing a lot better than it should against the >>"weaker" players. > >As i said earlier in this post the ELO is what is important. If you got the GM >norm this way Well you would be a GM that is of course only answering the >question of the title but not the strength fo fritz. I know this may sound like >i mencing words here, but it could be argued that If you are strong enough to >get the title, then you are grandmaster strength as you are your strength and a >GM. This would of course probably reflect that Fritz is a bottom of the barrel >GM, but if you check the list you will fin a number of people who float aroun >the 2480-2505 rating who achieved the title in just this way. I quote a GM from > silmans book "How to improve your chess" If an IM plays in enough tournaments >in europe he will get the title." The result is that by playing so much and >maximizing their oppertunities the odds allowed them the norm, but against a >solid GM they would probably score just as es fritz did against kotronias 1 of >4. I don't mean to keep contradicting you, but you've pretty much given up on your initial assertion. Now you are only making the argument that Fritz "has a chance" to get a GM norm. But you could take ANY player and this would be the case if he were allowed to play in enough tournaments (assuming this is allowed without having a good rating.) Maybe the odds would be close to zero for a weak player, but there is always a statistical chance. The only interesting question to me is how close is Fritz playing to weak grandmaster chess? (or IS Fritz playing GM chess?) WE cannot reasonably argue about whether Fritz could do it, any player can, we would have to get into statistical analysis of what it's chances are based on how many tournaments it played in a year. And then the argument gets more ambiguous than it already is. That seems to be what we do best though. Endlessly arguing points that cannot be resolved using as ambiguous a language as possible and never defining any terms. Bob posted to me that he was not exaggerating in his belief that micro's were not even close to weak GM strength. Maybe we could take a look at the Aegon games and do a performance rating against all the Grandmasters. Perhaps only the top micro's should be considered in this formula since I believe there is a huge spread among micros. Is this data on the web? We could consider this an upper bound on the strength of top Micro's as of 1 year ago. I say upper bound because the games were not played at long time controls. After we did this then we could have a big argument about how much difference the time control makes. - Don
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