Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 22:25:40 12/14/03
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On December 14, 2003 at 19:26:30, J F wrote: >Christophe, How many games do you recomend playing before you can draw a >conclusion? I think you are not going to like the answer. :) It depends on: * the reliability you want (do you want a 70% reliability? 80%? 90%? 95%?) * the elo difference between the programs If you want a very good reliability in the result (for example 95%) and the two programs are very close in elo, then you might need several thousands games. There is no simple answer to your question. However, I know that there exist a program called "whoisbetter" that can, given a match result, tell you if one program can be considered better than his opponent. The very important thing to remember is that in order to know which of the top PC chess programs is better, you will definitely need several thousands of games, believe it or not. So it's always funny to see somebody giving an opinion after 5 games. Below is a table that can be used to get an idea of the number of games to play to get a given error margin (in winning percentage and in elo difference) for a given reliability (percentage of confidence). The tables say that, for example, if you want to know with 90% reliability which opponent is better you will have to play 1000 games if their elo difference is 15 points. If their elo difference is below 10 points, you will have to play more than 2000 games... Reliability of chess matches 90% confidence Games %err+/- elo+/- 10 20 140pts 20 15 105pts 25 14 98pts 30 12 63pts 40 10 70pts 50 9 56pts 100 6.5 35pts 200 4.72 33pts 400 3.34 23pts 600 2.66 19pts 800 2.39 17pts 1000 2.12 15pts 1200 2.00 14pts 1400 1.81 13pts 1600 1.66 12pts 2000 ~1.50 11pts 80% confidence Games %err+/- elo+/- 10 15 105pts 20 11 77pts 25 10 70pts 30 9 63pts 40 8 56pts 50 7 49pts 100 5.0 35pts 200 3.75 26pts 400 2.60 18pts 600 2.15 15pts 800 1.86 13pts 1000 1.66 12pts 1200 1.46 10pts 1400 1.40 10pts 1600 1.34 9pts 70% confidence Games %err+/- elo+/- 10 15 105pts 20 10 70pts 25 8 56pts 30 8 56pts 40 6.3 44pts 50 6.0 42pts 100 4.0 28pts 200 3.0 21pts 400 2.2 15pts 600 1.7 12pts 800 1.5 11pts 1000 1.3 9pts 1200 1.24 9pts 1400 1.14 8pts 1600 1.04 7pts Christophe
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