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Subject: Past and Present Re: Rough approximation Re: ELO Calculations

Author: Eelco de Groot

Date: 15:40:23 04/27/05

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On April 27, 2005 at 16:37:24, Dieter Buerssner wrote:

>On April 27, 2005 at 15:16:00, Dieter Buerssner wrote:
>
>> [...] I don't have erf() with me [...]
>
>I even have it. I am surprised - the MinGW environment does support it (it is
>also part of the C99 Standard). So, if you have it too, you could change one
>line:
>
>>    printf("%d %.6f %.6f\n", d, expected_score(d), 1.0/(1.0+pow(10.0,
>
>to
>
>printf("%d %.6f %.6f %.6f\n", d, expected_score(d),
>       1.0/(1.0+pow(10.0, -d/400.0)), 0.5+0.5*erf(d/400.));
>
>It reproduces exactly the number I had given in the comment to the source (and
>still shows, that none of the formula is able to reproduce the mumbers from
>FIDE).
>
>Regards,
>Dieter

Hi Dieter,

I sure wish I could follow all your C code, but I never did Study C seriously.
Are there any good compilers that are not expensive and work under Windows?


I think I can guess where FIDE got its numbers, I suspect they are mainly
interpolations of the original table in Arpad E. Elo's 'The Rating of
Chessplayers, Past & Present' (Batsford Books, 1978). Prof. Elo gave the
following table:

    D          P             D          P            D          P
 Rtg.Dif.   H     L       Rtg.Dif.   H     L      Rtg.Dif.   H     L

   0-3     .50   .50      122-129   .67   .33     279-290   .84   .16
   4-10    .51   .49      130-137   .68   .32     291-302   .85   .15
  11-17    .52   .48      138-145   .69   .31     303-315   .86   .14
  18-25    .53   .47      146-153   .70   .30     316-328   .87   .13

  26-32    .54   .46      154-162   .71   .29     329-344   .88   .12
  33-39    .55   .45      163-170   .72   .28     345-357   .89   .11
  40-46    .56   .44      171-179   .73   .27     358-374   .90   .10
  47-53    .57   .43      180-188   .74   .26     375-391   .91   .09

  54-61    .58   .42      189-197   .75   .25     392-411   .92   .08
  62-68    .59   .41      198-206   .76   .24     412-432   .93   .07
  69-76    .60   .40      207-215   .77   .23     433-456   .94   .06
  77-83    .61   .39      216-225   .78   .22     457-484   .95   .05

  84-91    .62   .38      226-235   .79   .21     485-517   .96   .04
  92-98    .63   .37      236-245   .80   .20     518-559   .97   .03
  99-106   .64   .36      246-256   .81   .19     560-619   .98   .02
 107-113   .65   .35      257-267   .82   .18     620-735   .99   .01
 114-121   .66   .34      268-278   .83   .17     over735  1.00   .00

I think at FIDE headquarters, they wanted "exact" elo-numbers so at one point
they just linearly interpolated the elo-numbers given at each percentage-point
arriving at their own table. So i'm not surprised any efforts to reproduce that
with a formula will not give the exact numbers back... I wish I could blame this
gross oversimplification on Mr. Campomanes or the even greater crook Mr.
Ilyumzhinov but I'm afraid this dates back to even longer ago...

 Regards, Eelco




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