Author: Dave Gomboc
Date: 23:26:44 10/06/99
Go up one level in this thread
On October 06, 1999 at 18:20:33, KarinsDad wrote: >Dave, > >Maybe I am just being dense but, yeah so? > >The fact is that any forfeit can lower or raise a person's rating by as much as >32 points (in the US). But, that person did not REALLY deserve such a raise or >lowering. Let's take an example: > >Say two 1600 players are supposed to play, but in the last round, one gets in a >car accident (he is not injured, he just cannot make it to the tournament) and >forfeits. Nobody knows why he forfeited, so the TD sends in the pairings to the >federation. This isn't a good example, because once it became known that the person didn't show up for no fault of their own (it would have been illegal for them to leave the scene of the accident without permission of police), the ratings auditor would re-rate the tournament, not counting the forfeit as rated. More usually, the tournament report is not sent in the same day, so the TD will probably get a call explaining the situation. My chess club has touraments that are played at the rate of one game a week, every Thursday evening. The tournaments are 4-7 weeks long, depending on the tournament. So we'll keep the two 1600 players who are supposed to play, one of whom occasionally forgets that it's Thursday and doesn't show up to play. I hope this situation seems realistic to you. >These two players are both 1600 (let's assume that they both maintained their >rating in the first x rounds of the tournament). They are fairly close in >strength. But after this tournament, one of them is rated 1616 and the other is >rated 1584. Is it true that the 1584 player is REALLY 32 points lower than the >other? Of course not. But, that does not stop him from getting this rating. >How can one state that it is MORE accurate to predict results between the 1584 >and the 1616 player when in reality, they should both be 1600 players? The >prediction should be off. Please explain with more detail since I am clueless on >this (and yes, I realize that if someone has a propensity to forfeit, this would >lower his rating in the long run). Let's call the fellow who jumped to 1616 "A", and the fellow who dropped to 1584 "B". It's clear that player B deserves a lower rating than player A. The two players have the same level of skill, but B is less likely to show up, so his expected score over a series of games against A would be less than 50%. >Thanks, > >KarinsDad :) The rating system just follows what you ask it to follow. If you want to model "games where both people showed up on time", that is legit enough, I suppose. Canadian ratings model "all games", which seems more valid to me, personally. Of course, some people don't want to rate the games that the GM played when they were sick, or the games where the program lost because the hardware was overclocked too much, et cetera. I guess it's different strokes for different folks... Before anyone objects too loudly about rating games where a fellow doesn't show up, consider: not too different is the case of another fellow at my chess club who does show up for his games reguarly. He is a software developer working on Y2K code. Once in a while, he gets a call on his cell, stands up, and resigns his game, because he received a call from work and he has to go in. It might seem "unfair" to rate that game... at least if he was winning at the time. But he lost the game! What can you do? And you know, he's more likely to lose games in the future for the same reason. Worst of all, sometimes people play on in fairly hopeless positions against him, in the hope that his phone will ring! CFC ratings predict results, period. If the USCF wants to predict "results of games when both people show up before 1 hour has went by on their clocks" instead, I guess that's their business. Dave
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.