Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: How a chess program rates its player?

Author: Ricardo Gibert

Date: 17:50:18 11/02/00

Go up one level in this thread


On November 02, 2000 at 20:20:42, Pham Minh Tri wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Could someone explain to me how a chess program rates its players and give me an
>example based on following supposition: the rating of this proram is 2000, a
>player won it 3, lost 2 and drew 2; what is the rating of this player?
>
>Thanks in advance for any help,
>Pham


For an explanation of how the USCF chess rating system works read:

http://www.uschess.org/ratings/info/system.html

As for a chess program determining the rating of its human opponents, it is not
possible to generate accurate ratings (unless they happen to make a lucky
guess). For chess ratings to be accurate, they must be gained against a
*population* (ideally a random sample) of players rather than against a single
player whether it be computer or human.

It happens often that player A can beat Player B a significant percentage of the
time and player B can beat player C, but player C can beat player A, so a match
between player A and B is unreliable in determining who is stronger and so the
rating thereby derived is also unreliable.

For example, if you want to know who is the strongest player in the world today,
Kramnik or Kasparov, look at their ratings and not the match result. Matches are
for entertainment. They determine whether Player A can *dominate* player B, but
not which is the stronger player.




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.