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Subject: Re: CM8K another question

Author: James T. Walker

Date: 09:39:42 11/28/00

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On November 28, 2000 at 01:33:05, John Merlino wrote:

>On November 27, 2000 at 23:17:00, James T. Walker wrote:
>
>>On November 27, 2000 at 13:10:54, John Merlino wrote:
>>
>>>On November 27, 2000 at 11:32:30, James T. Walker wrote:
>>>
>>>>On November 26, 2000 at 18:19:42, John Merlino wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On November 26, 2000 at 16:21:18, James T. Walker wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>At what time control were the games played?
>>>>>>Jim
>>>>>
>>>>>Oops. I forgot that key point. Because of time constraints (from the time the
>>>>>test was mailed out to the time when ALL of the testing needed to be finished
>>>>>was less than 4 months) the time control for all games was Fischer 5/10.
>>>>>
>>>>>jm
>>>>
>>>>Thanks for the info.  In my opinion this means that the ratings are only
>>>>accurate at that time control.
>>>>Jim
>>>
>>>You are, of course, correct. It is impossible to have a SINGLE rating that is
>>>accurate at ALL time controls.
>>>
>>>jm
>>
>>The problem is, this is a very unpopular/uncommon time control.  I don't know
>>what would be most desirable but I'm sure 5/10 is not it.
>>Jim
>
>The reason that a Fischer time control was chosen was so the games could
>continue indefinitely, and all personalities (and humans) wouldn't have to worry
>about losing on time as much as with a fixed time control (you always have at
>least 10 seconds to make your next move).
>
>The reasons that the time control is relatively short are twofold:
>1) The development team wanted to make the games short enough for the human
>testers so they would be more willing to play all 30 games required for the
>test. If the time control had required a longer time commitment from the
>testers, they very likely would have received less data.
>2) Over 13,000 further comp vs. comp games needed to be played to complete the
>testing and get reasonably accurate ratings for all of the personalities. At
>5/10, the testing was done literally a few days before the program was finished.
>Obviously, then, a longer time control would have caused the ratings testing to
>not be finished within the deadlines of the main program.
>
>jm

Hello John,
All good reasons and I agree with them.  The problem is your team seems to have
ignored the most important ingredient in the formula.  A rating (Even if not
perfectly accurate) would be more useful to people at a more popular time
control. On ICC/FICS some of the popular time controls are 5/3 or 2/12.  In any
case I'm sure people will appreciate this feature of trying to find their own
rating if they don't already belong to some organization that will give them a
rating.  As usual the new ChessMaster has some bugs and hopefully they will be
fixed soon.  I have two almost identical computers and CM8K failed to install on
one of them.  I will write an email to Tech support today.  I get an error
message:

An error occurred during the move data process:-133
Component Data for classic chess games
File Group:dll_classic
File:F:\Classic8k.pgn
I did manage to install CM8K on the second computer by doing a selective install
of only the first 4 components on the list and it works (kindof).
Jim



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