Author: John Merlino
Date: 14:07:02 02/23/01
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On February 22, 2001 at 18:53:18, John Merlino wrote: >On February 22, 2001 at 18:32:30, Albert Silver wrote: > >>I presume the numbers were conjured up by the marketing department. Of course >it would be easy to justify too: let's see, after 5 games, the program >performed at 2450 (on the P2), which means there is an error margin of... >about 200 points so we'll say it's rated "roughly" 2625 according to >tests... :-) >> >> Albert > >No conjuring at all. > >The rating is an estimate based on several things: > >1) The SSDF (an independent Swedish organization) rated the engine in the >previous version of Chessmaster to be approximately 2475 at tournament time >controls on a Pentium 90. > >2) This rating was increased by approximately 150 points based on the minimum >spec machine for Chessmaster 8000, which is a Pentium II-233, under the general >rule that every doubling of processor speed increases rating by 70. So, it was >assumed that a PII-233 is about 4 times faster than a P-90 (although it is >probably more). So, now we're at approximately 2625. > >3) The SSDF rating is FIDE, and the Chessmaster ratings are USCF, which adds >another 150 points (although, maybe it should only be 100 -- this is probably >the only suspect portion of the equation). So, now we're at approximately 2775. > >4) Several thousand games were played between the computer personalities. In >some of them, the opponents were actual USCF rated humans, which gave the >results a much more "real-world" calculation. These games resulted in a >fine-tuning of Chessmaster's rating, but I'm not sure what the adjustment was >from that. >Overall, the Chessmaster personality scored +63 =1 -2 against 11 humans rated >above 2000 (average rating of these humans was 2145). I do know that the >strongest player in the test was rated 2375 and he lost all 6 games against the >Chessmaster. USCF ratings are believed to have this rule of thumb: If a player >is rated 400 or more points above his opponent, he is almost guaranteed to win >the game. So, this further enforces the 2775 rating from item 3. > >5) A further adjustment is done based on your computer's speed. > >jm I was wrong about step 3 above. Only 100 points were added. My notes were wrong. So the USCF rating on a P2-233 should be about 2725, not 2775. jm
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