Author: José Carlos
Date: 04:47:56 07/17/01
Strength is not an absolute magnitude. We can say player A is stronger than player B, and at most, we can figure how much stronger is A over B. But we don't have a mathematical definition of strength that fits every subjective definition people have. For example, if we ask GM’s (experts on the matter) who was stronger in his best time, Botwinnik or Capablanca, we’ll hear different answers with different reasons supporting them. If we try to define strength difference in terms of results, we have the problem of the number of games. To know with enough certainity degree the relative strength of a pool of players, we need thousands of games between them, that we don’t have. In the best case, we’d get the _relative_ strength of _that pool_ of players in _that exact moment of time_. We know human players vary in strength from one day to the next. Additionally, we couldn’t compare any of those players with any other outside the pool. The definition of strength as results implies, IMO, that it’s nonsense to compare players that have not played each other, because the results against third players are in _different contexts_, so it means very little. That leads to the fact that we can’t compare players of different epochs this way. So, it’s time to have a look at human tournaments and matches. In the past (I prefer not to consider the present situation) the world champion was decided by a very short number of games. First in zone tournaments, candidates and then against the previous champion. He didn’t play _all players in the world_ neither enough _statistically significant_ number of games. And we had no problem considering that player the world champion. All of this I’m speaking of, is just to try to show that it’s impossible by definition to speak of _absolute strength_, and that we humans have not bothered too much until now in the correctness of the practical relative strength. Personally, I don’t find any interesting this (useless?) search for strength measurement, neither for computers nor for humans. I stick to the old fashion tournaments where everything was possible; where a weak player beating a strong player was a ‘big surprise’ rather than a ‘statistical event’; where the champion was the champion, no matter his ELO. I’m afraid I should’ve been born in other time... in the past. :) José C.
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