Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 06:54:54 07/13/98
Go up one level in this thread
On July 13, 1998 at 03:40:28, Peter McKenzie wrote: >>>Do you really think the Computer Chess World would be best served by >>>a 16 player tournament? This seems like a dated concept - especially >>>to the *many* programmers who would likely be excluded :-). >>>Surely the aim of such a tournament is not only to establish the champion >>>program/machine combination, but to stimulate activity in the field. >>> >> >> >>my response would be that it *is* the WCCC. Can you or I get into the >>human world chess championship cycle? No chance. The WMCCC is ideal to let >>everyone in. For the WCCC I'd much prefer to see a reduced field with fewer >>rounds to make large machines possible again. > >Comparisons with the world human championship are of limited use. >If you're going to start comparisons with the human world chess championship, >then why don't you start asking why we only have a 5 round swiss? >If you proposed a 5 round swiss between the top 16 players for the next >world human championship, you would not be taken seriously. > Just for fun, I'd like to see a world championship event (human) where the winner is decided by some 5 minute blitz games if the regular (Swiss) event ends in a tie. Think that would also not be taken seriously? :) (hint: look at the last WCC event won by Karpov, and look at how many rounds he played at a regular time control, and then what happened after that was a draw.) :) >>>The best solution is to make it a large tournament, with a sufficiently >>>large number of rounds (eg. 9) to make it a decent tournament. A >>>slightly reduced time control is a very small price to pay for the >>>advantages of this format. >>> >> >> >> >>the math for 9 rounds is hopeless... IE there are two good ways to run >>a tournament, as the "humans" have found out: >> >>1. a swiss where rounds <= log2(players). >> >>2. a round-robin > >I dispute this. I've played in many good tournaments where the above >does not hold. can you give an example cross-table? I've *never* played in a swiss, human or computer, where log2(entries) was way less than the number of rounds actually played. There is definite math involved in choosing the right number of rounds for a Swiss to work properly. Too few and you end up with ties in all the top positions. Too many and the same thing happens... > >> >>a swiss with rounds > log2(players) is a waste of time after a couple of >>extra rounds. All you are doing is just playing games, because you have >>already seen the best 3-4 programs play each other by the time you get to >>log2(players). If you make the stupid mistake Jaap made at the last WMCCC >>and use accelerated pairings, you make this worse, and not better. But >>simply stated, too many rounds is no better than too few, unless too many >>becomes a round robin... > >Surely more rounds adds greater statistical confidence to the results, even >in a swiss. Actually, for the winner, maybe. But it also adds random chance due to the pairings. Which is why a round-robin is the fairest scheme as pairings don't affect the outcome with everyone playing everyone. The last WMCCC event shows what can happen however, in that all the top programs had played by round 5 or 6, so that the only question left was would a top-rated program make that one bad move and lose against a lower rated program or not? At every WCCC and ACM event I've attended, with one exception in 1984, the last round determined the champion. In 1984 we had clinched 1st before the last round because someone had lost unexpectedly (Belle I believe). > >>As far as the time control, I hate to see it change. Humans play 40/2. I'd >>like to see computer events do the same, so the games are somewhat comparable. >>Also because every WCCC since 1974 (first one) have been 40/2, as have all of >>the ACM events that I have attended. > >These are valid points but times change, perhaps we need to change too. > >I think this could be a good topic for an opinion poll. > >Regards, >Peter McKenzie
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