Author: Paul Sakov
Date: 17:41:28 05/30/02
Go up one level in this thread
On May 30, 2002 at 17:59:35, Amir Ban wrote: >On May 30, 2002 at 13:34:25, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On May 30, 2002 at 13:19:45, Dann Corbit wrote: >> >>>On May 30, 2002 at 13:15:59, Jerry Jones wrote: >>> >>>>Does anybody know what the highest official ELO rating according to FIDE is that >>>>was ever attained by a human, Kasparov that is. >>>>Is it possible that a few years ago his rating was a few points higher ? >>>>If Kasparov had declined to play Deep Blue, would this have influenced his >>>>rating ? >>> >>>You can add one million points to his ELO rating if you like. Or subtract them. >>> Just be sure to do it to everyone else and it is perfectly valid. >>> >>>ELO figures are only valuable as differences within a pool of players who have >>>had many competitions against each other. The absolute numbers mean absolutely >>>nothing. >> >> >>This is a continual problem. :) 32 degrees F means one thing. 32 degrees C >>means another thing. 32 degrees K means another thing. No way to compare >>today's 2850 rating to the ratings of players 40 years ago. > >It is perfectly sensible to compare ratings of 40 years ago and even more to >today's. That's because at no point in time did the pool of players change, with >an old group completely replaced by another. The ratings are measured against >the field, which changes continuously, and provides continuity of the ratings. > >So, even if Kasparov and Fischer never met (certainly Kasparov 2001 never met >Fischer 1972), they had many common opponents, whose ratings where themselves >determined by common opponents, etc. There's no more reason to assume that >ratings in time are incomparable than to assume that ratings in the US and in >Europe are incomparable, for, although most games are in one region, there are >enough interregional games to give the ratings worldwide meaning. There are a number of reasons for a possible trend in ELO ratings over time. 1. For a given pool, the sum of ratings is constant over time. Therefore, assuming that the players in the pool play at some constant strength, the only dynamical factor will be the rating given to incoming players. If the strength of a newly rated player 30 years ago was different from that now, then the strength corresponding to some fixed rating value would be different as well. As chess become more popular, and the age (and skill level) at which a player obtains his first rating goes down, the ratings would probably tend to inflate over time. There are a number of observations that could confirm this. E.g., Kasparov has probably passed his peak, still his rating keeps on growing. 2. Another important factor is the width of the field a player plays with. The underlying hypothesis under ELO rating system is that if player A is stronger than player B by, say, 200 points, and player B is stronger than player C by 200 points, than player A is stronger than player C by 400 points. In practise, this does not hold. On avarage, you would get points by playing with much higher rated players and loose points by playing with much lower rated players. Thus, with the number of GMs sharply increasing, top GMs probably play much less games with players rated 200+ below than they did 30 years ago. > >There are random fluctuations in the rating standard, because it's all >statistics, but the numbers are large, and I'm not aware of anything that would >cause ratings to systematically drift in any direction (actually this can be >simulated effectively, by creating a random population of players and slowly >change the pool over time and see if averages drift). > >Most strong players agree that the level of play is higher than 30 years ago, >and that's a good enough reason why today top ratings are higher. > >Fischer, Alekhine, Capablanca are of course classics, but so are Johnnie >Weissmuller and Jessie Owens, who would be today's also-rans. It is tempting to >say that this is because today our clocks run slower than in their time, but >they don't. > >Amir
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