Author: José Carlos
Date: 02:23:14 05/31/02
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 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 I'm surprised someone like you make such statements. I thought you must understand how ELO system works. First, human players change their strength over time. Today's players strength is different than yesterday's. In sum, the difference is probably very small from one day to the next day, but it exists. More days, more difference. Depending upon your rating, the applied constant is different. So if a player rated 2000 wins from a player rated 2400, the first wins more elo points than the second loses, which means the total elo in the pool varies. As new players enter the pool, changing (improving) their strength very quickly, they get more and more points from older players who eventually retire, so global elo increases also. FIDE system changes the ELO every 6 months, and remains constant in between. This implies that your ELO variation is different if you play a certain player the day before the rating changes or the day after. There're many more reasons why ELO system is not reliable. This no-reliability, this error margin, is small in small time periods, bug gets huge when you try to extrapolate over years. In computer chess the error is smaller, since programs strength is constant over time. Nevertheless, new programs usually have book lines designed to beat certain opponents, so the strengh difference is not correctly correlated to results, but I admit it's much more stable than in human chess. One more thing: Human players don't play enough games to get statistical significance. José C.
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