Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Rating swings on ICC

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:03:27 07/31/98

Go up one level in this thread


On July 31, 1998 at 10:01:09, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On July 31, 1998 at 09:26:14, John Scalo wrote:
>
>>I've recently gotten my little engine up on ICC (Frankenstein) and I'm wondering
>>what kind of rating swings are normal. A few days ago I watched in
>>disappointment as the rating dropped more than 200 points and figured one of the
>>minor changes I made wasn't so minor. But now it's slowly climbing back up.
>>
>>For those of you who have computer accounts on ICC, do you see such wild swings?
>>
>>Thanks,
>>John
>
>
>200 is probably the normal "swing"...  for several reasons...  If you only play
>humans, you won't see that wide a swing probably... but if you play computers
>there are interesting problems... old programs on new hardware are much
>stronger, etc.  So you can get a program with a 2400 rating that is really
>much stronger than that, but hasn't caught up.. and it may catch up at your
>expense.. :)
>
>You can also get burned when a human finds a hole and tears into it repeatedly,
>but that lessens as you improve things...  (hopefully)

I also forgot one more important thing...  blitz is one example of a really
serious time problem.  5 0 highly favors computers.  2 12 is much better for
humans that 5 0, yet both are blitz.  I chose (a long time ago) to limit blitz
to 5 3 or faster, and make everyone play longer time controls as "standard" to
eliminate the time control problem...

If you mix a bunch of 5 0 games, your rating will climb, then a bunch of 2 12
games will see it drop...



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.