Author: Louis Fagliano
Date: 09:18:39 06/19/02
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On June 19, 2002 at 07:18:25, GuyHaworth wrote: > >There are ELO rating lists for: > > people (on the basis of human-human games ... FIDE-managed), and > computers (on the basis of computer-computer games) > >There are apparently some intrinsic problems with rating schemes, maybe >particularly ELO which was the first, and I am looking for more information on >this. > >Each list would be equally valid if N ELO points were subtracted from all >participants ... so the absolute numbers mean nothing. Ok, that would be easy >to fix if there were rated people-computer games. So .... > >... is there an ELO list purely on the basis of computer-human games. > >I have also heard that there is an 'inflation effect' with ELO. What is this - The inflation effect with elo ratings comes about when a group of high rated players play only themselves. The era of "super tournaments" has caused this with the top human GM's. Kasparov has achieved a rating of over 2800 while Fischer, Spassky, Botvinnik, and other World Champions of the past have never approached this. This does not mean that Kasparov is 100-150 elo better than Botvinnik and would have crushed him in a match. Spassky, Fischer, et al, had to play in tournaments with many lower rated masters (IM's) in them because "super tournaments" were not available and beating someone 200 points lower than yourself would not gain you much in your own rating. Kasparov hardly plays anybody in a tournament other than Anand, Adams, Kramnik, Bareev, Ivanchuk, Topolov, Shirov, Morozevich, Ponomariov, Leko, etc., so how can he lose much on his rating if he draws or loses to the above? It's probably been 10-15 years since he's played an IM in a serious tournament game. You can see this also happening on the internet. There are several computer accounts with rating of over 3000 on the ICC because they have in their formula where they won't play anybody (human or comp) with a rating 100 points or more lower. The way to combat ratings inflation is to require some minimum number of game that must be played against opponents that have, say, a rating of at least 200-250 points lower than your own. Unfortunately, I don't think FIDE will ever implement and and enforce this.
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