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Subject: Re: Inflationary Effects?

Author: Sune Fischer

Date: 12:03:38 07/13/03

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On July 13, 2003 at 12:42:19, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>I (and many others) believe that the Elo system works well for players
>that are pretty close in rating.  It seems to work less well (in the case
>of computers) for players that are significantly separated in ratings.

I agree mostly, not sure why it should be different for computers though.

>Starting at the top eliminates the bottom of the pool from the "war".  If
>the bottom can't drop, then neither can the players at the top.  So you get a
>new top.  If you start the new (and strong) program at the bottom, he will
>drop _everybody_ as he goes up, and it would seem that this would result in
>the new player going to the right "differential" spot but that it might be
>lower than it would have been with a high start.

As we just agreed it is a bad idea to play matches with a big Elo difference, so
I don't understand why you think it is a good idea now?

There is no need for everyone to play everyone for the system to work.
What is required is for one single entry to be able to *affect* the ratings in
the entire pool, but head to head matches against all is not the only way to do
this.

For instance you don't see Kasparov beating up a lot of FMs, that doesn't mean
his rating is wrong or that the FIDE scale is broken. As a matter of fact it
would probably be broken if he did, because the formula is less accurate in
these cases, as we started out agreeing on.

-S.



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