Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 21:00:53 07/13/03
Go up one level in this thread
On July 13, 2003 at 15:03:38, Sune Fischer wrote: >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. I'm not either. But if you watch a 2000 computer play a 2600 computer, it _seems_ to me that the 2000 computer wins more games than it should. Or at least draws more than it should. I certainly can't prove this however, but experience seems to (at least in my case) support this conclusion. > >>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? If you let a new, strong player start at the top, he can establish a higher rating than if he started at the bottom and stumbled a few times, all the while dragging everyone's rating above him downward, rather than just jumping on the top few and leaping over them. > >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. I don't mean to imply it is necessary for everyone to play. But in the case of the SSDF, the _bottom_ players are not playing. That seems to be problematic. > >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. No, but the next player that beats up on Kasparov is not going to start with him. He's going to start on the bottom and work his way up the chain until he gets to Kasparov, probably dragging _everyone's_ rating down just a bit. > >-S.
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