Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 10:38:30 07/14/03
Go up one level in this thread
On July 14, 2003 at 03:27:27, Uri Blass wrote: >On July 14, 2003 at 00:00:53, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>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. > >What experience? On servers. At a couple of dozen ACM and WCCC and WMCCC events. on matches played here locally during testing. Etc. > >If you use games on chess servers then it is possible that the 2000 computer >simply updated the software but the result are still not written in the rating >list so this is different experience than ssdf. > >If you are talking about static programs than based on my memory there was a >version of cray blitz that beated Genius1 in every game. With a big hardware advantage. But It didn't win every game even though it certainly should have. I don't remember the specifics now, but I played something like 20 games and hit two or three draws. That was suggesting a difference of 400+ rating points. The real difference was far greater. > >Cray blitz had a big hardware difference but I do not think that the difference >was more than 600 elo. At that point in time, we were talking about 500K nodes per second for Cray Blitz vs genius on a 486/33, if I recall the hardware. The difference was probably way more than 600 elo, based on human vs computer games against both. I'm not sure whether it was genius 1 or genius 2, but I played the program a lot and it was not hard to beat it N games in a row at reasonable time controls (not blitz). I could _never_ beat Cray Blitz at any reasonable time control. > >Uri > >> >>> >>>>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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