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Subject: Re: Why I Believe That The Elo System Will Soon Stop Working

Author: Graham Laight

Date: 03:33:08 11/21/03

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On November 21, 2003 at 06:20:40, Odd Gunnar Malin wrote:

>On November 21, 2003 at 05:07:32, Graham Laight wrote:
>
>>Everybody knows that as chess computers improve, the proportion of draws in
>>their games becomes higher.
>>
>>The same is true of humans: the following graph suggests that at Elo 3600, all
>>games will be drawn: http://math.bu.edu/people/mg/ratings/Draws.jpg . I also
>>think that a player who plays at Elo 3600 would be unbeatable - no matter how
>>good his opponent was. For a 3600 player, obtaining a draw would, IMO, be almost
>>as easy as it would be for me to obtain a draw against Kasparov with only a king
>>against a king and a knight. In this situation, Kasparov's extra skill and
>>knowledge of the game (and his extra piece) would count for nothing.
>>
>>If what I'm saying is right (and I personally think that it is), then there's a
>>serious problem ahead for the Elo rating system: the system measures chess skill
>>by a player's likelihood of beating another player. However - if the computer
>>that can see 50 ply ahead is unable to beat the machine that can only see 25 ply
>>ahead, then, according to the Elo rating system, it would have the same Elo
>>rating!
>>
>
>There are more players in the pool.
>Would the result (over time) against a 20 ply player be equal for both?

Up to elo 3600, the program with the best eval function would win.

My argument is that once elo 3600 is reached, a program would never be beaten -
no matter how deeply the opponent could search(see
http://www.talkchess.com/forums/1/message.html?329073 to see my case for this
position).

-g

>Odd Gunnar



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