Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 09:20:53 01/07/04
Go up one level in this thread
On January 07, 2004 at 12:01:22, Mike Hood wrote: >On January 07, 2004 at 09:50:39, Mark R. Anderson wrote: > >>On January 07, 2004 at 08:44:36, J. C. Boco wrote: >> >>>Korchnoi continues to play even though his rating keeps dropping. >>> >>>I respect him more than any other player. >> >>I agree, I respect the "old lion" greatly also, including his aggressive play. >>Yes, he keeps playing. Bless him, he's the real "Energizer Bunny." Look at >>Fischer, who complained for years that the Russians did not play enough when >>they were world champs, and then when HE won, he did not play one single game in >>competition. What a hypocrite! I totally do not respect him (even beyond his >>offensive, anti-semitic, paranoid rants). >> >>Above all, to say that Fischer is still rated as 2780 is completely ludicrous! >>Any of the top players now would thrash him completely with little difficulty. >>Chess theory, especially the openings, have changed much in the last 30+ years. >>Also, Fischer is much older and has not played competitive chess for 32 years. >>That's a h*** of a long layoff for a world-class player! When he beat Spassky >>(who is a nice person, which Fischer can't claim), Spassky himself at that time >>had just gone out of the top 100, and even that was 12 years ago. Fischer's >>so-called "rating" of 2780 puts him at the level of Kramnik. Can anyone here >>really even entertain a fleeting thought that the Fischer of right now would put >>up serious resistence against Kramnik? And that's what ratings are supposed to >>reflect .... a player's current strength, not how they played more than 30 years >>ago. By FIDE's logic, Muhammad Ali should be ranked #1 in boxing right now. >> >>FIDE should de-list players who have been inactive for 2 or 3 years, much less >>32. To put a player inactive for 32 years as the #2 player in the world is an >>insult to current, competing, hard-working, world-class players, such as >>Kramnik, Anand, Shirov, Bareev, Svidler, etc. They have demonstrated their >>great strength repeatedly and recently, not over 3 decades ago. Well, sorry, >>enough of that .... I grow weary of "Fischer worship" when he does not deserve >>it. Fischer played many beautiful games, but that was 32-45 years ago. Let's >>admire (in chess terms) people like Kasparov and Kramnik who continue to put >>their reputations on the line frequently, even against our beloved chess >>programs! >> >>Mark Anderson > >Thanks, Mark, I agree with everything you say. My original post was meant >sarcastically -- I've surprised Mike Byrne took it seriously -- but it did have >a serious message. I wanted to point out an inherant flaw in the way the rating >lists are compiled. If you're rating computer programs it doesn't matter much, >because Shredder 7 on identical hardware will play exactly as well this year as >it did last year. But humans are different. Great players build up their skill >over the years, reach a peak, then gradually fade away. Some fade faster than >others! When rating humans it's nonsensical to consider games older than 3 to 5 >years. Robert Fischer shouldn't be in the rating list, not even as in inactive >player. Maybe if a player is absent from the chess scene for one or two years >because of illness, family pressure, living in a war zone, or whatever reason, >he can still be listed. But only for a couple of years. > >P.S. I have no wish to knock Bobby Fischer or start a thread defending/attacking >him. I was just using him as an example of how the list is "wrong". What is the reasonable thing to do with "old" people [over 40?]? Chessbase solves this problem by providing a graph of the performance rating of the chessplayer as a function of date. This makes it easy to see the player's lifetime peak rating. FIDE, on the other hand, provides a single number. What is FIDE to do? What if Fischer were, to everybody's surprise and shock, to enter a high-category swiss system tournament tomorrow? What rating should the tournament organizers use for pairing purposes? What Fischer rating would have to be used to compute the performance ratings of the other players after the tournament was done? Some of these are difficult questions, at least for me. Perhaps tournament directors and organizers should use their own personal estimates of playing strengths of the tournament players to determine pairings. It has been ten years since I played in a rated over-the-board tournament. Since that time I have analyzed and studied an uncountable number of GM games, as well as games of friends. Can anyone be absolutely sure that my current chess playing strength has deteriorated? Maybe all that analysis and study has made me stronger! If I enter a tournament, what rating should the tournament director and organizers use for me? The rating I had ten years ago is my last published rating. To bring this bulletin back into the realm of computer chess, note that all of the comments above might apply to engines inasmuch as engines sometimes go through many changes since the last time they played in a tournament. The ratings of yesterday may not be 100% accurate estimates of current playing strength [although they would be close.]
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