Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 17:29:33 01/23/04
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On January 23, 2004 at 15:55:38, margolies,marc wrote: >I am trying to figure this, Bob. Did you suggest that tournament results would >be more or less useful for program development when participants and observers >cared less about the tournament outcome? >thanks, Marc > > > > >On January 23, 2004 at 11:26:42, Bob Durrett wrote: > >---snip--- >>I see a tournament as being a tool too. It helps us to improve our odds of >>being on the right path. If we seek to determine who [or what] is best, who is >>second best, etc., then statistics provides us with useful tools to improve our >>chances of "getting it right." But there is no guarantee. >> >>It appears absolutely true that every tournament provides some information. The >>problem is in identifying that information, measuring it, and finding a good way >>to express or communicate that new information. >> >>This forum seems to have a problem coming to grips with the idea that there is >>useful information in every tournament. People seem "hung up" on the mandate to >>determine a "winner." That causes all kinds of misunderstandings. >> No, Marc. My bulletin was more in the nature of a private joke between me and good 'ol Rolf. It is possible that I was also taking a "friendly jab" at another fellow here as well, but that was not you and the guy is one of the "good guys" too. Truly, my feeling is that drawing conclusions based solely on win/loss/draw statistics is a losing proposition right from the start! If I were the one who played those games, or if my brainchild chess-playing program were to have played those games, you'd better believe that I would post-mortem analyze those games to death! All this hoo-rah about wins, losses, and draws would be down in the noise level. I would be searching for test positions where my engine didn't play as well as it should have and my main concern would be in fixing any bugs or weaknesses in my program. Having studied probability and statistics as a math major in graduate school [I later got a graduate degree in engineering], I got more exposure to statistics than any SANE human would ever want. When I retired, I took Emanual Lasker's advice and immediately set out to purge as much of that nonsense out of my mind as possible. [As I recall, he said he memorized a bunch of chess "information" as a young man and then spent the rest of his life trying to forget that stuff.] Do you realize that there are people who actually devote their entire careers to statistics [I call it "sadistics"]? Talk about an esoteric or arcane profession, . . . that's it! It's worse than being a chess engine book maker or an endgame tablebase guru! : ) So, in a sense I sort of agree with what you said, sort-of, assuming that you don't mean that too literally. Winning a chess tournament can be a great ego booster. I know from personal experience, having won a few. But I think in-depth analysis of the games would return a lot more information useful for improving the design of the chess-playing programs. Only IMHO, of course. I am not a chess programmer so cannot be sure [with the right confidence level, etc., etc. . . . ] Bob D.
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