Author: Albert Silver
Date: 05:56:49 03/17/99
This whole story about Mark's account screwing up the ratings on Chess4u has
been somewhat interesting. No doubt a few will disagree. The reason is that NO
ONE except for Hyatt, though for different reasons, actually gave any credence
to this. Chess4u is right, but not about Mark. The accounts that inevitably
cause inflation are the ones that use more than one program or accounts where a
lot of testing is done. Suppose I have, as Mark did, Hiarcs 7 running on a
PII-450 and it gets an official rating of 2800. No problem as it is indeed
playing at that level and it's results correspond accordingly. Now suppose after
about 2 months, I see the latest version of GNU chess out. The author claims it
is vastly improved and should be playing much better, though no one knows just
how much. I decide to test it with my account. GNU chess is not a 2800 player,
but when testing starts it is playing with a 2800 rating. It gets trounced by
the super opposition and the rating drops until it stabilizes at around 2300. I
am not personally worried as after the testing is done, H7 will obviously regain
it's lost points. The problem is that 500 points were spread out in the pool and
they don't properly represent an increase in strength on the opponents' part.
When I get back, I don't go to 2800, but a bit higher as I am now playing the
same opponents, but with slightly higher ratings. If a program undergoes
testing, and experiences severe rating fluctuations while it is being tested,
then the same phenomenon takes place. Bob is obviously already aware of this as
his notes to his Crafty account on ICC state that opponents who clearly play him
ONLY when Crafty's rating is high but never when it is at a low, will be
'noplayed'.
Albert Silver
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