Author: Andrew Dados
Date: 06:58:04 03/17/99
Go up one level in this thread
On March 17, 1999 at 08:56:49, Albert Silver wrote:
>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
Some loose remarks on a subject:
According to your post *any* bigger rating fluctuation cause ratings
inflation. Same holds true when I come to server tired or, like some weekend
players, drunk. How does it differ from your point, dunno. Other rating -
related problem I noticed is deflational Glicko rating system implemented on
fics, which does not preserve points pool.... but that's a different story
(Well.. one guy blames computers for there is less and less players over 2000
and people seem to make little progress over time).
I've met some people who claim that computer accounts are overrated; a few
who claim that they skew rating system and many, who just think there are too
many (C)...
....yeah... blame the puters... :)
:Everybody, even aware that it makes little sense, want to compare rating
numbers from different systems (like icc and uscf). When they are lower rated on
chess servers (rarely)
they blame 'system' or (C)... those numbers are miningless as absolute values
and yet '2000' is way better then '1950'.....not to mention that magic 2200..
-Regards-
Andrew
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