Author: Mark Young
Date: 11:26:12 03/17/99
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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. You are correct, anytime you change programs, or say Bob test a new version of crafty and the new program is much stronger or weaker, this can cause problems. There are two ways to handle this problem, have a new account for every program and version you run, or let the computer accounts reset their rating to a provisional state when they test a new program, or version. I wish this last idea could be done. The problem is ICC will let you have more then one account, but its not free, and servers like Fics and Chessnet only allow one computer account per person. Mark Young 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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