Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 12:03:26 10/27/99
Go up one level in this thread
On October 27, 1999 at 13:50:46, Dann Corbit wrote: >If you play someone one hundred points lower than you, they will get 36% of the >points and you will get 64% and your rating will stay the same. >If you play someone 200 points lower, you will get 76% of the points and they >will get 24% and your rating will stay the same. If you play someone 300 points >lower, you will get 85% of the points. If you play someone 400 points lower you >will get 91% of the points. At a 500 point difference, you will win 95% of the >points. At a 600 point difference, you will get 97% of the points. At a 2000 >point difference, you will win 99.99% of the points. In all cases, your rating >will stay the same. Playing lower rated players should not (in theory) change >your rating at all. The very rare draw or extremely rare loss to a low-rated >player will be balanced out by a bazillion wins. On the other hand, games >against players hundreds of points beneath you are not really very exciting >[imo]. Who would gather around to watch Kasparov play me? If he played Anand >or Adams or some highly skilled player, that would be something people want to >watch. The reason is that I have basically no chance of winning so the outcome >is pretty well known even before we start. So from a point of interest, I don't >think it makes a lot of sense to play opponents that are miles beneath. > >Those that claim your rating can be inflated by choosing opponents are not aware >of how the math works. And (let's suppose) that you have played someone ten >times and lost them all. You might think that -noplay would be good for you. >But look at all the recent SSDF contests where one program had a big lead and >suddenly lost it. Without a huge number of games, there is really no way to >know what the win expectancy would be, and once we know it accurately, then it >will only reflect upon our true rating. I think that Bob's point is that you can't get 0.4999 points for a win, so you get zero. If you play too far down, you get 0 for a win, lose 16 for a draw, and lose 32 for a loss. You can increase your rating by playing accounts you know are over-rated compared to you, and avoiding opponents that are under-rated compared to you. For instance, if you know that you are 200 points worse than your opponent, but they are rated 300 points above you, there are 50 free points, in theory. If you can find that you do better against than the rest of the world does, you've basically just permanently increased your rating, if you want to play it that way. People can play long matches on ICC in a very short time, and so you'll often find accounts that are dramatically over-rated, and this can be exploited. There are also accounts that are completely toxic, and unless you are selective you can get wrecked by these. If someone has had an attack of suicidal behavior, they are under-rated compared to almost everyone when they decide to get serious. I wouldn't be surprised if there were specific patterns that cause rating points to flow to certain accounts, permanently, causing a distortion in the rating bell curve. I'm not complaining about this, and I'm not thinking about a specific case, I am just pointing out this hypothetical, so people can get an idea how little ICC rating shows. bruce
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