Ralf Callenberg wrote:
13.06.2006 02:04, Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (wlod):

the presence of the rating system for pros
reliefs the open system from the pressure
of being extra subtle,

"Subtle" in which sense?

Please, be patient. I will address these issues
in separate posts.

Most players, including amateurs don't regard
ratings as fun but take it quite seriously.

Serious rating has to cost money.
Amateurs who want a serious rating
would have to pay for rating quite a bit,
say $10 per game instead of 1 cent per
game; even $10 per game would be possible
oinly if there were enough of them to pay
such a fee, and to justify the system.
After all, if they are not very strong, they would
have to pay for the rating themselves, they would
not find any sposors (excpet for some romantic
cases :-)

It would be useless and even unethical
to make a serious reference to the open rating
to claim one's chess strength.

It will happen nevertheless.

But others would be entitled to doubt the vadility
of such claims (and we would make fun of them
on rgc[mp] :-)

Why all this is important? Because it'd make
the open system cheaper, something like a
penny per game, per player.

What exactly will make it cheaper?

A multipurpose rating, which had to serve
also professionals, would need all kind
of constructions and precautions which
amateur system does not need. E.g. in a
purely amateur system I would not worry
that someone is using a PC program on
his/her 2nd computer. (A whole spectrum
of rating systems is possible, say a semi-
professional rating, with different fees per
game, but it's premature to go into such
complications).

On the other hand, the professionally rated
games would have to be played under
well understood and controlled circumstances.

Principally this is already the case with the Elo-rating.

In this post I am not attempting anything truly
original. I just wanted to state certain issues
to make future discussions easier.

The pro rating system should make cheating
virtually impossible.

And the example of arranged tournaments tells,
that this is quite difficult.

Prearranging is impossible to counter 100%, but
at least one can reduce the number of motives
for this kind of cheating. Here is a realistic goal:

it should not be possible to gain anything
by cheating for people who otherwise
don't care one for another.

Let me make it more precise (and modest):

it should be impossible for a party of two
or more people to cheat in such a way
that would gain anything in terms of their
total monetary award.

This is a very nice, objective goal (you see,
you have strimulated me to formulate some
original ideas :-). This is a minimal requirement,
sure, but maximal are imppossible.

Here is a silution within the pennies (perhaps
I'll work on it more pedantically later):

There is a fixed amount of $$ which
participants of the event are going
to win. The money will be distributed
after thetournament proportionally to
each player's rating performance.

As you see, for any reasonable rating function,
the total amount of $$ won by any subgroup
of pplayers depends mainly of their performance
against other players and almost does not
depend on the results between the conspiring
players (or else the rating function is useless
and should not be used).

I understand that I didn't solve all the problems.
At least I gave you an idea how to address such
issues. I have implemented at least one
modest partially cheating preventing axiom.

One has to address the whole competition system
(not just rating). For instance:

When you have an elemination tournament,
where the top 1 or top 4 players advance to
the next stage then cheating is imppossible
to avoid, when some players are dishonest.
It is imppossible to avoid because there is
no objective way to tell cheating from the
honest playing (and losing to a friend). Afterwards
one can play all kind of probabilistic games but
they will never amount to a proof of cheating.

And "cheating" is not even the best notion
for this topic. There can be perfectly ethical
but still objectively dobtful situation.
Consider titles awarded for Olimpic performances.
At a chess Olimpiad it is possible to choose
your opponents and to avoid some other
opponents. It is also possible to say pass
once you made norm, while in a regular tournament
you'd have to play to the end, thus risking your norm.
(This issue is not abstract. It was actually relevant,
if you check carefully the history of Olimpiads).
All this makes olimpic performances unsuitabe for
the purpose of awarding titles. Actually, the whole
notion of GM titles was imperfect (but good enough
for the practical purposes at the time).

Such a sophistication would be essential
to professionals (but not to amateurs).

Sophisticated equations don't make it more
expensive to calculate. So,
why not giving it also to the amateurs?


Ralf, thanks to the wikipedia controversy,
I know that fairness is essential to you, that
you attach a value to the notion of fairness.
Thus, please, don't put words in my mouth.
I never said that the cost inducing sophistication
of the rating SYSTEM is related to the sophistication
of the rating FUNCTION. Please, be patient. I hope
to explain things in the next posts.

Ironically, I said something opposite to what
you imply about my position. I said on rgc[mp]
SEVERAL times that the rating function should
be SIMPLE. (Only a mathematically unsohisticated
"expert", like Elo, would go for a sososophisticated
function).

Regards,

Wlod