Dave (from the UK) wrote:
There have been several arguments on here about determining the rating
of an absolute beginner at chess, who knows only the moves.

The thread 'Improve your chess in 7 days or less' got its name changed
to 'Rip-off of Reinfeld', then into 'beginner rating' etc.

Rather than change the name again, I thought I'd start a *new* thread.

Values of 0, 500 and 1000 have all been mentioned.

See this thread for example.

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec...779ed9a29f868b

Just to be a devils advocate, here is a PROOF, based on arguments like
Heisenberg's uncertainly principal, that the rating of a complete
beginner, who only knows the moves, can NEVER be determined.

1) In order to determine with any useful statistical significance the
ELO rating of a player, you need to establish that with multiple games.
For example, on ICC one gets a provisional rating until one has played
20 games.

2) After playing the number of games necessary to establish the rating
with useful statistical significance, the player is no longer a complete
beginner.

Hence such a rating can NEVER be determined.

Comments?
--
Dave (from the UK)

Please note my email address changes periodically to avoid spam.
It is always of the form:
Hitting reply will work for a few months only - later set it manually.

http://witm.sourceforge.net/ (Web based Mathematica front end)

It's all well and nice to talk about Heisenberg's uncertainty
principle, but this is the real world. The ELO formula requires that
the player must have SOME number applied to it, although it doesn't
matter WHAT that number is. And since we're talking about "ratings",
we're pretty much talking about ELO (although other formulae exist,
they are much less accepted).

Just because there's a magic rating of 2000 for Masters and 2500 for
GMs, they could easily have been any other numbers. But a player's
rating can never be "undefined", unless the ELO formula is replaced by
something else that can handle such a starting point.

jm