On Nov 16, 7:00 am, "Chess One" wrote:

Now and again I chat with the geniuses who administer chess in this country.

Can you be specific: which country? Do you /believe/
you are in Ireland, for instance? Or England? (There is
a strange flag by your name at ChessWorld -- not the
stars and stripes, nor even the flag of the Confederacy.)


One problem in conducting conversations is agreeing what words mean, and
yesterday we stumbled over this one: STRENGTH

So when you say 'strength' what do you mean?

Some people say that ratings don't equal strength, but I never understand
what that means - at least as a general statement ratings indicate
playing strength, but no computer program has a real, honest-to-goodness rating.


Ratings and strength are two different things (if I
counted correctly).

A player who retires from play for twenty years
may still have a rating of, say, 2825 or so, but
no longer be anything but a mere vestige of his
former self.

Some players can be observed to put far less
effort into games against their vast inferiors, and
expend far greater effort when playing those few
they recognize as their superiors.

But the ratings system blurs all results together,
mixing and stirring until all that remains is a blah
number. The number is accurate and fair, but it
contains less information, perhaps, than an
informed observer well-acquainted with the
subject in question.

Let me give a real-world example: here in the
state of Indiana there is a player named Emory
Tate, and he has been "taken out" of contention
more than once by far lesser players, when
competing for say, the state title. Yet when he
faces off against "other GMs" (yes, he actually
believes he is one!) his results are much better
that his rating would predict -- or at least his
upset potential is. This is most likely because
of his far greater effort in those games, and his
relative lack of effort when playing patzers.

At the other end of the scale there are many
players who have low ratings, but who are in the
process of studying and improving rapidly; such
players' ratings could well be off by a class or
more, since they knew so little to begin with.
If an average player were to sit down thinking he
was expected to win, and take the improving
player's rating too seriously, the result could be
disastrous.

Where ratings come in handy is in removing
the problem of human bias from the equation;
there are countless cases where someone will,
for whatever reason, proclaim that player-X is
far better than his actual rating, but where this
is entirely the result of personal bias, not facts.

When such unsubstantiated claims surface,
it is possible to look at results /objectively/ by
taking raw numbers and doing math -- where
the human-bias element is removed from the
equation altogether, *if* the equations and
relevant data were determined in an objective
manner, with no room for human meddling.


-- help bot