On Apr 26, 6:24 pm, "David Kane" wrote:
"raylopez99" wrote in message

oups.com...

So, understanding how chess works, and how chess playing computers
work, and having seen Crafty evaluate pretty good myself, I have to
side with the original article.

I would not go so far as to say that I side with the original argument,
only that Riis' objections were groundless.

I agree Riis' objections were groundless.

In fact, the original authors
have done some groundbreaking work on developing a
methodology to rate chess players. It is, at the very least,
very interesting, and a refreshing change from the pseudo-science
historical ELO/chessmetrics stuff.

If you have a moment kindly articulate what you mean by pseudo-
science. I like Sonas' work, which has been used by the PGA (defunct
GM association). What I am aware of is that (from memory) it seems
Sonas rates players from different rating pools (which Sonas
acknowledges is faulty), that is to say from different time periods,
when in fact as Arpad Elo pointed out, as time progresses the rating
pool as a whole gets stronger. Also Sonas apparently (from reading
some of these threads) makes assumptions such as a player who plays
infrequently should gain or lose a different number of Elo points than
a player who plays regularly. What other 'pseudo-science' (which I
take to be what you feel are defects) are you referring to?


The problem with the work is
that it applies a new method to a very hard problem (ranking
world champions) when they haven't even shown the method's
worth when applied to easy problems (ranking everybody else).


Ranking everybody else meaning what? If the players compete regularly
against one another, the Elo Gaussian distribution seems a good way of
ranking to me. BTW I've seen Arpad Elo's scheme even applied to rank
world football (soccer) teams, and it's surprising how well the system
seems to work (Brazil was #1, as expected, and the other familiar
winners were in the top 10, even Greece, which won the Euro
Championships in 2004 and were considered a 'surprise team', in fact
was ranked at the time in the top 10 by this system, so the 2004
championship wasn't quite that big an upset, not unlike Euwe's victory
over Alekhine was not that big an upset because in fact Euwe was quite
a good player, albeit obscure).

I have previously expressed belief in the theory that "move rating" will
eventually surpass "result rating" as the gold standard measurement of
chess skill. This is a small first step, but there is much work left to
do.

Agreed, though I doubt move rating will eventually surpass 'result
rating' anytime soon, unless we develop a very powerful PC (which is
possible) and/or a quantum computer that can instantly solve the
entire chess tree to give a 'perfect' verdict on every move (i.e., the
move, with perfect play will end in victory, defeat or a draw).

RL

Then you conceed my point and indeed the point of Crafty rating chess
players.

OK, now if I used Crafty for analysis of Fritz or Rybka games, it would
certainly not agree and would often call their moves 'errors' even though
they are FAR stronger than crafty.

To properly analyze the world champions
you would need to use a program that is atleast equal in strength to
these champions. Crippled Crafty just doesn't cut it... now if they
used Rybka for analysis I wouldn't have any problem
with the study.

J.Lohner

On Apr 27, 7:54 am, David Richerby
wrote:
help bot wrote:

A silly statement. As we saw, the wild, attacking style of GK gave
GM Karpov a very hard time, except for their very first match. How
was GM Tal, in his prime, all that different from GM Kasparov?

Tal sacrificed for the attack; Kasparov sacrificed for the initiative,
according to somebody I read.

They say there's a fine line between love and hate,
but *this* is really splitting hairs. Obviously, the
road to attack is paved with stones bearing the label:
"gain the initiative".


Tal and Kasparov were dramatically
different in style. Quite apart from anything else, Kasparov's play
is much more sound than Tal's.

Perhaps. But I know of one game where GM Kasparov
sacked an entire Rook for nothing more than a few spite
checks -- and this is about as unsound as it gets with
these guys. And that game was hardly an exception,
apart from the rarity of winning a full Rook down at that
level despite the idiotic attack.


Of course, Tal's play was sound enough
to win in many cases; who needs to be more sound than that?

It depends mainly on whom you are playing. For
instance, against DeepFritz, it would be wise to refrain
from unsound sacrifices altogether.


Another example was the cool, calm, collected Bobby Fischer, who was
overwhelmed by GM Tal in his prime

You mean the +4-2=5 career record

Lapsing beyond well GM Tal's prime now, and into GM
Fischer's. In between there were, I believe, three other
world champions.


(excluding the two blitzgames at
Herzeg Novi, which were both won by Fischer and which were ten years
after the rest of the games) in Tal's favour?

No, I was talking about GM Tal's prime, just as I wrote.
The year 1959 leaps to mind.


[GM Fischer] calmly observed after the fact that GM Tal's
hyper-aggressive play was "unsound".

Tal never claimed to be sound.

Who cares? You are beginning to sound like Taylor
Kingston, who wishes to substitute mere hearsay for hard
evidence. As I see it, it makes no difference what GM
Tal said; he either was, or he wasn't, sound; and on top
of this, he is to be disqualified on the basis of knowing
himself personally.


He just claimed to be sound enough to
be very difficult to beat over the board.

This is immaterial to what I was talking about, although
it might prove relevant to a discussion of GM Tal's
humility.

-- help bot

"raylopez99" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Apr 26, 6:24 pm, "David Kane" wrote:
"raylopez99" wrote in message

oups.com...

So, understanding how chess works, and how chess playing computers
work, and having seen Crafty evaluate pretty good myself, I have to
side with the original article.

I would not go so far as to say that I side with the original argument,
only that Riis' objections were groundless.

I agree Riis' objections were groundless.

In fact, the original authors
have done some groundbreaking work on developing a
methodology to rate chess players. It is, at the very least,
very interesting, and a refreshing change from the pseudo-science
historical ELO/chessmetrics stuff.

If you have a moment kindly articulate what you mean by pseudo-
science. I like Sonas' work, which has been used by the PGA (defunct
GM association). What I am aware of is that (from memory) it seems
Sonas rates players from different rating pools (which Sonas
acknowledges is faulty), that is to say from different time periods,
when in fact as Arpad Elo pointed out, as time progresses the rating
pool as a whole gets stronger. Also Sonas apparently (from reading
some of these threads) makes assumptions such as a player who plays
infrequently should gain or lose a different number of Elo points than
a player who plays regularly. What other 'pseudo-science' (which I
take to be what you feel are defects) are you referring to?

ELOs methodology was designed for a certain set of conditions
(playing actively in a pool) but is applied under conditions way outside
of those conditions. The issue is whether those extrapolations
are supported by any evidence.


The problem with the work is
that it applies a new method to a very hard problem (ranking
world champions) when they haven't even shown the method's
worth when applied to easy problems (ranking everybody else).


Ranking everybody else meaning what? If the players compete regularly
against one another, the Elo Gaussian distribution seems a good way of
ranking to me.

That is a big if. Look at actual ratings lists and you will find: 1. That they
contain a very small number of players compared to the
total number of chess players 2. Many of the players in the list have
very few games 3. Many are based on old results.

The proposed method should be confirmed by applying
it to problems where we know what the answer should be. I.e.
first determine a general relationship between moves and wins,
and *then* apply it to a hard problem (like ranking world
champions).

BTW I've seen Arpad Elo's scheme even applied to rank
world football (soccer) teams, and it's surprising how well the system
seems to work (Brazil was #1, as expected, and the other familiar
winners were in the top 10, even Greece, which won the Euro
Championships in 2004 and were considered a 'surprise team', in fact
was ranked at the time in the top 10 by this system, so the 2004
championship wasn't quite that big an upset, not unlike Euwe's victory
over Alekhine was not that big an upset because in fact Euwe was quite
a good player, albeit obscure).

I'm not familiar with the soccer ratings which you speak of, but many ratings
of this form consider factors *other* than the result. Famously,
statisticians have analyzed in great detail what wins games in major
league baseball. While certainly results tell us something, it is absurd to
think
that W/L results are the *only* things with predictive value.


I have previously expressed belief in the theory that "move rating" will
eventually surpass "result rating" as the gold standard measurement of
chess skill. This is a small first step, but there is much work left to
do.

Agreed, though I doubt move rating will eventually surpass 'result
rating' anytime soon, unless we develop a very powerful PC (which is
possible) and/or a quantum computer that can instantly solve the
entire chess tree to give a 'perfect' verdict on every move (i.e., the
move, with perfect play will end in victory, defeat or a draw).

This is not at all necessary. Most people conveniently overlook
that, in practice, the conditions required for ELO rating are rarely
met. Move rating becomes useful when its errors are smaller than
those already present in result rating. The key advantage of move
rating is that you get much more information per game, so in theory
get better ratings faster.

On Apr 27, 2:49 pm, "Inconnux" wrote:
Then you conceed my point and indeed the point of Crafty rating chess
players.

OK, now if I used Crafty for analysis of Fritz or Rybka games, it would
certainly not agree and would often call their moves 'errors' even though
they are FAR stronger than crafty.

To properly analyze the world champions
you would need to use a program that is atleast equal in strength to
these champions. Crippled Crafty just doesn't cut it... now if they
used Rybka for analysis I wouldn't have any problem
with the study.

J.Lohner

Not true at all. Crafty could easily tell you which programs far
stronger than itself played the most perfect chess. This is not
debatable. For instance, the winning program between two chess
programs playing each other by definition will produce at least one
less error than the losing program--and Crafty could, at some point,
appreciate this.

The only way you can get around your erroneous statement is to qualify
"properly" in "properly analyze". If you mean that it is better to
have an even stronger chess program than Crafty to better ("properly")
rate the champions, of course you're right and nobody would disagree
with you. But that doesn't mean Crafty's efforts are of no value.
Perhaps with a 'properly' written program you might have, in a close
tie, a switch between two players say tied for fifth place in the
pantheon of all-time champions

RL

On Apr 28, 2:17 am, "David Kane" wrote:
"raylopez99" wrote in message


Thanks David Kane. My speculation about what you thought was bogus
about the current Elo rating was then largely correct--seems like it's
the sample size being too small--for a moment I thought you had some
other special insight and/or were a crank. I still find ELO quite
useful when done in a normal distribution--play more games, and you
lower the error rate. Of course if you don't play often then you can
have an erroneous rating.

BTW here is the list of soccer (football) ELO ranked champions:
http://www.eloratings.net/world.html

RL

raylopez99 wrote:
Goodbye, duffer.

Oh. Well, if you put it like that, goodbye.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Swiss Apple (TM): it's like a tasty
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ fruit but it's made in Switzerland!

"raylopez99" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Apr 28, 2:17 am, "David Kane" wrote:
"raylopez99" wrote in message


Thanks David Kane. My speculation about what you thought was bogus
about the current Elo rating was then largely correct--seems like it's
the sample size being too small--for a moment I thought you had some
other special insight and/or were a crank. I still find ELO quite
useful when done in a normal distribution--play more games, and you
lower the error rate. Of course if you don't play often then you can
have an erroneous rating.

BTW here is the list of soccer (football) ELO ranked champions:
http://www.eloratings.net/world.html

RL

You will note that this rating system is a modified ELO system
that considers the score as well as the result.

In principle,a system that truly rated the moves wouldn't have
to use the result at all. For example, if a 1900 played like a 1700
but beat a 1300 playing like a 1500, then the winner would lose
points and the loser would gain them! Of course, some hybrid
such as that used in soccer could also have merit.

On Apr 28, 8:45 am, David Richerby
wrote:
raylopez99 wrote:
Goodbye, duffer.

Oh. Well, if you put it like that, goodbye.

Dave.

--
David Richerby Swiss Apple (TM): it's like a tastywww.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ fruit but it's made in Switzerland!

Geez, don't be so sensitive, I was only flaming you.

RL

On Apr 28, 10:42 am, "David Kane" wrote:
"raylopez99" wrote in message

oups.com...



On Apr 28, 2:17 am, "David Kane" wrote:
"raylopez99" wrote in message

Thanks David Kane. My speculation about what you thought was bogus
about the current Elo rating was then largely correct--seems like it's
the sample size being too small--for a moment I thought you had some
other special insight and/or were a crank. I still find ELO quite
useful when done in a normal distribution--play more games, and you
lower the error rate. Of course if you don't play often then you can
have an erroneous rating.

BTW here is the list of soccer (football) ELO ranked champions:
http://www.eloratings.net/world.html

RL

You will note that this rating system is a modified ELO system
that considers the score as well as the result.

In principle,a system that truly rated the moves wouldn't have
to use the result at all. For example, if a 1900 played like a 1700
but beat a 1300 playing like a 1500, then the winner would lose
points and the loser would gain them! Of course, some hybrid
such as that used in soccer could also have merit.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Interesting, now I see where you're going. So, to further amplify, if
you fail to find the best move possible and, in a mating net, fail to
mate your opponent in the most efficient manner possible, you could in
theory lose points or not win as many points as somebody who mates in
X moves, as opposed to mating in 2X moves. I suppose this is
analogous to losing Elo points if you fail to win, but only draw,
against an opponent who is much weaker than you.

RL