Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

If people think they are going to be 'rated' on games that they have
previously been told, don't count, there is going to be a chilling effect
that discourages people from participating on the website here.

For that reason, two separate rating systems should be used, if at all any
ARE used:  one would be for those adventurous souls willing to play games
they've never even heard of (and are therefore attempting to learn), and
another rating system for those souls that insist on playing just one
particular game, something they actually know a thing or two about, and
about which they have developed theories of play that are put into
practice.

My program isn't ready yet, but I'll keep it in mind.

I think there are a lot of programmers hanging out at this website
(http://www.chessvariants.org) and many of them may have hacked together a
program out of nothingness, using nothing but sweat and insight, and they
should be encouraged to have their programs brought in as well.  (Ditto
goes for the people that are responsible for programming ZOG.)

I think that a 'Game-Ply Rating' system would probably oscillate around
a bit, with every re-calculation introducing a little bit of drag and a
little bit of drift- considering how 0-ply systems would hover around
1000, 1-ply systems around 1100, 2-ply at 1200, and 3-ply at 1300, and so
on.

Using a 'Game-Ply Rating' system, to which computers could contribute
benchmarks, would make the human performances more meaningful.  And if a
human's  USCF or ELO chess rating were imported into the 'Game-Ply
Rating' system, it would probably see a steep climb before stabilizing. 
For instance, if a handful of human beginners at 800 USCF started playing
a few 0-ply computers at 1000 GPR, the human ratings would go up.  I would
oppose lowering a computer's GPR rating, however.  If a computer has a GPR
rating, it should only go down as a result of a loss to another computer. 
This is because humans are inherently smarter than computers.  The
computer GPR ratings ought to be independent benchmarks that only they
themselves contribute to.

Matthew, that would be an interesting experiment. We could use Game Courier
as the interface with the CPUs doing the thinking! Can you suggest a game?
We'd have to have it available in 3 platforms, your program, GC, and ZOG.

Tony, to answer your question, I already have two ST computers, so I don't
have to pony up for a PC computer, nor buy a Windows developer's license
(which I understand is $1,500 on top of the purchase price of the
hardware, and it costs even more to get a Mac and a Mac developer's kit,
if that even exists, which I'm not sure about).  And then there's the
learning curve.  I'd have to learn how to program a Mac or Windows, and
that's one daunting task right there.  Also, I prefer computers whose
operating systems are in ROM, and therefore incorruptible.

For the purpose of establishing benchmarks, maybe you and I could someday
test out our programs against each other's?  You could use a modern
computer running at 2.5 gigaherz (or whatever), and I could use my little
computer?  I'm naturally referring to the game of Baroque - or one of its
relatives (but no Rococo, please).  And certainly not Chess, as there are
enough Chess-playing computers already.  Baroque is a more challenging
game, and requires far more calculations than Chess does.  (Markedly more,
if we allowed either side to delay indefinitely the reversals of their
rooks (causing one to become an Immobilizer), or the reversals of the King
and Queen (Withdrawer)), which adds a whole extra element of long-range
strategy to the game.

When it comes to modern computers, there are zillions of programmers that
are better than I am.  I'm no virtuoso.  I just put my nose to the
grindstone, and keep toiling away at the darn thing until it works like
it's supposed to.  That means a near endless examination of the states
that the 'programming engine' outputs, and you would not believe how
poorly implemented the Atari support package is, you end up having to
kludge out your own suite of programming tools, the kind that more or less
work right most of the time.  I've put in about 9 months or more on this
thing so far.

Sure is slow and tedious.

As for computer contests, we /could/ use an ordinary telephone line with
direct connections, no webmail involved.  (Or we could just post the moves
here or at some other mutually agreed-upon place.)  The role of the
user-attendant would be to type the moves in, as they come.

As the thread Derek points to indicates, the strength setting is a ply
setting. Given that this is true, I hypothesized that at lower strength
levels, ZOG would not take forever to make a move with the thinking time
set to forever. So I lowered the strength, set thinking time to forever,
and let ZOG play itself. It made moves very quickly. When I raised the
strength, it made moves less quickly but still fairly rapidly compared to
forever. So experiment corroborates the claim that the strength setting is
a plies setting. So my claim that ZOG has no plies setting may be false.
But it was certainly not a non sequitur.

In fact, the Zillions program actually DOES have a ply depth control.  It
is illusive though and has been mistakenly presumed by many (including
myself) to not exist.

Please read this thread of interest from the Zillions discussion board:

http://zillionsofgames.com/discus/

You must navigate manually the rest of the way since deep-linking is not
supported.

Zillions of Games Discussion Forum: Desired Features for Zillions of
Games: Time keeping

ZOG does not have ply-setting, however, you can set the amount of time that
the program will evaluate the position. This is indirectly reflected in the
number of plies that are processed, although it depends on the CPU, of
course. (Not to stir the pot, but out of sincere and friendly curiosity,
why use a 2.5 MB RAM CPU when computers and memory are relatively cheap
now?)

Fergus, your reference to Zillions of Games being a constraining factor
appears to be a 'non sequitur' and not a premise.

Supposing the games on this website are adequately described, it follows
that all of the games on this website /can/ be played; not just online,
but face to face, should the opportunity ever arise.  Computers could
eventually be brought in to help people learn how to play these games;
wasn't increased accessibility the main idea behind designing Zillions of
Games?

It's unfortunate that Zillions of Games doesn't have a ply-setting, as
that would have been extremely convenient for entry into my proposed
'Game Ply Rating' system.  Even five or six computers that limit
themselves to 2 ply searches, are going to play wildly differently if they
disagree on the values of their pieces, or employ even slightly different
pseudo-random number generators.  Even if they were all playing absolutely
randomly (and were therefore all assigned initial ratings of 1000), there
would eventually be a departure from that number, as their true colors
started to show, and the game results began to produce a bell curve of
sorts.  The inherent differences in programming is what appears to be the
real quandary behind using a 'ply' based rating system; each computer
will naturally play a little bit differently.  (What sounds good in theory
may not work out in the long run.)

As for computers that can play one or two of the games available at this
website, I'm still working on my Baroque computer game (for an ST
upgraded to 2.5 megs RAM, minimum). 

Boy, it sure takes a ton of work to do all of the graphics, but at least
the calculation part is proceeding fairly well.  My program just isn't
marketable, or user-friendly, in the slightest.  (And I'll probably end
up giving it away for free, anyway.)

Zillions of Games appears to be a remarkable product, even if it won't
run on my hardware platform.

Yep, that's me.  I'm also known as Matthew Monchalin.  It's a very
frequent misspelling of my name.  But while we are on the subject, try not
to pronounce my name as 'Moncha Lin' (as it has the accent on the penult,
so pronounce it 'mont CHAY lin').  I think there may also be a Matthieu
Monchalin over in France, but I've never met him.

Matthew,

The point I was making about Zillions of Games was a premise in an
argument whose conclusion is that, for most of the games played on Game
Courier, the software simply does not exist to implement the 'Game Plies
Rating' system you have suggested. This has nothing to do with
willingness to upgrade to a version of ZOG with a plies setting. There is
no such version for anyone to upgrade to. My argument can be broken down
like this:

1. ZOG does not have a plies setting.
2. Most games on Game Courier cannot be played by any software but ZOG.
Therefore, most games on Game Courier cannot be played by any software
with a plies setting.

Also, my question about your name referred to a book, David Pritchard's
Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, not to your id on this website. In that
book, David Pritchard describes a game called Renaissance (aka Baroque
Renaissance Chess), an Ultima variant created by a Matthew Monchalin in
1975. The name is close to your own but spelled differently. Is that you?

David, you must be thinking of USCF ratings, NWCF ratings (if they still
exist), or ELO ratings, and each of these provide some way of estimating
probable future performance based on previously observed past performance.
 I need to read up more on the Glickman Chess Rating system to see how it
differs from that of the Game Courier Rating system, seeing as how they
seem to share the same acronym.

I was suggesting, on the other hand, a way of measuring computer programs
pitted against each other, and against humans that are allowed to compete
with them.  You've probably heard of http://www.pogo.com where you can
play cardgames such as Hearts and Spades (but no Skat, the last time I
looked).  You even get to play with robot players if you want.  There are
lots of sites like that in Internet.  It's my understanding that the Game
Courier here at www.chessvariants.org could handle cardgames like that,
though one might be a tad less graphical than another.

As for ZOG being some kind of a reason to forbid the 'Game Plies Rating'
system I suggested, that only applies to people unwilling to buy an
upgraded ZOG with the feature I suggested.  Since I don't have a copy of
Zillions of Games (and I'm unusually reluctant to go out and buy
something that I don't even have a hardware platform to run it on), it
escapes me why, exactly, the program can't be upgraded to play out all
the plies that it has been directed to search through, short of observing
that the person who originally programmed it, must not have felt like
designing that feature.  It was probably a case of him shrugging, and
saying, 'Why bother?'  If someone gets around to upgrading ZOG so it
*could* search through entire Plies' worth of information (with or
without regard to time controls, or the peculiar predicaments inherent in
data storage), I'm sure it could do the job just as well as the next one
could.

It is time to put the Ratings page in a visible sector. Also the next
Tournament Page.

Matthew, if you open any of the games being played here on Game Courier
and click on the 'Ratings' box, you will see ratings: restricted to that
game variant.  Replace the name of the game variant with a * in 'Game
Filter' and click the 'Submit' box, then you will see the overall
ratings.

Playing random moves should result in a rating around 400 points below the
weakest player in the pool (depending on how ratings are computed).  For
example, a ten year old child with an 800 rating has already mastered the
Scholar's Mate and will attack the Queen with Knight.  A 1200 to 1600
player, with a little practice, should win every game against a 2-ply
depth search, which is consistent with a machine rating in the 800 to 1200
range.

I guess automating the gaming process by bringing in computers to play
humans (or other computers) might overwhelm the website, but while I am on
the subject, there should be some practical way of evaluating how well
computers play against each other, even if a 2-ply computer will almost
always lose to a 2-ply human, if only because the 2-ply human has a way of
recognizing patterns and trends, and learns how to take advantage of them. 
I suspect an ordinary human capable of 3 plies will often beat a computer
capable of 6, if only because the human can assess positions more deeply
in a general, 'off-the-cuff' sort of way than computers can.

Well, I'm not too likely to buy a copy of Zillions of Games, so your
argument against implementation of a 'ply-based' ratings system using
computer players for standardization purposes sounds more like an 'a
priori' argument against it than anything else.  Computers should be
encouraged to participate against humans.

If two computers made absolutely random moves, the likelihood of winning
or losing would ultimately depend on their implementations of their
pseudo-random number generators; and some platforms do that sort of thing
much better than others can.  Even still, a computer that made totally
random moves should be rated 1000.  Programs that were 100% 'open
source' could be entered into the system for benchmark purposes. 
Computers otherwise operating on the basis of secret terms, or on the
basis of undisclosed source code would find themselves ranked against
those that were, just like humans are.

In closing, if a computer that played utterly randomly could be rated
1000, and a depth of 2-ply would make it play with the equivalent of a
1200 rating, then it follows that 10-ply would bring it up to 2000, and
20-ply would bring it up to 3000.

The ratings page appear to be accessible by going to
/play/pbmlogs/ratings.php (I hope I spelled that
right because I don't have any cut-and-paste-capabilities) but if you
want to print out a copy on your printer, check to see if the very last
few pages are sized properly because they appear to require landscape
fonts as opposed to the first 10 pages, which are for portrait fonts.

The user identification subroutine truncates my name from 18 characters to
16 characters; 'Matthew Montchalin' shrinks down to matthew_montchal
because of the way the website handles registrations.

The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants mentions a Matthew Monchalin. Would that
be a typo of your name or someone else?

Where, exactly, is the ratings page?  Are you suggesting the existence of a
webpage that deals with this subject?  How do I get there?  I tend to have
a lot of trouble (and that's an understatement) navigating around this
website (http://www.chessvariants.org) and rely principally on the menu
system in place.  The time lag between clicks and webpages loading tends
to frustrate my navigation also.  Humans should not have to wait 3 or more
minutes for any given webpage to load.  If this were a direct-dial BBS (and
not a website) with a real telephone number, it would load a whole lot
faster.

There isn't a simple formula for calculating the ratings. They are
calculated by a complex algorithm. That is described on the ratings page.

There is no strict line between provisional ratings and regular ratings.
The same algorithm is used to calculate all ratings. You can consult the
number of games played by each player as a guide to the trustworthiness of
the ratings.

Ratings are meaningful only relative to each other. Your suggestions about
using computer players to set standards for what the ratings mean could not
be implemented without destroying what the ratings already mean. Besides
that, it would be wholly impractical, given the large number of games
available here, and given that Zillions of Games, the only software
available for playing most of the games here, does not let users set ply
levels.

Where can I find the formula for determining the players' ratings?

Is there such a thing as a performance rating, and a provisional rating?

All other things being equal, two computers that are both capable of 2 ply
searches, and make their moves accordingly, with absolutely no regard to
positional nuances, only material differences, ought to be rated 1200.  If
they are capable of 3 ply searches, then their ratings ought to be rated
1300.  Similarly, a computer capable of a 4 ply search should be rated
1400. By allowing computers to play against live humans, an exponential
standard of sorts could be established for measuring human excellence.

oh Fergus, lol, i was only joking!

Jared, I saved more time by writing the first thing that came to mind.

Christine, if you do a little research, you will find that I must be very
busy with a cross-continental double life if Manabu Terao and I are the
same person.

It's not evil twins, it's evil QUADRUPLETS!!! **Cackle!!**