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Hi James, I'm glad you like the new ratings system.
The player, Manabu Terao, seems to be listed twice, but with 2 slightly different IDs.
Since no one would ever have more than one ID, it must be two different people with the same name.
I wholeheartedly concur with the similarly named guy who posted the last message.
Two people named Manabu Terao (a very common name) with essentially the same rating (very probable), and same ID, but of course with one having a numeric extension. That prooves they are different people? I think they are one and the same. But I will comment no further on this matter.
Gary, I believe that Manabu Terao and Manabu Terao are two different people as much as I believe that Gus Duniho and Fergus Duniho are two different people.
lol, yes this may be true Fergus, but how do we know you are not one of the Manabu Terao's :)
'Gary, I believe that Manabu Terao and Manabu Terao are two different people as much as I believe that Gus Duniho and Fergus Duniho are two different people.' No offense, but you could have saved some time and just said that in the first place. ;)
It's not evil twins, it's evil QUADRUPLETS!!! **Cackle!!**
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.
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.
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, 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.
The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants mentions a Matthew Monchalin. Would that be a typo of your name or someone else?
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 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.
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.
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.
It is time to put the Ratings page in a visible sector. Also the next Tournament Page.
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.
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?
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.
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