Re: [Bug-gnubg] Re: Strange FIBS ratings

[Jim Segrave]

On Sat 06 Sep 2003 (11:23 +1200), Joseph Heled wrote:
> Still, would anyone consider a 1936 FIBS player an 'Intermediate'?
> 
> -Joseph
> 
> address@hidden wrote:
> 
> >>And now match 2:
> >
> >
> >>Error rate (per decision)       -13.86 ( -0.036%)    -21.97 ( -0.075%)
> >>Error based abs. FIBS rating    1936.0               1866.3
> >>Chequerplay errors rating loss    95.9                131.8
> >>Cube errors rating loss           18.1                 51.9
> >

I don't have direct experience of FIBs, but it surprises me that with 
a chequer error rate of about .020/move (two beers behind Joern?), the
estimated ratings would be 1700 odd in the first match and 1866 in the
second. 

I sort of have serious doubts about the practicality of trying to
correlate a single short match to a rating which is supposed to be
accumulated over a large number of matches. Questions have also been
raised in a rather acrimonious thread on gammonline re. the validity
of modeling ratings using the noise feature in gnubg to simulate
human play.

It would be interesting, though probably impractical even if the data
were available, to take a *huge* number of matches from FIBS with the
player's ratings and analyse those matches to try to correlate
real-world play and error rates with the assigned ratings. 

In the meantime, I find the one word summaries more useful than the
estimated ratings when skipping through a long match to find my worst
blunders. Awful/beginner/casual player (okay, that's two words) are a
sign that I really ought to have a look at what I did wrong, the rare
ET matches I can usually skip as far as learning goes.

-- 
Jim Segrave           address@hidden