Pages

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Chess rating system Elo vs Rest of the World Contest

Alexandra Kosteniuk's Chess News & Trivia (C) 2010

First prize is a copy of Fritz signed by all-time greats Garry Kasparov,
Viswanathan Anand, Anatoly Karpov, and Vladimir Kramnik!

Hello Everyone,

There has been this debate for some time now about how good the Elo rating is. And, there has been a contest going on for that which ends on November 14th.

The contest is based upon the premise that a primary purpose of any chess rating system is to accurately assess the current strength of players, and we can measure the accuracy of a rating system by seeing how well the ratings do at predicting players' results in upcoming events. The winner of the contest will be the one whose rating system does the best job at predicting the results of a set of 7,800 games played recently among players rated 2200+.

So far there has been an unprecedented level of participation, with 162 different teams submitting entries to the contest! There is also a very active discussion forum to promote the free flow of ideas, although many teams are still hesitant to share too many details about their approach (especially considering that the winner will receive a copy of Fritz signed by Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Anatoly Karpov, and Viktor Korchnoi) Both Chessbase and Kaggle have donated generous prizes, to be awarded to top-performing participants who are willing to share their methodology publicly.

You can read more about the contest in this chessbase report.

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's
Also see her personal blog at

2 comments:

  1. Personally,
    I hope the FIDE finds a better, more fair, system that is resistant to grade inflation. It seems to me as a spectator that 2500 20 years ago was harder to reach, and meant more than 2500 today (not to lessen your accomplishment.)

    Also I remember when 2700 basically meant you where world champion. Today 40 Players hold that ranking, http://chess.liverating.org/ Personally I think thats insane, and it diminishes the Accomplishments of Players like Fisher, Cappa, and Alekhine.

    Personally, (and I know this wont happen) but I think some sort of cap should be put on the Rankings. Let the World Champion or World #1 be ranked at 2700 and let other players be ranked relative to that summit, there would need to be some annual Adjustment for IMs and Higher to effect the system but I think it could be done.

    I know Opening theory has advanced, but given access to our opening books, IMHO Fisher in 71 or Cappa 21 would be Very competative with any world champion since, and IMHO our ranking system should respect that ...

    Honestly a Centry from now will players look back on Kasparov, and say; what as all the fuss about, "Kasparov, Please the man never even got near 3000" Blessings, BB.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Saira Fernando, MadridSeptember 22, 2010 at 9:14 AM

    cute post and cute comment

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.