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

[Joern Thyssen]

On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 11:36:33AM +0200, Jim Segrave wrote
> 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?), 

No, two beers above my play :-)

> the estimated ratings would be 1700 odd in the first match and 1866 in
> the second. 

Kees' experiments show that cube decisions errors don't weigh as much as
chequer play errors. I can't offer any explanation for this, other than
gnubg's chequerplay is much better than the cube play???

> 
> 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.

Some people like numbers (error rate of -22 or FIBS rating of 1845)
other people like words ("supernatural" or "awful!"). To reach a variety
of people we should probably offer both.

Personally I neither use the textual rating nor the FIBS rating, but
judging by the amount of correspondance I got after removing the FIBS
rating I'd guess that many people use it.

Jørn

pgpWE6XvRCNsS.pgp
Description: PGP signature