drummyfish/less_retarded_wiki
5
1
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity

Update

Browse source
This commit is contained in:
Miloslav Ciz 2024-10-25 00:41:24 +02:00
parent ced34db6fa
commit af69eeea02
14 changed files with 1845 additions and 1844 deletions
Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

2
elo.md
View file

@ -6,6 +6,8 @@ The Elo system was created specifically for chess (even though it can be applied
**Elo rates only RELATIVE performance**, not absolute, i.e. the rating number of a player says nothing in itself, it is only the DIFFERENCE in rating points between two players that matters, so in an extreme case two players rated 300 and 1000 in one rating pool may in another one be rated 10300 and 11000 (the difference of 700 is the only thing that stays the same, mean value can change freely). This may be influenced by initial conditions and things such as **rating inflation** (or deflation) -- if for example a [chess](chess.md) website assigns some start rating to new users which tends to overestimate an average newcomer's abilities, newcomers will come to the site, play a few games which they will lose, then they [ragequit](ragequit.md) but they've already fed their points to the good players, causing the average rating of a good player to grow over time.
Elo rating can also be converted to (or from) alternative measures such as material or time advantage, i.e. given let's say two chess players with known ratings, we may be able to say how big of a handicap the stronger player must suffer in order for the two to be on par. However the relationship will probably not be simple, we can't say "this much Elo difference equals this many pawns in handicap" -- having a two pawn material advantage in a beginner game hardly makes a difference but on the absolute top level losing two pawns is decisively also a lost game (despite this some approximations were given, e.g. Fisher and Kannan estimated that in computer chess 100 Elo was roughly equivalent to one pawn).
**Keep in mind Elo is a big simplification of reality**, as is any attempt at capturing skill with a single number -- even though it is a very good predictor of something akin a "skill" and outcomes of games, trying to capture a "skill" with a single number is similar to e.g. trying to capture such a multidimensional thing as intelligence with a single dimensional [IQ](iq.md) number. For example due to many different areas of a game to be mastered and different playstyles [transitivity](transitivity.md) may be broken in reality: it may happen that player A mostly beats player B, player B mostly beats player C and player C mostly beats player A, which Elo won't capture.
## How It Works