Chess Ratings — Move Over Elo

databuff writes "Less than 24 hours ago, Jeff Sonas, the creator of the Chessmetrics rating system, launched a competition to find a chess rating algorithm that performs better than the official Elo rating system. The competition requires entrants to build their rating systems based on the results of more than 65,000 historical chess games. Entrants then test their algorithms by predicting the results of another 7,809 games. Already three teams have managed create systems that make more accurate predictions than the official Elo approach. It's not a surprise that Elo has been outdone — after all, the system was invented half a century ago before we could easily crunch large amounts of historical data. However, it is a big surprise that Elo has been bettered so quickly!"

Comments

Re:how are victory margins relevant to chess?

[thousandinone]

This is pretty ridiculous. Margin of victory? Is there a committee overseeing ethical treatment of chess pieces now? If I sacrifice everything but my King and a Bishop to checkmate you, why is that intrinsically a better strategy than sparing some of my pieces?

There are definite merits to a sacrificial strategy- it's all about board control. Long as theres more than one or two legal moves available to your opponent, you can't really predict where he'll send his pieces. A queen in the middle of the board can cover a lot of distance and do some impressive maneuvers, but any given piece only occupies one spot. Control where your opponent moves, control the game. Not to mention that less pieces on the board gives you more options for where to move with your remaining pieces, and by allowing your pieces to be taken, you have a measure of control over where the free space on the board is.

Indeed, given the rules of the game, I would say a strategy that goes to great lengths to preserve as many of ones own pieces as possible is flawed...