On Wed, 2008-11-19 at 15:03 -0500, Michael Williams wrote: > Not sure if I buy that. For any complex game, you have a range or random > player to best-in-world player. There are nearly infinite actual ratings > between the > two. Since Go is clearly more complex than chess, Go's "nearly infinite" is > probably larger that chess's "nearly infinite", but that's beside the point > because > both are much larger than the number of humans to ever have existed.
I'm talking about the fattest portion of the human range of skill. If you consider the fattest part of the bell, say the 99% of the players not extremely weak or extremely strong, the range is pretty limited. In chess it's probably more like 2000, not the 3000 I was saying (if we consider the middle 99%) If you consider all possible players, I think the range is finite although it might be pretty large. I don't think it's very interesting, except as a thought experiment to consider players who play weaker than random, perhaps resigning on every move, etc. Or actively searching for the worst possible move and so on. - Don > > > Don Dailey wrote: > > On Wed, 2008-11-19 at 10:24 -0800, Christoph Birk wrote: > >> That should not matter much. The typical chess player should be > >> "as strong" as the typical Go player and I also expect the strength > >> distribution to follow similar lines. > > > > Larry Kaufman, a chess Grandmaster and also an expert in many games > > once told me that there are many more levels in Go than in chess. > > > > For instance in chess, your rating can range from about 500 to 2800 or > > so (roughly.) You can have a rating less than 500 of course and some > > do, but 500 represents something like someone who just learned the rules > > give or take. But for arguments sake let's say that 99% of all players > > are well within a span of 3000 ELO points to be generous. > > > > For 19x19 go, assuming we were to use ELO ratings the range would be > > much higher according to Larry. So it could be more like 4000 or > > 5000, I don't know. > > > > So I don't know for sure what you mean when you say the strength > > distribution follows similar lines. > > > > For comparison purposes maybe we need to identify the "median player" > > somehow and extrapolate from there. But if you take the median for > > both games, and assign them some fixed elo, I think you would find the > > top GO players had ELO ratings hundreds of points higher than the top > > Chess players. > > > > There is yet no ceiling on how strong chess players can be either, so I > > assume the same for GO, even more so. The top playing chess program > > seems to be at least 200 ELO stronger than the best human and they > > continue to improve every year. And it's still very clear that they > > could improve a lot. > > > > > > - Don > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > > _______________________________________________ > > computer-go mailing list > > computer-go@computer-go.org > > http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/ > > _______________________________________________ > computer-go mailing list > computer-go@computer-go.org > http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
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