at the mercy of the arbiter

[Mick Norris]

I think that's a point, too .For instance, if you look at football matches played decades ago -try for instance the 1966 World Cup Final - you'll notice that t's rather slower than today's game. Simply, players accustomed to the football of 1966, were they suddenly to find themselves in the game of 2009, couldn't cope. Perhaps they couldn't cope at all, at any professional level. But would that mean they were worse than players currently at, for example Macclesfield?

I can answer that one, based on their performance v Bury at Gigg Lane on Saturday anyway

None of the Macclesfield players would get into the 1966 World Cup, let alone any of the teams in the final!

Then again, none of them would get into the current Bury team either

[JustinHorton]

Ah, Gigg Lane. Only time I was there the Cemetery End was still there. That's the sort of stand name I understand.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Fascinating discussion. Glad I helped kick it off!

To clarify matters further, I wouldn't lump all "classic" chess together anyway. I mentioned the "holy trinity" of Al, Cap and Em (rather than Morphy, Steinitz, Chigorin etc) for a reason - and that is to all intents and purposes the "inter war" years saw what we now know as "modern" chess come into being. IMO anyway. Anybody who doubts this, perhaps, should compare the tournament books of two classic "home-grown" tourneys - Hastings 1895 and Nottingham 1936.......

IMHO at least, the difference is VAST. Far bigger than between 1936 and now I would wager. The players at Hastings really *did* seem to be playing a different game to us at times. But at Nottingham, we can recognise them as "our own" even if the quality wasn't always *quite* as high

And having just seen Kamsky - one of *the* best players in contemporary chess - miss an utterly elementary stalemate device, maybe we shouldn't be bigging our "own" chess up *too* much

(and let's not beat up on poor old Suechting too much, eh. He was, inter alia, a *genuine* amateur )

[Mick Norris]

Ah, Gigg Lane. Only time I was there the Cemetery End was still there. That's the sort of stand name I understand.

Still there, and still called the Cemetry End, although it is now seats, as are the rest of the stands

Not sure when Oxford will return

[JustinHorton]

So the Cemetery End isn't dead?

[Mick Norris]

It was pretty lively on Saturday, be even better when Accy visit on May 2nd

[JustinHorton]

Now there's a club that's risen from the grave

[Keith Arkell]

Just to tidy up where we got to in the debate about whether,or more relevantly,by how much the quality of chess playing has improved with time:

Kasparov rightly called his predecessors ''GREAT'',because each was the strongest player on the planet in his day.He does though repeatedly refer to such terms as
''the development of chess'' and the ''evolution of ideas'' to make clear his view that chess has not stagnated.

Capablanca's GREAT achievement was that he played the way he did way back in the 1920s when a lot less was known about the game,the opposition was inferior,most players were amateurs,we knew less about nutrition,poverty was more of an issue,travel was more difficult,there were less tournaments,there was no internet,and there were no computers.
Hugo Suechting also had these hindrances of course,and the fact that he achieved the phenomenal position of world number 28 was far more relevant than the fact that he was at best 2100 by todays standards,and often hung material while under no particular pressure.

Equally Roger Bannister was GREAT because he ran a mile in less than 4 minutes in 1954.It doesn't matter that people are now bigger and train and eat better and that 200 Americans or 855 people worldwide have now ran a 4 minute mile.

So how do we test how rapidly chess playing improves with time?
It appears that ''chessmetrics'' does an excellent job of measuring a player's level against his contemporaries,but fails when sizeable time intervals are involved.The greater the interval,the greater the inaccuracy,to the extent that when the gap is 98 years then the stats are 459 ELO points out (see the work of GM Nunn on the Carlsbad 1911 tournament,an analysis which I think hardly any strong players would disagree with after examining the games).

That leaves us with computer testing of the quality of the moves of top players from different eras,which Steve Collyer drew our attention to earlier.In principle this is the right course to take,but this kind of work is still in it's very early stages.
It will be necessary to tackle the problem in a very sophisticated way so that we don't end up with a kind of circular argument.For example something like this: Capablanca's opponents were reletavely weak,and so set him problems which were easy to solve,and therefore made it easy for him to find the best or equal best moves according to the computer; whereas the opponents of Kasparov,Topalov and Anand are far stronger,and so set them far more cunning and deep problems,and therefore make it harder for them to find the best or equal best moves.

Right that's all from me on this subject...at least for a week or so...

[E Michael White]

The deflation in the ECF system has been caused by the systemic undergrading of juniors. This could have been at least partially solved by having perhaps 4 grading lists a year instead of the absurd one.
Stewart Reuben

There are many reasons for deflation in ECF grades. The way that juniors' first grades are currently determined leaves some deflation but it is not the most significant source.

Complete quarterly lists are unlikely to reduce deflation and may increase it, unless the basis of calculation is also changed; it all depends on the pattern of games ie who plays whom and the activity rates.

Do you have any reasons or calculations to support your views ?

The ECF system is linear and Jeff Sonas has said this is statistically sounder than the FIDE curve.
Stewart Reuben

I dont think Jeff Sonas meant that statement in isolation to relate to systems with no k-factor unlike FIDE.

[Stewart Reuben]

My reason for thinking only one rating list a year leads to deflation is because it has led to deflation.
Juniors are given a, one size fits all, of a certain age group, grading bonus at the end of the calculation. This remains with them for the whole year. If the bonus was inadequate, then that particular player will deflate the grades of his opponents. The type of player for whom the bonus is inadequate is likely to be one who carries on playing chess, thus playing more games. The type of player for whom the bous is too high is much less likely to continue playing. Thus one has deflation.
Of course the bonus shold be individualised to each person, not just juniors. A player has gone up 20 points in the year, give him a bigger bonus than one who has only gone up 10.

But if you had say quarterly grading lists and continued to roll over the last 30 games, then the problem would be far less acute. In addition it would help popularise chess, lead to more activity as internationally, in the US and London when they had monthly lists.

There are many factors that affect inflation or deflation in grades. David Welch told me principal among these was the undergrading of juniors. There are undoubtedly regional differences as players don't meet others from other areas enough.

What I wrote about Sonas was ambiguous. I meant that Sonas said a linear relationship as opposed to using Gaussian distribution was statistically more valid. He did not comment on whether the averaging system over the past year used in England is better or worse than the rolling average (in a certain sense) used in FIDE.

I have often thought the English Grade was perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. While the USCF Rating was perfectly inaccurate and perfectly useful.

Stewart Reuben

[E Michael White]

My reason for thinking only one rating list a year leads to deflation is because it has led to deflation.

That is clearly one of your less convincing explanations !

Of course the bonus shold be individualised to each person, not just juniors. A player has gone up 20 points in the year, give him a bigger bonus than one who has only gone up 10.

Some sort of predictor/corrector approach seems ok to me as long as it is well defined, uses the last 3 or 4 base grades, is kept under review and applies less fiercely in the case of an underactive player. We dont want any sort of grader discretion; arbiter discretion causes enough problems as it is.

But if you had say quarterly grading lists and continued to roll over the last 30 games, then the problem would be far less acute. In addition it would help popularise chess, lead to more activity as internationally, in the US and London when they had monthly lists.

Players may like to see more frequent grading lists for other reasons but they wont necessarily fix or ease deflation.

In addition to looking at the first layer of games ie the junior's immediate opponents, you need to consider the medium/longer term effect that those opponents have and the opponents of those players. Your previous comments suggest that you think a player would reach his true level quicker and so cause less deflation. In reality what happens during quater 1 is that not only is any increase/decrease crystallised into the juniors grade but also into his opponents grades. If the 1st quarter opponents were previously accurately graded they will become undergraded for quarter 2 and cause similar deflation as the junior would have done under annual grading. There are then many more undergraded players carried to the 2nd quarter to cause further deflation.

Whether the long term effect is deflationary/inflationary/neutral depends on the pattern of play and how active the players are. It can go either way. The last thing that is needed is a major change like junior increments which simply does not do what it set out to do.

What I wrote about Sonas was ambiguous. I meant that Sonas said a linear relationship as opposed to using Gaussian distribution was statistically more valid. He did not comment on whether the averaging system over the past year used in England is better or worse than the rolling average (in a certain sense) used in FIDE.

I realised you were referring to the metric function which calculates expected %s. If I remember correctly, what I read in Sonas's report was that he used approx 260,000 historic games and recalculated grades using various assumptions for the metric expectation function and k values. In his view using a linear metric in combination with the FIDE method of k-factors gave the closest fit to results. It would be wrong to use this statement as the basis for saying a linear metric is the best to use with the ECF averaging method as has been implied by both yourself and others on this forum.

Applicability of Sonas's conclusions to ECF games can be questioned on statistical grounds because his data relates primarily to high level tournaments and has a higher proportion of all play alls than corresponding ECF games would have. Assumptions of randomness are also questionable as FIDE pairing methods in large swisses affect randomness, whereas many ECF games originate from League matches. Also questionable is the assumption that more closely predicting results is an indication that the system is working better so that ranking aspects of grading lists will be more accurate.

Maybe I should have put this in the grading part of the Forum

[Keith Arkell]

I just popped in to see if there are any new postings on the debate about the old masters.

I think one of the wisest of the earlier postings was the following by Justin Horton:


JustinHorton Post subject: Re: at the mercy of the arbiter Posted:
Mon Apr 20, 2009 2:18 pm

''Would it be possible to suggest that many of the stronger
players of the time might have been woefully lacking in technique - of
all kinds - by today's standards, but that tactically they are
unlikely to have been so weak? I don't want to make an entire (and
inappropriate) distinction between tactics and technique, but even so
it's surely possible to see that while in some facets of the game
players didn't really (again, by today's standards) know what they
were doing, in others they were incredibly far ahead of a player who,
today, might be of similar technical level...
What I mean is that you're in a position
where some aspects of the game - in football as well as chess - have
changed enormous, perhaps unrecognisably, over decades. But others
haven't. So you can look at aspects of play from 1911 or 1930 or 1895
or when you will, and think God, these people can't play to save their
lives. And then you'll look at others and think "these people could
calculate like Shirov". Perhaps it's a very mixed picture and it
depends what part of the picture you're looking at?''

I think that in a way this is what Michael Adams meant in the following
-kindly supplied to me a few days ago by Cathy:

"I don't really find older players all that interesting. I'm much more
interested in current games. I mean, older games, when you look at
them, have always been massively superseded by the players of today.
That's not to say they weren't great players but you know, one feels
it's a bit like playing through a game by 2200s. They have their
moments, there'll be some good patches in it, but there'll also be
some very bad patches as well. Obviously I can enjoy parts of them,
but I don't think you can really learn a lot from them." Michael
Adams, interviewed by Cathy Forbes. First published by Chess Monthly
in January 1992 and reproduced in Meet the Masters by Cathy Forbes
(Tournament Chess, 1994).

Thinking about what Justin said,I think that we need look no further than
some of the old chess compositions to see that there have always existed -
how can I put it...'great chess minds',in a pure abstract kind of sense.
Translating this into good competitive chess though was progressively more
difficult the further you go back in time,because there were so
many glaring deficiencies in what today is,to pinch a phrase off John Cleese,
the ''bleeding obvious''.

[Richard Bates]

My view in all this is that one has to distinguish somewhat between the players and the games they played.

Take the top players of any era, give them access to the sum of human (&computer!) knowledge that we have today and i think most would be at the very top rank of today's game. The most obvious evidence of this is to consider the advances made over any, say, 20 year period and see that the top (youngish) players at the start of the period will usually still be there at the end. The differences between Nottingham 1936 and Zurich 1953 are vast and yet Botvinnik is still the best player at the end of it. There were even greater differences between 1953 and the 80s and yet Smyslov still reached the candidates final in 1984.

I also do think one is missing out if they think that they can't learn anything from old masters. Directly this is most obvious in the endgame - I doubt that the quality of endgame play is much higher, if at all, today - not least because of changes in time limits and that the reduced relative importance means that less time is devoted to studying it.

However, even ignoring the endgame, the strength of chess today ultimately depends on the sum of knowledge of what has gone before. As such i think one only limits themselves if they don't start from the beginning when amassing that knowledge.

Personally i stopped around 1953, which might explain a few things...

[Stewart Reuben]

I recently read an interesting assertion.
That the average I(median?) IQ rises about 3 points every 10 years. That is not inconsiderable even when measured against the lifetime of Richard Bates. (He must have been a midget when I first met him in Richmond.).
Of course that would concern itself more with rating drift than quality of games.
Stewart Reuben

[Sean Hewitt]

Going back to the original topic (!).

Keith Arkell was delighted to find that the arbiters knew what they were doing when pairing Round 4 of the Amersham Congress this weekend!