Re: computer-go: relative strengths chess vs go

[Don Dailey <drd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

   From: Andre Engels <engels@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
   Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 18:23:31 +0200 (MET DST)
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   Barry Phease wrote:

   > >In a post on the rating list one says 100 rating points are worth
   > >a stone.
   > 
   > This is a very rough approximation and certainly doesn't apply among 
   > professionals.  It might be true that 100 rating points correspond to one 
   > rank difference, but about 3-4 rank differences make up one stone among 
   > professionals.

   What makes you think that 100 rating points is similar to one rank rather
   than one stone for professionals? The EGF rating regards one amateur rank
   as 100 points, but one professional rank as only 30 points of rating.
   I do not know whether their system is actually close enough to ELO to
   use it as comparison, though (the algorithm will be similar, but the 
   numbers may have been plugged in differently).

   -- 
   Andre Engels, engels@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   http://www.win.tue.nl/~engels/index_en.html

   If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise,
   we don't believe in it at all			-- Noam Chomsky


Although it would be nice to know, the part  I'm most interested in is
whether  a  (hypothetical)  player exists,  who  can  beat the current
champion consistantly (let's say 75% of the time.)  If one does exist,
is there  another hypothetical player who can  beat our first one like
this and so on.

It  turns out that Bobby Fischer  was close to being  such a player in
his prime.   His superiority over everyone  else  was quite huge.  But
now I have heard  it said the Kasparov would  beat him soundly, even a
Fischer in his  prime (brought back  in a  hypothetical time machine.)
It's a fact that Fischer  was far superior in his  day, but it's  less
clear whether Kasparov would have this kind of  advantage today, a lot
of it subjective guesswork  and ratings comparisons (which  are rather
difficult  to  compare  almost 3  decades after   the  fact.)   But it
wouldn't surprise  me at all if  the  current best players, especially
Kasparov had a reasonable edge over Fischer.

If  this is true  (I  admit, it might  not  all  be), then  even in  a
fraction of   a lifespan  we  have seen   enormous growth   of playing
ability.  Of course we have always worshiped  our top players, so it's
not suprising that  even today we  still believe that we have  finally
gotten close to the top, who could ever play better than Kasparov?

Don