Re: [pbmserv-dev] Those wacky provisionals

[Richard Rognlie <rrognlie@gamerz.net>]

We all know the rating system (while you are provisional) can give 
counterintuitive results.  but it works.


so... we have a case where 1 player is provisional (no games completed)
vs. 1 player whose status we don't know.

Let's assume the other player is also provisional.

The player gets an assumed rating of 1600.  the other player has a rating
of N (say... 2000?).  Average them (1800).  And add 200 (2000).  *then* add the skew back towards 1720 (1944).

not enough to get even close to the 2114 rating.  so assume that 
that's not possible.

Now let's assume a game against an established player.

assumed rating 1600 vs. say 2000 (average 1800) + 400 (2200) 
skew to 2104.  (so, if the opponent was established with a rating of
a little more than 2000, it's possible that the rating would turn
out to 21xx.

but it's a *provisional* rating.  It really doesn't matter.   

The established player loses nothing against a provisional player's
first game. 

On Sun, Mar 30, 2003 at 03:38:27PM -0500, Marc Lanctot wrote:
> The point was that it's a bug that should be fixed.
> 
> Marc
> 
> 
> 
> Martin Moller Pedersen wrote:
> 
> >[Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
> >-> I just noticed that jon.dann has a provisional Quoridor rating of 2119 
> >-> after playing one game.  Since the highest established rating is 1790, 
> >and -> the second highest provisional is 1824, I am wondering how this 
> >-> occurred.  I thought a provisional couldn't be more than 200 above the 
> >-> player he beat.  This suggests that the rating system can be cleverly 
> >abused.
> >
> >How can it cleverly be abused ?
> >If a provisional player has a very high rating but has only played a 
> >singled game
> >and he then plays and lose a game against a established player, then the
> >established player doesn't got more than a few points.
> >
> >/Martin
> >
> >
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> >
> > 
> >
> 
> 
> 
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