orgfert wrote:Martin Thoresen wrote:I think your posts doesn't make sense at all. Dumbed-down Rybka? Your analogy is the same as saying that a car with 300 hp which is driven legally at 100 km/h on the highway is dumbed down because it can theoretically run at 250 km/h.
I suppose a better analogy would be putting the same motor in two different automobile designs and then racing them. It makes no sense. The goal is the best chess possible with an intended design. For a match to mean something, the programmers should put forward their best setup. This is probably why interest was minimal in a uniform platform world championship. After all, why bother to win a crippleware world title? Ergo, why bother to take interest in yet another crippleware chess match? Such matches are done
ad infinitum in CCRL and other places, and the resulting Elos touted as illumination. Dingoes kidneys.
Perhaps you should keep looking for the proper analogy. Try putting two drivers in identical cars and then let them
race. Obviously, that is nowhere near as exciting to you. Yet, it may illuminate the drivers' ability better than
having them race in their own cars. In the latter scenario, there is the question of what was most important in
winning the race. Was it the car or the driver?
Obviously, I am in the minority as far as the purpose of a
rating list. I keep seeing rating lists and
competitions being lumped together. Perhaps the term
rating list should be abandoned and everybody
start using the term
ranking list. That would be more consistent with most people's idea of what the lists
are. Pity that some of the people involved with the lists don't see it that way. Of course, if the true purpose of
a list is to help show the level an engine has obtained rather than to show which engine is better than another
engines, then the current terminology is appropriate.