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BGonline.org Forums
Original Reference and cotnent
Posted By: Chuck Bower In Response To: To Chuck Bower (Bill Riles)
Date: Saturday, 29 December 2007, at 6:14 p.m.
Inside Backgammon vol. 2, #1 (Jan-Feb 1992). Robertie's reply to a letter-to-editor (Anthony Moutzouris of Johannesburg, South Africa).
To summarize the scale, give best player in world the 1 rating. A player s/he can beat 70-75% of the time (why so loose?) gets a 2 rating. A 3 rating is beaten by a 2 rating 70-75% of the time (and in general n is beaten by n-1 70-75% of the time).
The game's complexity is the difference in rating between the world's best player and an absolute beginner.
Robertie's game complexity values: Go=40, Chess=14, Scrabble=10, Poker=10, BG=8, Checkers=8, Hearts=5, Blackjack=2, Craps=0.001, Lotteries=10^-7, Roulette=0.
Surprising he didn't rate bridge (particularly because he mentions it in his introduction).
Note that 1/(0.7)^10 = 35.4 while 1/(0.75)^10 = 17.8, almost a factor of two ratio.
People have and will continue to argue the values in Robertie's table.
Just to create some extra food for thought, which number do you think is the off the most, a) in the difference scale, and b) in the ratio scale? For example, if you think BG is an 11, this is off by 3 in the difference scale and 11/8 - 1 = 0.375 in the ratio scale.
It would also be interesting to estimate 1-on-1 games of physical skill (e.g. tennis, golf, basketball) on this scale.
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