On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 6:39 PM, Michael Goetze <mgoe...@mgoetze.net> wrote: > this is actually a rather complicated topic because you can have different > definitions for "professional strength". For instance, I could make an > argument that S. Shikshina 3p does not have "professional strength", AFAIK > she did not become a professional in the regular way and has never won a > professional tournament game.
I agree it's complicated. Especially because there are differences between countries. But if we see news like "CrazyStone beats 4p with 7 stones handicap" we also know little about the background of the pro. So we fall back on an average experience of what we generally encounter when meeting a 4p ranked player. And I think it's fair to say that "on average" a 4p player can at best give one stone handicap to the average EGF 7-dan and it's therefore not much of an exageration to compare a 4p to what would be an EGF 8-dan if they existed. All the examples given to support the argument either way are at best anecdotal. But looking at the EGF ranking list, the 7-dan players are interspersed with players of professional ranks, with very few 6 dans among them. That is based on a considerable amount of data. Maybe you are correct to have doubts about S. Shikshina, but how about Guo Juan, Catalin Taranu, Alexander Dinnerschtein and others? These things tend to average out over larger numbers. A world ranking system would be nice to have. But I'm afraid that the political bickering that it would involve to make it happen would make the infights of the Chess community pale by comparison. So until then we'll have to make do with these average guesses. Mark _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
