bet players

This article examines a number of methodologies that have been suggested for the task of comparing top chess players throughout history, particularly the question of comparing the greatest players of different eras. Statistical methods offer objectivity but, whilst there is agreement on systems to rate the strengths of current players, there is disagreement and controversy on whether such techniques can be applied to players from different generations who never competed against each other.
Perhaps the best-known statistical model is that devised by Arpad Elo. In his 1978 book The Rating of Chessplayers, Past and Present,[1] he gave ratings to players corresponding to their performance over the best five-year span of their career. According to this system the highest ratings achieved were:
2725 – José Raúl Capablanca 2720 – Mikhail Botvinnik, Emanuel Lasker 2700 – Mikhail Tal 2690 – Alexander Alekhine, Paul Morphy, Vasily Smyslov. (Though published in 1978, Elo's list did not include five-year averages for Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov. However, it does list the January 1978 ratings as 2780 for Fischer and 2725 for Karpov.)[2]
In 1970, FIDE adopted Elo's system for rating current players. So, one way to compare players of different eras is to compare their Elo ratings. The best-ever Elo ratings are tabulated belowThe average Elo rating of top players has risen over time. For instance, the average of the top 100 has risen from 2645 in July 2001 to 2665 in July 2006.[4] Many people believe that this rise is mostly due to a system artifact known as ratings inflation, making it impractical to compare players of different eras.
Elo was of the opinion that it was futile to attempt to use ratings to compare players from different eras; in his view, they could only possibly measure the strength of a player as compared to his or her contemporaries. He also stated that the process of rating players was in any case rather approximate; he compared it to "the measurement of the position of a cork bobbing up and down on the surface of agitated water with a yard stick tied to a rope and which is swaying in the windMany statisticians since Elo have devised similar methods to retrospectively rate players. Jeff Sonas, for example, calls his system Chessmetrics. This system takes account of many games played after the publication of Elo's book, and claims to take account of the rating inflation that the Elo system has apparently suffered.
One caveat is that a Chessmetrics rating takes into account the frequency of play. According to Sonas, "As soon as you go a month without playing, your Chessmetrics rating will start to drop".[6] While it may be in the best interest of the fans for chess-players to remain active, it is not clear why a person's rating, which reflects his/her skill at chess, should drop if the player is inactive for a period of time.
Sonas, like Elo, acknowledges that it is useless to try to compare the strength of players from different eras. In his explanation of the Chessmetrics system,[7] he says:
Of course, a rating always indicates the level of dominance of a particular player against contemporary peers; it says nothing about whether the player is stronger/weaker in their actual technical chess skill than a player far removed from them in time. So while we cannot say that Bobby Fischer in the early 1970s or Jose Capablanca in the early 1920s were the "strongest" players of all time, we can say with a certain amount of confidence that they were the two most dominant players of all time. That is the extent of what these ratings can tell us. Nevertheless Sonas' Web site does compare players from different eras, and shows that in such cases the Chessmetrics system is rather sensitive to the length of the periods being compared, for example:
The award is given annually to the best player at each position in each league. Players are voted on by sportswriters, and if two players of the same position receive the same number of votes, the award is given to both players (Greg LaRocca and Masahiro Araki both received the Central League award at second base in 2004).
The award was established in 1940, and has been awarded each year since 1947. Though the naming comes from awarding the nine best players in each league, the Pacific League awards ten players each year, after adopting the designated hitter role in 1975.
In early Japanese baseball, players with exceptional fielding ability were given the award, (even if other players had far superior hitting numbers) but fielding was supposedly taken out of consideration in voting after the Japanese Golden Glove award was established in 1972.
The award can be thought of as the Japanese equivalent of the Silver Slugger Award, but in Japanese baseball, pitchers are not awarded based on their offensive ability (pitchers do not bat in the Pacific League, but the award is still given in the league each year). Another notable difference is that sportswriters are the voters for the Best Nine Award, whereas the Silver Slugger Award is voted on by managers and coaches. Some fans view the Best Nine Award purely as a popularity contest, rather than a legitimate award.
The same award is also given at the college level, in the Tokyo Big6 Baseball League.
Since the voters are all media-related persons, voting results are often more reflective of overall impact in the mass media, rather than specific numbers. Players with more popularity are often awarded over more deserving players. For example, Japanese baseball icon Shigeo Nagashima won the award every single year of his career, even though he was clearly not the best third baseman in the league during the final stages of his career. Fans are often confounded by the voting results each year.
For example, here are the three Pacific League outfield winners for 1996 (bold indicates league leading number):
Ichiro Suzuki (Orix BlueWave) .356, 16 HRs, 84 RBIs, 35 steals Arihito Muramatsu (Fukuoka Daiei Hawks) .293, 0 HRs, 38 RBIs, 58 steals So Taguchi (Orix BlueWave) .279, 7 HRs, 44 RBIs, 10 steals Other deserving outfielders in the league:
Tuffy Rhodes (Kintetsu Buffaloes) .293, 27 HRs, 97 RBIs, 11 steals Koji Akiyama (Fukuoka Daiei Hawks) .300, 9 HRs, 66 RBIs, 13 steals Rhodes and Akiyama both had better offensive numbers than Taguchi, (hits, HRs, RBIs, batting average, steals, and on-base percentage) but were not given the award. This was probably because the Orix BlueWave won the Japan Series in 1996; like the Japanese season MVP award, the Best Nine Award tends to favor players from championship teams. Ichiro is obviously deserving of the award for winning the batting title and leading the league in hits and on-base percentage, but Muramatsu's steals do not fully compensate for his mediocre average and very low power numbers. Rhodes was the offensive powerhouse for his team, recording the most HRs, RBIs, and highest batting average for the Buffaloes. It is also notable that all three winners had also won (or would go on to win) multiple Golden Glove awards, showing that fielding ability is still very much taken into consideration.