Enter Your Reply

David, you must be thinking of USCF ratings, NWCF ratings (if they still
exist), or ELO ratings, and each of these provide some way of estimating
probable future performance based on previously observed past performance.
 I need to read up more on the Glickman Chess Rating system to see how it
differs from that of the Game Courier Rating system, seeing as how they
seem to share the same acronym.

I was suggesting, on the other hand, a way of measuring computer programs
pitted against each other, and against humans that are allowed to compete
with them.  You've probably heard of http://www.pogo.com where you can
play cardgames such as Hearts and Spades (but no Skat, the last time I
looked).  You even get to play with robot players if you want.  There are
lots of sites like that in Internet.  It's my understanding that the Game
Courier here at www.chessvariants.org could handle cardgames like that,
though one might be a tad less graphical than another.

As for ZOG being some kind of a reason to forbid the 'Game Plies Rating'
system I suggested, that only applies to people unwilling to buy an
upgraded ZOG with the feature I suggested.  Since I don't have a copy of
Zillions of Games (and I'm unusually reluctant to go out and buy
something that I don't even have a hardware platform to run it on), it
escapes me why, exactly, the program can't be upgraded to play out all
the plies that it has been directed to search through, short of observing
that the person who originally programmed it, must not have felt like
designing that feature.  It was probably a case of him shrugging, and
saying, 'Why bother?'  If someone gets around to upgrading ZOG so it
*could* search through entire Plies' worth of information (with or
without regard to time controls, or the peculiar predicaments inherent in
data storage), I'm sure it could do the job just as well as the next one
could.