
method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess
Arpad Elo, the inventor of the Elo rating system The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players, originally designed for rating chess players. It is a special case of the Bradley–Terry model. The Elo system was invented as an improved chess rating system over the previously used Harkness rating system and has since been adapted for use in other zero-sum games and sports, including tennis, association football (soccer), American football, baseball, basketball, pool, various board games and esports. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American chess master and physics professor.
The difference in the ratings between two players serves as a predictor of the outcome of a match. Two players with equal ratings who play against each other are expected to score an equal number of wins. A player whose rating is 100 points greater than their opponent's is expected to score 64%; if the difference is 200 points, then the expected score for the stronger player is 76%.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).