Processing Power to Chess Rating Ratio

50 here is what the Deep Thought team wrote about the relationship between search depth and chess strength in a 1989 article: The ascent of the brute-force chess machines back in the late 1970s made one thing crystal clear: there is a strong causal relationship between the search speed of a chess machine and its playing strength. In fact, it appeared from machine self-test games that every time a machine searches one extra ply, its rating increases by about 200-250 rating points. Since each...

 The Pleasure of Entrainment

If entrainment is a form of pleasure, it is a pleasure at once structural and experiential, both mathematically regular and playfully flexible. Entrainment is not a phenomenon completely unique to games, but it does come very close to identifying the curious structural pleasure that all game experiences seem to contain: the meditative patterns of Tetris; the turn-taking, clacking cadence of Billiards; the rhythmic shooting pattern of Space Invaders; the pulsing flow of cards, hits, and chips ...

 Gamification Auction Mechanic

On a previous assessment, Mrs. Tabor asked her students three different questions to assess their science-centered critical thinking. Based on the answers, she gives each student a chip with a different color and value (much like the suns in Ra). Students who demonstrated an “average” level of critical-thinking skills get chips worth 3 or 4; students who demonstrated greater critical-thinking skills get chips worth slightly less (2 or 3); and students who struggled a bit get chips worth m...