Pedro Martínez: Both Nothingness and I checked Resher's stats thoroughly. His wins by time-outs were games not even half played against the same 2 absolute beginner opponents in every variant. The rating was based on 4 games, 1 more than an unrated status. Based on those data I call someone a beginner. If trained by Nothingness I'm not surprised Resher is improving rapidly. I have no doubt Nothingness takes this job very seriously and Resher seems eager to learn, as can be seen by the large amount of espionage games of all sorts he has taken up since he signed up for the tournament, quite some of them against you. I'm sure he's learning a lot from you as well.We encourage the beginners to train themselves for the tournament, so it's only likely some will get above the beginner's level before the tournament.

Maybe that clarifies things?