Does it seem to anyone else that, on the whole, the Chess Mentor courses are considerably underrated--numerical ratings-wise? It seems to me that there is much good material there for players with Chess.com ratings in 1800-2000 range, at least, yet there are few courses with numerical ratings as high as 1700, and many more courses containing material from which, I think, higher-rated players can benefit have much lower ratings than that.

I mention this only because I have a friend who plays in the Chess.com 1800-2000 range and he won't give CM a try because he took a look at the ratings of the Courses and decided they were beneath him. I don't think so. So, I wonder how many other potential customers might be being chased away by the low numerical ratings given to the Courses.

Or it it just me? (That's certainly possible.) I'm currently rated in the high 1900's but I decided to play through all of the Tactics Courses from the lowest-rated to the top. I find that I'm picking up much needed good stuff--including both the material itself and the practice opportunities--in Courses rated hundreds of points below my rating. Anyone else find that, too?

this is a great point. it's because the ratings got inflated for people due to an algorithm change. hrmm... good point.

I also found out that although I play at 1600-1700 range, my Tactics Courses are about 1200-1400 range. I think, instead of saying the courses are underrated, we whould say that our Chess.com ratings are overrated.

And that's possible, too. I KNOW I don't play to a 2000 USCF OTB rating. But, then, I would expect a correspondence chess rating to be higher than an OTB rating, I think.

i quite liked the chess mentor, i dont think the whole rating thing would be a big issue? but then again i dont care about rating whatsoever but i do get a little bit edgy playing someone my level or above! im sure a high level player could still learn from lower rated mentor courses as you could be higher rated but not exactly know the theory behind the tactics...? from what i remmeber with the basic tutorial it was quite informative...

i might see if someone will purchase an unlimited membership for me for christmas as im hell to buy for!

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Hmm generally i expect CC ratings to be far higher than OTB ratings.  that theory only applies though to people who actually take the time to analyze in the great amount of hours they are given to move

A good point, photray94. At first, I couldn't understand why a player would want to play 30 or more correspondence games at a time, which I would think, for most people, would not allow for the analysis that is possible in correspondence chess. I wondered why such a player wouldn't just play live chess. But perhaps these players play correspondence chess because they simply don't ever want to have to wait for their opponent to move. To me, that misses out on the beauty of correspondence chess, i.e., the depth of the analysis. But, to each his own.

As a Chess Mentor user, I agree that Chess Mentor's ratings are slightly under-rated.

However, I notice that you've just reset these ratings - I guess they are a bit high now, but will probably adjust with time...

i don't know how underrated the chess mentor is because my chess mentor rating is 1850 yet my current online chess rating is only 1400-ish, maybe i haven't played enough correspondence chess to get an accurate rating or haven't done time on either one.

I would have to agree here because my rating goes from 1600-1700 in the turn based chess but it is approaching 2000 in mentor, the rating system definately needs a change

I think I confused things a bit: I wasn't speaking about an underrating of Chess Mentor ratings that each student earns as they study with it. (Although that may be another issue.)

I was only inquiring about the degree-of-difficulty ratings assigned by Chess.com administrators to the Chess Mentor courses and lessons themselves. It seemed to me that they were underrated in that the courses and lessons contained material that was useful to players with higher turn-based playing ratings than the ratings the courses and lessons were assigned, resulting in some players incorrectly concluding that Chess Mentor was too far beneath them to even want to try.

Personally any player who thinks they are 'beyond' or 'above' any certain teaching program/book/whatever, will never get any better. You never know what you might learn that will help you ascend higher.

Amen, Unholycyclone. I'm sticking to my plan of working my way up through Chess Mentor, and enjoying it.

My only concern is to repeat the lessons until i have the 100% result, so i can move to the next lesson. My CC rating is 1800-1900 and in chess mentor i oscilate between 1300 and 1500. however, i find good chalenges in all kind of rating problems in CM.

Great tool... i love playing chess mentor... it's like playing enigmas, very chalenging...

chessmentor is HARD :P ... but I feel the ratings are accurate.  When I take my time, use the hints and really study the position ... I can get about 2200 ... which I think is fair.  In general my rating is 2000 which is almost exaclty my level of play here @ chess.com :).

 

I think ratings should be penalized a little more harshly for using the 'correct square' buttons...

Right now I am trying some 2300+ level lessons and scoring quite well in most of them.  So I am not sure.  :)  I did take a break for awhile but now my rating keeps going up and up and now I have reached 2400+.  But my CC rating is only about 2300.  :)

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Hi.  I didn't see this thread down below, but I just posted something about the Chess Mentor ratings.

I totally disagree, and think that the Chess Mentor stuff is wildly OVERRATING me.  I'm USCF 1534...and I currently have a 2513 Chess Mentor rating.  LOL.

I also started out by doing only adaptive type training, and peaked at around 2200.  I felt that this was wildly overrating my play (especially since I was often scoring only 60-70% or so on some of those problems). 

So I started out from the very beginning, doing sequential play in hopes that I could work up to my "true" strength.  It's too easy to answer dozens of questions in a row with 100% accuracy to work up your chess rating. 

I've finally worked my way up to the 1900-2100 difficulty range, and as stated above, am only answering those with 60-70% accuracy.  So I THINK that's the problem range I should be staying in. 

But I still think it's vastly overrating my play.

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I find this to be absolutely amazing!  And certainly a totally different experience than the one I'm having. 

I guess I haven't played enough CC games to find out what my online rating would be.  Something tells me it will be in the 1800ish range.