so if your opponents score affects oyur score?

 

yes. depending on your opponents score, you can earn or lose any number of points.

lol chess rating system is easy: how many wins, many points

I've only played 3 games so far on  line and noted I have a rating that changes with each win/loss - but - the "today's rank" is blank - does that change after I have played so many games?

After a few games (around 10) or a certain amount of time, the ranking box fills out.  

 

I've always wondered about this, since joining the site.  For those who do have USCF/FIDE/Elo ratings, do you find that there is a significant discrepancy between those and chess.com ratings?  I'm suspecting so, but without an OTB ranking of my own, I've got no way of telling.

 Thanks.

erik wrote:

everyone starts at 1200. then as you play you get a new rating. it is all based on the Glicko ratings system :) check it out - it's a fun read!

http://math.bu.edu/people/mg/glicko/glicko.doc/glicko.html 

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You know what's really sad? I visited that link and understood every single bit of it. Heck, I even know how to write the Excel formulas to emulate it. That's just sad... sad, sad, sad. Man, I need a social life. ROFL.

I guess for now I will choose not to visit the site and put the formula into excel - and just stick to my social life

   Ah yeah...like I just want to play... I got a headache looking at that site. Wow.

i think Jay or someone posted a topic on how they work and why you are given a 1200 preliminary.

oh ok makes sense pretty interesting

Would you say that you experienced the Glicko system to work fully symmetrically, i.e. will you end up on the same rating if playing higher rated players 10 times and beating them, let's say, only once, compared to playing lower rated players 10 times, winning 9 out of 10 times? I like to play both higher and lower rated players, but it would be interesting to know if there would exist a strategy to increase your rating by focusing on lower OR higher rated players. That would constitute a glitch, IMO...

Interesting idea, Clownfish. The formulas could be used with some sample data to determine the results. But to use that approach in real life, as a "strategy" per se, would require you to know not only the ratings of your potential opponents but also their RD values. Then you would have to run the numbers to determine the best possible sample of opponents against which to battle. Even then, there's no guarantee of better success against the lower-ranked sample group.

 

And what if the higher-ranked players have very high RD values and the lower-ranked players have very low RD values? Then the results for the two scenarios you describe above could be equal or even reversed!

 

I offer the following spin on your idea: We have no way of affecting our opponents' RD values. But we can affect our own. By definition, the RD value will gradually increase with time. So if we take extended leaves between groups of rated games, that would affectively cause our RD value to increase before each group of games. Therefore the ratings swing caused by our game results would be more dramatic (which could be a BAD thing). But we would need to know what time constant the USCF (or FIDE or whomever) uses for the RD equation. 2 months? 6 months? 1 year? 2 years? And of course we would have to stay "up on our game" during those sabaticals.

 

In the end, I don't think there's an easy way to minipulate the formulas or the system. There may be a way, but it's probably not very easy. Or we could try to win every game. :-)

Chess rating ELO is hard to improve.

Ratings...Shmatings...Get to playings, fools! 

But then I wouldn't get to play around with the math formulas. LOL.

LOL it is kind of easy too.

High rated is good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

joeyson wrote:

wow ppl

just play

ratings dont even matter

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 Ratings are important to people, it justifies their abilities, thought starting with a 1200 rating does not accuratley portray the skill of the individual.

i'm rated 1200 and i don't play golf

come get me