We often hear people go on about how liking your rating is short-sighted or greedy or missing the point of chess. Does everyone agree to this? I happen to like my rating.

Hating it is probably worse.

If you like your rating, then its more likely that you will keep that rating than if you hate it.

Liking your rating is fine if your rating is likable.

Not necessarily. You'd still know that you'd like it if it were higher. If you hate it and it doesn't go up, you're more likely to quit.

I've been trying to get my rating to land on a good year for a while now, to no avail... it's lately been either just a little bit too high, leaving it in the near future, or just a little bit too low, leaving it in years I don't care about... I think the closest I've gotten from the low side was 1980 and the closest I've gotten from the high side was 2015...

Well, I did get 2007 once, but that's a pretty yucky year...

It's only bad if you focus on things that improve your rating and don't improve your chess. The way I see it:

• I want to get better at chess
• If I get better at chess, my rating will go up
• But - it's a fallacy to then say "hey my rating went up so I must be getting better.

All I read into my rating is how good I'm currently rated, compared to the rest of the chess world.

i tend to see a correlation with my rating and how i'm playing.  i like when i get higher--right now i'm a low 1600 (which is pretty high for me) and i am playing better than i have over the previous few weeks.  so that's good.  but i'm not getting comfy.  i'd like to be a mid to high 1600 in a week if i can.  and then 1700s eventually.  i hope it's possible and i'm working to make it so.