Chess Club Rankings

We actually have two types of ranking systems in the chess club.

The first is by colour.

Red players – are dangerous.

• They rarely make mistakes
• They will quickly and mercilessly take advantage of any mistakes you make.
• They set up pieces on open lines, have great pawn structure and know how to set traps.
• Know that only one thing counts in the end – killing that King.
• Realise that being a pawn up is a big advantage.
• They generally know their end game finishes.

Green players – know what they are doing.

• They know what good board position is, they know how to open up strongly and if a red player is not careful they can put together devastating attacks which can seriously scare red players.
• A lot of the time green players will get so carried away with their attacks that they forget about the rest of their pieces.
• Green players typically don’t make blunders, but do make mistakes.
• Some of the end games may accidentally end up in a stalemate rather than a draw.

Blue players – have the basics sorted.

• Know what a good opening looks like and can play games which have a sort of plan.
• A lot of the time, they will be easily distracted. A bit like junior soccer, where ever the ball goes, the whole team follows. So they might be on a good attack and then their opponent makes a move on the other side and they forget about the attack and run over and make moves to counter.
• Blue players will make a lot of blunders, but luckily for others they will not see and punish other people’s blunders.
• End games will finish in draws as knowledge on how to finish an opponent is lacking.

Purple players – are still learning.

• They will make moves which have a little at least 60% randomness built into them.
• Pieces will work as individuals and not as a team.
• The will not realise why things are falling apart.
• End games will typically be a draw against other purple players as they are yet to learn how to finish them off.

The second form of ranking is a numerical number (ELO).

• This denotes your playing strength.
• It will be changed by games that you win or lose.
• The points you gain (or lose) will be based on how many points your opponent has.
• Example: White is 1200 points vs Black with 800pts – if White wins they will gain about 3 points and Black will lose that many points. Where if Black wins, they will gain 30 points and White will lose 30 points. In the example about, the big difference indicates that Black (800) has only about 3% chance to beat White (1200).