Brainstorming and team strategy

The primary aims of this topic are to improve our team, its ratings and results. All discussions leading to that end, short of discussing individual matches, are welcome.

First Problem/Issue

Looking at our teams' records, the conclusion that we are losing more than we are winning is inescapable (See here: http://www.chess.com/groups/matches/royalchess?show_all_current=1).

What are we doing wrong? What can we do to improve?

The first thing to be noted is that we are sometimes engaging higher rated teams and players. This is something we can work on right away. As Sajay has reminded me, the Royals' average rating is in 1300's range (1378, as of now). Hence, bulk of matches we engage in should cater to rating near that range.

Any comments, suggestions or questions on this first issue are welcome.

My suggestion is that we should invite more of 1500+ members to the group, and also 1800+. That really helps the strength of the team and brings up the average rating. 

madhurakanksha's suggestion is a very good one (more of 1300 matches). We should be creating matches with very less members in rating belts with low no. of members in the group. If in a certain belt, say 1800-2000, our highest rated player is 1945, then the rating belt should be limited to like 1950, so that competition is not overloaded upon us. 

As I have learnt from other groups, challenge groups that have a population less than double of ours. So you won't face like twenty 1700s against  five 1500s and a few 1300s. 

StrategicPlay's excellent observations give me an idea: to make separate matches for higher rated players (say 1800-2000) and mid-rating players (say 1500-1800) lower rated players (say 1200-1500).

Should we also try acertaining the number of participants for each match beforehand? Or that would be overkill?

While inviting higher rated players seems to be a viable solution, I have my reservations about it. We have some players rated above 2000. The rating of our highest rated player is above 2500. Another problem we face is how to make the higher rated players active in this  team?

I support 200% that we should play more of 1300-1400 matches..

At the same time we should get match experience from very highly rated. if we lose to a 2000+ team the experience we gain is more than that for the opponents.   The common problem with us is either we are not thinking before moving or we are thinking and not moving (times outs)..

so somebody pls share some tricks to stay around!

"When the going gets tough the tough gets going..."

@Sajay

Maybe we should try the economist's way: prescribing and then maintianing a ratio between lower rated matches, mid-rated matches and higher rated matches. That can create a win win situation: improving team's rating with gaining experience against higher rated players.

How about having half of the team matches for under-1500 rated players?

I caught one more culprit .... most of the challenges we issue are 'open-rating' challenges. 

I request the admins to withdraw the unaccepted challenges and to issue fresh challenges with rating limts.

but since our members have varied ratings (712-2512) it is better if we have games in both sections... but yes more often we should have limited rating games.

The way out, in my opinion is that we identify approximate rating ranges for all matches. 

Lower: 700-1300 (or 700-1100 or simply under-1200)

Middle: 1300-1700 (or 1200-1500 or 1600)

Higher: 1600-2000

Very High: above 1800 or above 2000

While we desire that we have a mix matches catering to all rating ranges, we should try to play/create matches within a single rating range.... not open matches.

If anyone has any different solution please do share.

agreed!

@sajay

Let us create some lower rating matches right away then ... 

Status update

Although we are yet to actually win any team game, a casual look at the bottom of link below shows that Royal's seem to be winning way more matches then the situation before this discussion:   http://www.chess.com/groups/matches/royalchess?show_all_current=1

Kudos Team! And cogratulations to the Royal admin.

infact when few weeks back i checked our game status all of them showed negative... sure we can get us out from this..

Excellent.

Status Update

We have a 23% win rate now. Not a high one but significantly better than when we started working on our strategy. Team's rank is now #605 out of 10,304.

Kudos to all. We are continuing on the right track. Excellent work admin.

any thing around 600 is very good rank.. wow thanks team!

Second Problem/Issue : Time Over

I have noticed that we are losing some matches because of time running out for individual matches. How can we minimise these unintended loses?

Any suggestions for the admin?

checking match period viz 3/5/7 will help a great deal.

@ Sajay

How do we make sure that all people do that?

lets put a message while organising turn matches viz

"this is a 3 day match so pleaesmake sure you play"

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