Why Does Absolutely No One Play Unrated Games? (Rant)

I've set my estimated rating range seaker to infinity good and bad players, but it takes so long before it finds an opponent.- And if you want to go "live" on unrated, it can takes hours to play a good set of games; simply because of waiting time.

Worst of all, most of the times you search for another game, it resets to a rated match- even if you were already set on an unrated queue beforehand. - Which means if you coach or play anticipating an easy, point-free game against a 500 rated player or lower and lose; you can lose your hard-earned established rating.

I want to practice my chessgame without losing points; but either no one else is available to play, or I have a terrible experience that ultimately hinders my grind and makes me feel like i'm wasting time and points.

I feel like the site is automatically set towards funneling players to play rated games; which means that fewer people decide to play unrated. 

You have misunderstood the purpose of ratings. Their main purpose is to find good matches.There is no point in protecting a rating. You cannot spend ratings. 

Don't worry unless and until you make it into seriously high over the board ratings-- >2200.

If you only play one opening and decide to diversify, it is likely you will lose some ratings points while you are learning. Eventually, your rating will recover.

If you play unrated games, you will meet a lot of clowns who are seriously misrated.  If you look at the ratings history, many of them have flatlined for years. 

You will learn more quickly if you have some idea of the strength of your opponent.

Play rated games.

I hear where you're coming from, and I get that ratings aren't that important; but like you said, I'm learning. I have gained some points with a bunch of winning streaks, but I'm both worried of getting a losing streak,and worried of forgetting my training tactics and stradegies. - Adding on to that; I've mostly played d4 in my chess past, and now have learned that e4 is stronger, and therefore need to fully implement key lines and theory into my game- BUT; as you said, I can't have that effect my current rating that I've worked for. 

Unrated games seem like the ultimate practice ground; but no one ever plays them, especially if you limit the seeker to your rating field.

When you get "unrated" players at the 1100 level, you sometimes find players who should be much higher rated but love beating low rated players in easy games.

Good luck.

I really think you should play rated games.  Ratings go up and down.  There are various theories that abound in the forum. Some people think that the evil developers send armies of bots to drive down the ratings of free members.  Since players frequently start off at 1200, they are often misrated. 

Playing rated games will help get you out of that pool.

There must be fewer servers for unrated games. It takes several minutes to match an unrated game sometimes— only to have your opponent auto-resign. They probably fell asleep waiting. Hit “play” for a default match-up? INSTANT RATED GAME!!!

Why do people bump old threads ! 😤👎

Because I’m tired of wasting time waiting for an unrated opponent. Maybe bumping an old thread will get somebody’s attention at chess.com. Do you have a better solution?

Doesn’t matter how many servers of no one is playing unrated. Not much reason too, unless you are tired and don’t want to commit all your brains to a game perhaps

Depends on the reason.

An intra-club daily tournament may get more players if it is unrated, especially if some of the players are seriously under-rated.  As an unintentionally under-rated player I did not want to crash my Club of Numbers club-mates ratings and thus only played if the tournaments were unrated - playing 28 unrated games in two tournaments (one first place, one second place) while also starting play in inter-club matches that took my rating from 1200 to 1921 (20 total games with 18 wins and 2 draws - two of the wins were 960) over the same eight month period.

In the KOTH and Horde variants I've played some unrated games because new players are more willing to play a higher-rated player (2xxx) if it is unrated.  I opted for somewhat longer time controls when setting up those games and used the extra time to provide some useful commentary/instruction in the notes (I am a moderately fast typist).

Because people want to get better at chess and earn more new rating points - there are lots of them and, they are quite weak if we compare them to the players who don't play rated games anymore. They aren't interested in unrated games for obvious reasons.
I already made my rating, and that's it. I don't need more, and therefore, I play unrated games only.

I think the reason the unrated pool is so small is that folks who don't want rated games are mostly playing the bots.

Maybe because of situations like this:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/did-this-guy-take-me-seriously-64438235

 

I think it’s evident that there’s a demand for unrated games. The longer wait does NOT indicate a smaller pool. It could mean just the opposite.
Sometimes I just want to try something different without wagering points. (Losing a bunch of games in a row might get me accused of sandbagging.) Sometimes I’m supervising my kids and can’t devote as much attention to playing chess. Regardless, if I only have 10 minutes to play chess it’d be nice to not have to spend 3 of them waiting for an opponent.
Then again, sometimes I just play a rated game and eat the points if I lose. That does nothing to help validate the elo scores on this site.

I pretty much only play unrated games, and in my experience, the wait is generally only slightly longer than in rated. In rated games the pairing is made automatically by a computer algorithm whereas in unrated games, someone has to actually scroll through a list of possible games and choose to play you. It's not rocket science why it would take a little longer.

Maybe it’s not rocket science, but perhaps it’s brane serjery?

That makes sense. I wasn’t aware that there was no automated matching system for unrated games. That would be an elegant (and presumably simple) solution. Same process, just an option for an unrated match rather than a custom challenge.