Chess.com or Lichess?

That's why chess websites inflate the ratings. It brings the bums in.

Lichess if you are free to play player. Chess.com if you can afford their premium offers.

chess.com

  Stop playing 5/5 Blitz.

  If you prefer playing Bridge, why are you playing Snap?

because of limited time. I have got a wife and two kids. Much prefer the 10/0 or 15/10 games but just dont have the time these days.

I will give you guys an example. Against the Caro Kann I play an unusual variation called the Bayonet attack. Now, I am sure high level players know how to get the better of this variation, but people rated below 1500? Come on! Most of them shouldn't know it. For 8 years on chess,com none of the under 1500 players had a clue about it.

I just played a guy rated well below 1500 and he played the right moves without even spending a second to think about them.

 And literally everyone I face on chess.com  Blitz at this low low rating knows EXACTLY how to deal with it.

Same with the benko gambit. They all seem to know EXACTLY how to escape trouble. Kings gambit, well I have 10 years experience playing that but it is still amazing how many of these 1400 guys seem to know the three best variations to deal with it.

There is something messed up with this. The starting rating on chess.com is 1200 and they are saying that someone only 250 points over that rating knows all the basic openings, gambits and so on, and most of the variations?  I would love to see half these guys do the same play with a real chess board. 

Nor everyone is at it. I can tell who the real chess players are. They tend to have a really high rating in rapid (1700+, and sometimes over 1900) and they play well. When I lose to them, fair enough, I know they have learned the game and are playing fair. I can tell who they are as well... they spend longer thinking about the difficult stages of the game.

With this many chess teachers on yt, twitch its almost impossible to find someone who doesnt know what he is doing in the first five moves of the game. If I decided to play Caro-Kann ofcourse I will learn how to counter most responses, and the knowledge will only grow with experience. You cant influence on what your opponent should or shouldnt play, thats the fun part in the game. Plus game also has a middlegame and endgame, so being bad in the openings doesnt mean losing a game. If you dont like those suboptimal openings you are playing, why dont you change them?

I don't get it. Don't you want to improve? Why do you want your opponents to play badly?

Also just because they know the best lines doesn't mean they can play the positions to the end without errors. I encountered some low-rated players who were booked up to the teeth and blitzed out their moves in a fraction of a second. In such cases I tried to deviate early to test them  whether they understand the positions they are playing. And so far in all cases they suddenly struggle to consistently find good moves. The rating difference will eventually kick in even if the position is objectively equal.

My opening are sometimes not very ambitious and from a theoretical point of view I have basically nothing but if there is one thing I know it is that people at club level play significantly worse when the queens come off the board.

So if you get a slightly worse or equal position from the opening than this is perfeclty normal but that doesn't mean you are lost. If you can't hold these positions then you have to work on your chess more.

That’s because of rating inflation. The players in skill have proven to have no difference.

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Even I know that. Look at me. I’m absolute garbage. It seems like that you don’t like opponents that know the first 5 moves of the game.

Also another thing is that you are actually obsessed with rating despite claiming otherwise. You label your opponents a "1600" or a "2000" which shows you already classify them according to rating. You basically expect them to play low quality chess which is just a poor attitude. They train and play chess the same as you do. Just because they are lower rated doesn|t mean that they deserve to lose every single game or play garbage moves in the opening.

The rating only is a predictor for how the game could pan out. And in most cases you should win but that todesn't mean your opponent loses all the time let alone play bad moves all the time.

Opening knowledge is probably the most easiest to master in chess as you literally just ahve to memorize it. Some players memorize some STafford traps but do they actually stored the actual pattern in their brain or do they just repeat the moves they have memorized. There is a huge difference between the two.

If you are higher rated than it shouldn't matter whether your opening result is slightly worse.

On lichess you will encounter the same opponent's once you climb higher.

Dont be so hard on yourself,  Aun. You have a rating above 1600 on Rapid, which is better than 90% of players. Definitely not a "garbage player" in my opinion-- especially if you play fair and try to learn strategy as well as the endless tactics. That will help you if ever play OTB. 

As for me being upset about the first 5 moves, nope... try the first 20-30! I play Pirc/Indian defence as black, and Kings Gambit as white. I know quite a lot about these openings, and I am AMAZED with all the unknown lines outside the book that these supposed 1450 players have somehow come up with. There are lines that you won't find in any online videos, but they play them with incredible accuracy, and avoid defensive errors too. I dont know if these guys just play this way for the first 20 or 30 moves and then calm it down in the later stages so they dont get caught by chess.com staff.  

Unlike a lot of players on here (and most of the people on this forum I bet) I actually run the analysis after every game. It is amazing how "accurately" these guys play. For every move in the game, the after game analysis rates the moves played as blunders (very bad moves), mistakes, inaccuracies, good moves, excellent moves and best moves. Of all the moves on the board, it is very hard to find the "best move" especially if you are playing Blitz where there is little time to think, and especially if you are only rated only 1400-1500. Players in this 1400-1500 range are classed as "weak intermediate"- they should be able to come up with a few good and excellent moves, and a few "best" moves in obvious stages of the game, but also they will make a few inaccuracies or just "good" moves, especially when the lines are unusual. I dont see much of that on Blitz. 

I will say, it didn't used to be like that on here. A few years back, my Blitz rating on here was 1700-1800 and I enjoyed it. When people beat me, I didn't feel disheartened and laugh at their ridiculous accuracy. I congratulated them because I could see they used clever sacrifices, tricks and knowledge- the exact kind of things that you learn in the chess.com lessons.

And ratings do matter, especially to players who dont have the time to play OTB and compete in tournaments. I dont care about the rating to tell people about it, but I want to know that I am improving, or at least not getting worse.

You're a 1400-1500 player. You, apparently, know the Bayonet attack.

But you're complaining that other 1400s-1500s should not know the Bayonet attack.

Think about the logic of that complaint. You, yourself, know the opening, but you think that other players in your same rating range should not know it ...

Why do you believe that other players in your same rating range should know less than you?

I haven't yet read such insightful and utterly true words in the forums, thank you!

😆 well said

Since when has the 'L' word been allowed to be mentioned ?

I see. But I don't get how you can know the theory but not your opponents.

Basically, I believe the rating range is messed up. It is 200 points too low. I think this is caused by a huge number of cheats. There, I said it. I will probably get in trouble.

If everyone is playing fair (big IF) they should have a rating close to 1800. I should have that rating too, and I did for many years on here. It is my level on all the other time controls, and on Lichess. If I was to play a computer opponent set at 1800, I would win 50/50.

So why is chess.com Blitz freakishly low rated with strong players at the so called "lower intermediate" range?

Either there are a load of geniuses or there are a lot of cheats, who skew the balance. I suspect the latter due to the very robotic nature of play. It is not just the bayonet attack they seem to have "memorised", that is just one example. There are LOADS of openings and so many players seem to know so much, and so many sidelines!

For example, I play the Pirc defence and they all seem to know how to stop it. But just consider the huge number of replies to e4 (classical, sicilian- with many variations, French, Caro Kann, Scandianavian, and many others). And yet they never seem to run into trouble against the Pirc? Come on!

Now, if it is the first of these two, and everyone is playing fair, then why not just alter the ratings so we seem higher?

 You might say "who cares about a number idiot?" but it does matter. Because players want to know if they are improving over time or getting worse, or staying the same. I was originally 1300 years ago, then worked my way up to 1800... suddenly I am back in the 1400 range and I want to know what is going on.