Chess.com Ratings are a JOKE

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llama36

Or, you know... make it up to them...

Everyone who gets tricked into being crushed by a GM gets 1 month of diamond membership free.

Jimemy
nMsALpg skrev:

Or, you know... make it up to them...

Everyone who gets tricked into being crushed by a GM gets 1 month of diamond membership free.

I like this idea. To solve a ”problem” in a way that is positive to everyone.

llama36
CooloutAC wrote:
nMsALpg wrote:

Or, you know... make it up to them...

Everyone who gets tricked into being crushed by a GM gets 1 month of diamond membership free.

 

I just got gifted 15 days by a staff member for other reasons yesterday.  But I doubt they would do that.   its way too many people.

I think that's another benefit though... because you'd have to apply for permission, and chess.com wouldn't let it happen very many times because they wouldn't want to give out 100s of memberships a day.

bdub76
Concerning speed runs, I’m not worried about GMs. There aren’t a lot of them.

I’m more concerned about the 1500-2000 playing through the beginner levels that aren’t well known. There are far more players at those levels.

There should definitely be a floor for the tilted players unless folks are willingly signing up to play them. This solves the playing subs issue.
AlexiZalman
CooloutAC wrote:

...

On Lichess the average is fixed to 1500 which is the rating everyone starts at.   Chess.com is completely different though.   I was going to quit chess when stuck at rating 100 for a week here,  and after buying a beginner book and learning and practicing i hit a wall at 400. My opponents playing skills were night and day and it did not feel right.   I decided to make an account on lichess and it was a very different experience.   So I agree with what you are saying and have come to the same conclusion.

As I mentioned in my first post in this thread, I am pretty sure there is something very fishy about the gameplay at sub-1000 levels on chess.com, which more talented players are unlikely to notice.  I didn't really notice this till I eventually started played in tournaments where the rating ranges were much wider, say +/-400, than the individual auto-selection.  Everything seemed inverted, my gameplay was much better against players much higher rated and much worst against those much lower.  After playing 100s of games using the auto-selection method my rating was moreorless static. I came to the conclusion that the only way to really increase my rating was to target much higher rated players - not an easy thing to consistently do on CCC.  The whole experience was counter-intuitive to real world chess progress., and totally undermined the ELO system.

llama36
AlexiZalman wrote:
CooloutAC wrote:

...

On Lichess the average is fixed to 1500 which is the rating everyone starts at.   Chess.com is completely different though.   I was going to quit chess when stuck at rating 100 for a week here,  and after buying a beginner book and learning and practicing i hit a wall at 400. My opponents playing skills were night and day and it did not feel right.   I decided to make an account on lichess and it was a very different experience.   So I agree with what you are saying and have come to the same conclusion.

As I mentioned in my first post in this thread, I am pretty sure there is something very fishy about the gameplay at sub-1000 levels on chess.com, which more talented players are unlikely to notice.  I didn't really notice this till I eventually started played in tournaments where the rating ranges were much wider, say +/-400, than the individual auto-selection.  Everything seemed inverted, my gameplay was much better against players much higher rated and much worst against those much lower.  After playing 100s of games using the auto-selection method my rating was moreorless static. I came to the conclusion that the only way to really increase my rating was to target much higher rated players - not an easy thing to consistently do on CCC.  The whole experience was counter-intuitive to real world chess progress., and totally undermined the ELO system.

You have zero games on this account.

I mean, it's a nice story, but you have no idea how often someone will say something like...

... well for example, a few days ago some noob was complaining about how he always loses as white against the scandinavian after 1.e4 d5... so I looked in his game history and saw that in his last 100 games he had that position 6 times AND ONLY LOST ONCE.

This happens all the time. People are always saying completely stupid and untrue things. Whether they do it on purpose, I don't know, but without a game history there's 0% chance I believe you.

llama36

Others like 

[long-@ss rant about how chess.com is a literal pack of satanic freaks for making him 9 out of 10 games with black]

Then you go to their history and out of 2000 games they've had 1016 with white...

Literally a 100% chance.

Just like somehow whenever you see a chessboard on a movie there's nearly a 100% chance the bottom right corner is black.

Jimemy
CooloutAC skrev:
Jimemy wrote:
nMsALpg skrev:
CooloutAC wrote:

They even let streamers speedrun in the community exacerbating the perception the site is full of cheaters. 

I agree their policy on speed running is trash.

But on balance, there are over 1 million games played on chess.com every day... so letting some GM speedrun on Twitch does more good for chess.com than harm... from a business standpoint I mean.

I have never meet a speedrunner as far as I know. And I love to watch speedrunners on youtube because I learn a lot from it. I take this trade any day, the risk of facing them versus the awesome free content they give me.

 

You'll learn more by watching people who dont' speedrun imo.  What you are doing is supporting the undermining of the rating system and the encouragement of others to manipulate it.  What they are teaching kids,  is to value ratings more then competitive matches.  And its completely unnecessary because they can accomplish the same thing by playing their own volunteering viewers,  would be more rewarding for their subscribers as well.

Lol you telling me what I learn from?

Naroditskys speedruns is in my opinion the best content in Chess on youtube. He is a perfect coach. 1700 players do misstake that GM dont do and therefor I learn how to punish the misstakes or how to counter stuff that happens on my lvl.

Two strong GM playing eachother is not the same thing.

 

llama36
CooloutAC wrote:
nMsALpg wrote:
AlexiZalman wrote:
CooloutAC wrote:

...

On Lichess the average is fixed to 1500 which is the rating everyone starts at.   Chess.com is completely different though.   I was going to quit chess when stuck at rating 100 for a week here,  and after buying a beginner book and learning and practicing i hit a wall at 400. My opponents playing skills were night and day and it did not feel right.   I decided to make an account on lichess and it was a very different experience.   So I agree with what you are saying and have come to the same conclusion.

As I mentioned in my first post in this thread, I am pretty sure there is something very fishy about the gameplay at sub-1000 levels on chess.com, which more talented players are unlikely to notice.  I didn't really notice this till I eventually started played in tournaments where the rating ranges were much wider, say +/-400, than the individual auto-selection.  Everything seemed inverted, my gameplay was much better against players much higher rated and much worst against those much lower.  After playing 100s of games using the auto-selection method my rating was moreorless static. I came to the conclusion that the only way to really increase my rating was to target much higher rated players - not an easy thing to consistently do on CCC.  The whole experience was counter-intuitive to real world chess progress., and totally undermined the ELO system.

You have zero games on this account.

I mean, it's a nice story, but you have no idea how often someone will say something like...

... well for example, a few days ago some noob was complaining about how he always loses as white against the scandinavian after 1.e4 d5... so I looked in his game history and saw that in his last 100 games he had that position 6 times AND ONLY LOST ONCE.

This happens all the time. People are always saying completely stupid and untrue things. Whether they do it on purpose, I don't know, but without a game history there's 0% chance I believe you.

 

well if you look at my insights,  as I explained you will see I definitely hit a wall at 400-500 section.   You can see where i was about to quit chess in the 100-200 categorty,  Thats when I bought a book which helped.  Then when I hit the 400 rating wall I started playing on lichess for more competitive matches.  And that feeling has never changed on lichess.

 I even made threads complaining about how it didn't feel right at that level at the time,  so when I got gifted the diamond yesterday it was first thing I checked.    I got my blitz all the way up to 800,  then immediately crashed and burned back to 600 where i have been struggling.  But alot of that has to do with the fact I just bought an e-board and have been playing most 30 min matches now.   SO its hard for me to adjust back and forth.

I'm guessing 800 is the next wall though.   And again I don't think it is a coincidence.

I imagine the only wall in lichess is the 1500 wall.  But to me that is a good wall,  because that is kind of like going from novice to intermediate.  Its when you go from average,  to above average,  and its by design.

I don't know man, maybe there are some sort of walls...

But I will say it's normal for progress to be 2 steps forwards and one step back. I don't think it's unnatural to reach a new peak, then fall back down.

 

Jimemy
CooloutAC skrev:
Jimemy wrote:
CooloutAC skrev:
Jimemy wrote:
nMsALpg skrev:
CooloutAC wrote:

They even let streamers speedrun in the community exacerbating the perception the site is full of cheaters. 

I agree their policy on speed running is trash.

But on balance, there are over 1 million games played on chess.com every day... so letting some GM speedrun on Twitch does more good for chess.com than harm... from a business standpoint I mean.

I have never meet a speedrunner as far as I know. And I love to watch speedrunners on youtube because I learn a lot from it. I take this trade any day, the risk of facing them versus the awesome free content they give me.

 

You'll learn more by watching people who dont' speedrun imo.  What you are doing is supporting the undermining of the rating system and the encouragement of others to manipulate it.  What they are teaching kids,  is to value ratings more then competitive matches.  And its completely unnecessary because they can accomplish the same thing by playing their own volunteering viewers,  would be more rewarding for their subscribers as well.

Lol you telling me what I learn from?

Naroditskys speedruns is in my opinion the best content in Chess on youtube. He is a perfect coach. 1700 players do misstake that GM dont do and therefor I learn how to punish the misstakes or how to counter stuff that happens on my lvl.

Two strong GM playing eachother is not the same thing.

 


I'm telling you what you are learning,  and what you are supporting.    I refuse to support his channel and I've told his manager and mod my reasons why as well.  Aquilangula or something his name is.    He is the guy who convinced him to do the speedruns.  I wouldn't be surprised if the mods from the all the channels conspire together to control these players behind the scenes lol.  I think HIkaru is finally getting rid of his that has been a center of controversy,  as well as with Naroditsky.  But I don't watch most of these streamers anymore.  I can't bring myself to support the corruption.  I"ve been against cheating in gaming all my life,  I'm not about to start condoning it as educational.

"educational"   lol.   Thats a laugh.  If you want educational watch channels like John Bartholomew for example.

Yeah I support Naroditsky and I support his speedrun. You and me have different opinion. And I am gonna leave it at that.

llama36
CooloutAC wrote:
nMsALpg wrote:
CooloutAC wrote:
nMsALpg wrote:
AlexiZalman wrote:
CooloutAC wrote:

...

On Lichess the average is fixed to 1500 which is the rating everyone starts at.   Chess.com is completely different though.   I was going to quit chess when stuck at rating 100 for a week here,  and after buying a beginner book and learning and practicing i hit a wall at 400. My opponents playing skills were night and day and it did not feel right.   I decided to make an account on lichess and it was a very different experience.   So I agree with what you are saying and have come to the same conclusion.

As I mentioned in my first post in this thread, I am pretty sure there is something very fishy about the gameplay at sub-1000 levels on chess.com, which more talented players are unlikely to notice.  I didn't really notice this till I eventually started played in tournaments where the rating ranges were much wider, say +/-400, than the individual auto-selection.  Everything seemed inverted, my gameplay was much better against players much higher rated and much worst against those much lower.  After playing 100s of games using the auto-selection method my rating was moreorless static. I came to the conclusion that the only way to really increase my rating was to target much higher rated players - not an easy thing to consistently do on CCC.  The whole experience was counter-intuitive to real world chess progress., and totally undermined the ELO system.

You have zero games on this account.

I mean, it's a nice story, but you have no idea how often someone will say something like...

... well for example, a few days ago some noob was complaining about how he always loses as white against the scandinavian after 1.e4 d5... so I looked in his game history and saw that in his last 100 games he had that position 6 times AND ONLY LOST ONCE.

This happens all the time. People are always saying completely stupid and untrue things. Whether they do it on purpose, I don't know, but without a game history there's 0% chance I believe you.

 

well if you look at my insights,  as I explained you will see I definitely hit a wall at 400-500 section.   You can see where i was about to quit chess in the 100-200 categorty,  Thats when I bought a book which helped.  Then when I hit the 400 rating wall I started playing on lichess for more competitive matches.  And that feeling has never changed on lichess.

 I even made threads complaining about how it didn't feel right at that level at the time,  so when I got gifted the diamond yesterday it was first thing I checked.    I got my blitz all the way up to 800,  then immediately crashed and burned back to 600 where i have been struggling.  But alot of that has to do with the fact I just bought an e-board and have been playing most 30 min matches now.   SO its hard for me to adjust back and forth.

I'm guessing 800 is the next wall though.   And again I don't think it is a coincidence.

I imagine the only wall in lichess is the 1500 wall.  But to me that is a good wall,  because that is kind of like going from novice to intermediate.  Its when you go from average,  to above average,  and its by design.

I don't know man, maybe there are some sort of walls...

But I will say it's normal for progress to be 2 steps forwards and one step back. I don't think it's unnatural to reach a new peak, then fall back down.

 


The problem is when those peaks are because people are purposely underrated.   It ruins the credibility of the whole system. 

The wall placed in Lichess is only a single artificial wall and it is right at the median and average.   That feels more sporting and competitive.

Oh I see, you're saying  there are people who start at 800, and so people from, IDK, 700-900 run into them, lose games, and become underrated, and so they in turn play people like you and keep you down.

I guess something like that might happen... I don't think it'd be as big of a wall as you're making it out to be... but I can see how there could be an argument there. I still think you'd be facing people who are nearly correctly rated... you know, like only 10 points down or something from that 1 game they lost unfairly.

Jimemy

Its easy as a beginner to blame the system, blame the cheaters, blame speedrunners, blame the ratingsystem. But I would recommend beginners to look at your losses, accept your losses. Its more likely that you have lost to a normal player then anything else. And if you accept the losses you can then spend the time to analyse the games and why you lost instead. Because in the end you lose because you make misstakes. Take those losses as a chance to get better. To analyse a lost game is a great way to get better even if is a game versus a cheater you can still learn something.

AlexiZalman
nMsALpg wrote:

...

All this to say that the starting rating on chess.com has a very small effect because the math of the rating system works to preserve the point-to-skill ratio.

This is only true if the ELO system is universal, i.e. the only one that exists. If you have multiple ECO systems in operation, then each system is capable of converging to a different average, for different seeding ratings. The prime example of this being the difference between the LiChess/Chess.com averages. 

I could also appeal to Chaos Theory and predict that if a given ELO system was regularly reset and the same seed rating used, the resultant averages could be very distinct - note titled players would have to be prohibited from seeding their OTB ratings.  However, this would be guesswork on my part as I can think of no real-world examples as evidence.   

llama36
AlexiZalman wrote:
nMsALpg wrote:

...

All this to say that the starting rating on chess.com has a very small effect because the math of the rating system works to preserve the point-to-skill ratio.

This is only true if the ELO system is universal, i.e. the only one that exists. If you have multiple ECO systems in operation, then each system is capable of converging to a different average, for different seeding ratings. The prime example of this being the difference between the LiChess/Chess.com averages. 

I could also appeal to Chaos Theory and predict that if a given ELO system was regularly reset and the same seed rating used, the resultant averages could be very distinct - note titled players would have to be prohibited from seeding their OTB ratings.  However, this would be guesswork on my part as I can think of no real-world examples as evidence.   

In 2010, on these forums, I was telling people that ratings are a relative measure... yes, I know this wink.png

eddie671829

agreed. my rating is 500 but I can play a 1100 rated computerangry

llama36
AlexiZalman wrote:

However, this would be guesswork on my part as I can think of no real-world examples as evidence.   

I sometimes think economics would be a good analogy because things have intrinsic value, and then on top of that you have different markets that give it a different value in terms of currency. The easiest example being a lump of gold is worth ____ USD and ____ Yen and even though the numbers are different the value they represent is the same.

As for the chaos theory thing, maybe you could work it into economics, although I don't know enough about that to be sure. On a day-to-day level the stock market is supposedly random right? Something like that.

Grievious

I know 1100s who would crush Magnus and Naka if they worked together..  Chess.com does nothing about them, because they don't care.  Go to the hidden forum that you are not allowed to go to and complain there where you can't post a complaint. 

AlexiZalman
bdub76 wrote:
...

I’m more concerned about the 1500-2000 playing through the beginner levels that aren’t well known. There are far more players at those levels.

---

Yeah that would worry me the most. Going back to gaming culture there could well be a lot of these ALT accounts - assuming little is done to block them.

Jump off track for a moment. The recent attempt by Elon Musk to purchase Twicher has stalled over the exact number of Bot accounts the platform has. The company says 8%, whereas Musk argues for much more. The number of accounts an internet company has is a very important statistic in measuring the value of the company. 

The question therefore maybe, 'What % of ALT accounts would it take to affect the low-level gameplay and consequently ELO system on Chess.com?".

If the % is over the threshold, then much would be explained.

Mike_Kalish

I, for one, don't care. If everything you say is true, so be it. I got to 1127 and then started losing. Now I'm trying to hang on to 1000. Maybe in reality, my skill level is 1300, but I couldn't care less. I'll feel good about 1300 when I can beat 1200 players on chess.com. This is my chess universe. I don't play OTB other than with grandkids and such. So whatever chess.com says I am is what I say I am. That's just me and my opinion.....not really disagreeing with the OP. 

AlexiZalman
nMsALpg wrote:

....

This happens all the time. People are always saying completely stupid and untrue things. Whether they do it on purpose, I don't know, but without a game history there's 0% chance I believe you.

I can assure you I have giving an honest opinion of my very subjective experience.  Of course, any deductions derived from that experience could be entirely wrong and a single example is unlikely to be proof anything.  However, as an individual I can but act on my own experience. I never intent to play humans on this account.

I am not asking anyone to believe me, I am not a prophet!