PawnTsunami wrote: "Sshhh! Don't tell them all of our secrets!"
^ (Right you are.)
Everyone just disregard my earlier post!
Happy chess everyone.
wait, looking at your stats you went from 1300 to 1800 in Rapid in under 90 days. How did you improve so fast??
But how do you find stronger opponents to play? Is it by setting some values in the search for a new game? Because usually stronger players do not want to play me since they have nothing to gain from playing versus me.
I fought versus a Swedish 2000 rated CM, I think two or three times in an Swedish tournament and that was a fun experience even do I lost fast in all those games. But he really shows my weakness fast. So if I would be able to play him many times I might get better way faster. However he might be a bit to strong for me since the odds of me winning is very low. But maybe to fight versus a 1850 would be a nice practice for me.
In the random pool, it will be hard to do that and make consistent progress. If you have a friend who is significantly stronger (in your case, a NM would work) and they are willing to play you in some training games, you can do that. I would suggest having them play the openings you want to work on. You can do the same thing by hiring a coach for the same reason (playing the training games) or by hiring a coach for actual lessons (which will help fill in whatever fundamental knowledge gaps you may have).
If you have a group of friends who are all around the same strength, you can play each other and help each other improve. If you want to know one of the reasons kids improve so fast, that is one big reason - they form friend groups, play each other, analyze the games together, and all of them end up improving.
wait, looking at your stats you went from 1300 to 1800 in Rapid in under 90 days. How did you improve so fast??
This was a new account (forgot my password to my old account after changing phones and realized I had not updated my email address on it). The 1300 was when I was still in my provisional period - though I did get slowed down a bit when competing in some tournaments organized by my local club against kids who were underrated in their online rapid rating (one kid was a 2150 USCF, but only ~1200 in chess.com rapid ratings at the time because he only played blitz online at the time).
So that was just my online ratings catching up to where it should be. My actual improvement came from going from 900 USCF to 1600 USCF in 3 years (as an adult, that is not bad - kids do it MUCH faster).
First of all he never claimed that, because he probably assumed it was blitz I was specifically referring to. Actually I think its a similar case for every time control he started in. lmao. You are showing just how delusional you really are now.
I've seen pages and pages of @PawnTsunami patiently explaining his points while you shift the goalposts and claim other people are delusional LOL. On page 2 alone he breaks down your claim about Kowarenai having 50 game win streaks and demonstrates how it's just wrong. You've never acknowledged that and just continue to claim that K is an example that proves your point instead of being one that proves Pawn's point. I know the people who are already of your opinion will refuse to be swayed by the facts, but there are also a "reasonable middle" who will see what is happening here, and learn to automatically dismiss everything you say.
look.
if you know that your rating is higher than it is, then create a new account and restart.
i know for a fact that my rating is considerably lower than it should be because i've beaten several people rated at least a few hundred points above me.
if you aren't winning more than half of your games, you're exactly where you need to be.
stop berating other people over your rating.
it's literally just a number.
if you want to improve, do a ton of puzzles.
you'll begin to notice the patterns.
Here's some food for thought.
Many stronger rated players tell you to play stronger opponents to get better,
but many lower rated players don't like the ego beatings they can take at a higher level, even though it can help them improve.
You can do the Glicko math and say, "If I raise the opponent rating strength a couple hundred points in the settings,
I might lose a couple more every ten games but I'll gain more rating points as long as I
win at least x number of games for every ten played."
Then you don't focus so much on winning every game as long as you reach your next rating milestone.
So maybe you need to win 8 of every 10 you play at your own rating level to raise your rating 50 points, but only 6 of every 10 against players rated 200 points higher than you to gain that same 50 in net profit.
With the former, you can stay down in that level for a long time losing games due to simple mistakes and not really make much progress.
With the latter, (playing against stronger opponents) you gain the points and the added benefit of what you learn from the experience of playing against tougher competition.
Something to think about, no?
you get better by playing equal or slightly better opponents. Playing opponents way above your level is only going to frustrate most people out of the game indeed. You also have less of a chance to actually practice and progress. On the same token it also makes the stronger player worse, its just not productive for anyone. Thats why in real life it doesn't work like that. People at Michael Jordans never feel entitled to show up to a neighborhood park and start dunking on kids just to tell them to "git gud" unless there are no other courts available to play on and they need to court to play amongst themselves where they would then have a competitive match.
In real life you have certain parks the A players, B players, C players and D level players frequent. And within those parks you have certain courts that are organized by level too. It's is just natural for people to matchup this way for most competitive match they can have. Because that is how you truly improve and stay productive for everyone. They would have a bad reputation and basketball would be just as popular as e-sports if they acted otherwise.
I do understand why you see it that way, but even in your example of Michael Jordan, he got better and earned the nickname "Jackrabbit" by playing much better competition (older kids) when he was younger.
True, the chess ratings are really bad here...
I really think that all chess websites do this
There is a very big difference in the rating systems between lichess and chess.com that we know of.
You have a reading and a comprehension problem. Lichess and Chess.com both use the Glicko rating system, which is itself an evolution of Elo rating system used by FIDE; Lichess uses a slightly later version of the Glicko system than Chess.com, but the difference is not material.
The difference is in the player pool between the 2 sites, because a rating is NOT an indication how how good someone is at chess, but of where they sit relative to other players in the same rating pool.
Oh come on .. it's part of the challenge.. or is your mental fortitude not strong enough to break out of 1100
Chess.com allows speedruns and allows new accounts to pick their starting ratings at 400, 800,1200,1400, or 1800 at their own discression. And depending it can take a player up to 200 games to get properly rated. The average rating on chess.com in blitz is around 800. Yet that is not the median rating.
Lichess on the other hand, everyone starts at 1500 rating no matter what and gets quickly and drastically provisioned within 15-20 games. 1500 is also the average and median rating.
I believe this is a major reason why lichess matches seem so much more consistently competitive for lower rated players then on chess.com.
On both sites new players get to their correct rating within 15-20 games, no matter where they choose their starting level. Your claim that it takes 200 games on Chess.com has been disproven, even though you deny it.
On both sites new players get to their correct rating within 15-20 games, no matter where they choose their starting level. Your claim that it takes 200 games on Chess.com has been disproven, even though you deny it.
If you read this thread, you will see we have discussed the account Kowarenai as an example that you are the one that is wrong.
It's actually reading this thread and seeing @PawnTsunami's detailed refutation of your opinion about @Kowarenai's games that has disproved your assertion LOL
It's actually reading this thread and seeing @PawnTsunami's detailed refutation of your opinion about @Kowarenai's games that has disproved your assertion LOL
I actually went through his games while watching the coverage of Round 11 yesterday. His actual playing strength is about what I would expect from a ~1400 level player OTB, so him getting to the 1400-1800 range was very quick. The reason it takes him so long to move passed that is because he plays for cheap tricks. When the tricks work, he gets a quick win. When his opponents are paying attention, he picks up losses (even to players whose rating is much lower than his own). The kind of crap he is playing works in 3+0 or 1+0 games because many times guys are premoving in the opening and frankly, he gets lucky (i.e. one of his more recent games where White was playing a KIA setup and premoved Bg2 when K had played Bh3 the previous move).
You think Kowarenai is 1400 OTB strength but has 2500 online peaks because he plays for nothing but cheap tricks every game? What?
Even for the absolute youngest and best blitz specialists the biggest gap you would expect between an OTB rating and online blitz is about 500-600 points.
I have played Kowarenai before, he doesn't play rubbish, actually a lot of the games he wins are grinds where he slowly outplays his opponent (many of whom are titled players).
You think Kowarenai is 1400 OTB strength but has 2500 online peaks because he plays for nothing but cheap tricks every game? What?
Even for the absolute youngest and best blitz specialists the biggest gap you would expect between an OTB rating and online blitz is about 500-600 points.
I have played Kowarenai before, he doesn't play rubbish, actually a lot of the games he wins are grinds where he slowly outplays his opponent (many of whom are titled players).
When I was new to OTB chess I might have had the opposite problem as Kowarenai... I played so slowly that I often had the impression I won games because my opponent got bored. I had this impression because they'd play noticeably worse in the 2nd half.
When I was still something like 1600 I (very luckily) drew this 2000 guy... took me 1 hour on my clock to play about 15 moves of theory, of course he blitzed out his 15 
But I'd been calculating so much during all this that I was all warmed up. Meanwhile he'd been sitting there bored for an hour... I think that makes a difference i.e. the volume of work you do while seated at the board.
Of course as Finegold says... just can't do it when you get older. Not enough energy (so lower volume of work).
But how do you find stronger opponents to play? Is it by setting some values in the search for a new game? Because usually stronger players do not want to play me since they have nothing to gain from playing versus me.
I fought versus a Swedish 2000 rated CM, I think two or three times in an Swedish tournament and that was a fun experience even do I lost fast in all those games. But he really shows my weakness fast. So if I would be able to play him many times I might get better way faster. However he might be a bit to strong for me since the odds of me winning is very low. But maybe to fight versus a 1850 would be a nice practice for me.