ps. I know I'm being nit-picky, but I just want Chess.com to be as good as possible.
Also, the fact that this would improve my statistics is only incidental. 
Chess rating system
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You have to keep them around (let's face it, they did happen) because they "count" for tournaments and matches.
It might be a good idea to exclude them from "average opponent", and especially exclude them from "best win".
when you lose your rating gos down
on the plus side, since the game ended after only 1 move, it is bringing my average moves per game way down.
Drunk-Elephant wrote:
Okay, quick question. I am rated 1852 so far, and just won a game against a new player rated 1200. Only 1 move was made, and then he let his clock run down. My rating did not change. Not even +1. Is this not the same as saying that I had a 100% chance of defeating that player? This seems strange to me, because he might really be a 2500+ player, but rated only 1200 on this site because he has never played any matches on this site before. To make things even stranger, I started this game during my first day on chess.com, when I was also rated 1200, with no previous wins, loses, or draws. Would that not mean that I had a 50-50 chance to win, statistically? I hope that I've explained myself clearly enough. Anyway, can someone tell me why this happens?
My only thought, is that this is a security feature of Chess.com. Because, without this feature, someone could create numerous accounts, and then win against himself over and over again to drive up the rating of one account. So, to counter this, you have set things up so that no one can gain points by defeating new players. I'm not even sure if what I just typed makes sense. Hopefully you all understand me. Can someone please explain?
If a game is played with only one move made, you get credited with a victory of the game, but no points as the game only had one move made and wasn't devolped enought to award points. If it had gone 3 moves then points would have been awarded.
yeah, but now that same game is messing up my other stats: average opponent rating, and average # of moves per game.
AlecKeen wrote:
Becca wrote: Rating has its place but its not the most important thing. Sometimes you can lose a game on time and it will seriously affect your rating this has nothing to do with how well you play.
Oh yes it does! How well you play includes how well you manage your time. Time is as much part of Chess as it is in other games. In football you could score the greatest goal in history, but if the referee blows time before it goes in it doesn't count. Similarly in Chess if you don't get your moves in within the time, you lose, and correctly so.
Very true! I lost 6 games on time (in correspondence, on chess.com) and my rating dropped 280 points!
OG
Charlie91 wrote:
viswanathan wrote:
...turtle, the general points system followed is as follows:
pawn - 1pt.
knight/bishop - 3pts.
rook - 5pts.
queen - 10pts.
of course points are not everything...
Correct me if I'm wrong, some books say the relative strength of the bishop is higher by a fraction of a point (1/4) -- 3 1/4 or whatever fraction, and queen is 9 points, and the king is 3 points.
Alternate valuations
Although the 1/3/3/5/9 system of point totals is generally accepted, many other systems of valuing pieces have been presented. They have mostly been received poorly, although the point system itself falls under similar criticism, as all systems are very rigid and generally fail to take positional factors into account.
[edit] Historical valuations
An 1813 book (source unknown, perhaps by Jacob Sarratt) gives these valuations of the pieces:
- pawn 2 at the start, 3¾ in the endgame
- knight 9¼
- bishop 9¾
- rook 15
- queen 23¾
- king as attack piece (in the endgame) 6½
If these values are divided by three and rounded, they are more in line with the valuations used now:
- pawn 0.7 in the beginning, 1.3 in the endgame
- knight 3.1
- bishop 3.3
- rook 5
- queen 7.9
- king as attacking piece in the endgame 2.2
Howard Staunton in The Chess-Player's Handbook notes that piece values are dependent on the position and the phase of the game (the queen typically less valuable toward the endgame), but gives these values, without explaining how they were obtained (Staunton 1870, 30–31):
- pawn 1.00
- knight 3.05
- bishop 3.50
- rook 5.48
- queen 9.94
In the 1817 edition of Philidor's Studies of Chess, the editor (Peter Pratt) gave the same values.
The 1843 German book Handbuch des Schachspiels by Paul Rudolf von Bilguer gave
- pawn 1.5
- knight 5.3
- bishop 5.3
- rook 8.6
- queen 15.5
When normalizing so that a pawn equals one:
- pawn 1
- knight 3.5
- bishop 3.5
- rook 5.7
- queen 10.3
Yevgeny Gik gave these figures based only on average mobility:
- pawn 1
- knight 2.4
- bishop 4
- rook 6.4
- queen 10.4
- king 3 (as an attacking and defensive piece)
but Andrew Soltis points out problems with that chart and other mathematical methods of evaluation (Soltis 2004:10-12).
Emanuel Lasker gave these approximate values: (Lasker 1934:73)
- Knight = 3 pawns (3 points)
- Bishop = knight (3 points)
- Rook = knight plus 2 pawns (5 points)
- queen = 2 rooks = 3 knights (10 or 9 points)
- king = knight + pawn (4 points)
[edit] More recent evaluations
World Champion Emanuel Lasker (Lasker 1947:107) gave the following values (here scaled and rounded so pawn = 1 point):
- pawn = 1 (on average)
- knight = 3½
- bishop = 3½ (on average)
- rook = 5 (on average)
- queen = 8½.
However Lasker adjusts some of these depending on the starting positions, with pawns nearer the centre, and bishops/rooks on the kingside, being worth more:
- centre (d/e-file) pawn = 1½ points, a/h-file pawn = ½ point
- c-file bishop = 3½ points, f-file bishop = 3¾ points
- a-file rook = 4½ points, h-file rook = 5¼ points.
According to Burgess, Lasker (in his book Lasker's Chess Manual) gave these relative values for the early part of the game (Burgess 2000:491):
- rook pawn: ½
- knight pawn: 1¼
- bishop pawn: 1½
- central pawn: 2
- knight: 4½
- queen bishop: 4½
- king bishop: 5
- queen rook: 6
- king rook: 7
- queen: 11
Grandmaster Larry Evans gives the values:
- pawn = 1
- knight = 3½
- bishop = 3¾ [1]
- rook = 5
- queen = 10 (Evans 1967:73, 76).
A bishop is usually slightly more powerful than a knight, but not always – it depends on the position (Evans 1967:73, 76), (Mayer 1997:7). A chess-playing program was given the value of 3 for the knight and 3.4 for the bishop, but that difference was acknowledged to not be real (Mayer 1997:5).
Another system is used by Max Euwe and Hans Kramer in Volume 1 of their The Middlegame, with values
- pawn = 1
- knight = 3½
- bishop = 3½
- rook = 5½
- queen = 10.
Bobby Fischer gave the values:
- pawn = 1
- knight = 3
- bishop = 3¼
- rook = 5
- queen = 9 (Fischer, Mosenfelder & Margulies 1972:14).
An early Soviet chess program used
- pawn = 1
- knight = 3½
- bishop = 3½
- rook = 5
- queen = 9½ (Soltis 2004:6).
Another popular system is
- pawn = 1
- knight = 3
- bishop = 3
- rook = 4½
- queen = 9 (Soltis 2004:6).
[edit] Larry Kaufman's research
Grandmaster Larry Kaufman performed a computer analysis of thousands of games by masters to determine the average relative value of the pieces. He determined (to the nearest ¼ point) the following:
- pawn = 1
- knight = 3¼
- bishop = 3¼
- rook = 5
- queen = 9¾.
Add an additional ½ point for having both bishops. Kaufman elaborates about how the values of knights and rooks change, depending on the number of pawns on the board: "A further refinement would be to raise the knight's value by 1/16 and lower the rook's value by ⅛ for each pawn above five of the side being valued, with the opposite adjustment for each pawn short of five." (Kaufman 1999).
[edit] Hans Berliner's system
World Correspondence Chess Champion Hans Berliner gives the following valuations, based on experience and computer experiments:
- pawn = 1
- knight = 3.2
- bishop = 3.33
- rook = 5.1
- queen = 8.8
wow, interesting post. thumbs up.
Yes, very interesting.
My opinion is that these point systems can only be very vaguely estimated, and that the board position can sometimes mean that a Rook and Knight are less valuable than a pawn.
It ultimately depends on the board position.
OG
There are no strict rules for the values of the pieces. You are being very materialistic here. Plus, it all matters on the positioning of the pieces. But yes the "1/3/3/5/9 system" does give a fair idea. Dont make things complicated.
I think the alternate valuations that place a Bishop as a fraction of a point higher than a Knight fail to take into account the possibility of a situation like the one that arose in Anand-Radjabov this morning in Linares.
Me, I use the 1/3/3/5/9 as a guide, except that I tend to prefer Bishop over Knight in many situations, especially when I still have the two Bishops. Of course, there are many situations where I trade Bishop for Knight when I feel that it's to my advantage, which is why I gravitate away from point systems that value the Bishop more than the Knight. I think the consideration of the resulting pawn structure is more valuable to consider when considering a Bishop for Knight trade than the consideration of whether you're trading your Bishop for his Knight or the other way around.
Hello, I am new here. I have got a question. What games i need to play to be rated games. I am currantly playing my first game here, it's a corespond game, is it for rating or not. Thanks. PS. Sorry for my bad english.
dragan1202 wrote:
Hello, I am new here. I have got a question. What games i need to play to be rated games. I am currantly playing my first game here, it's a corespond game, is it for rating or not. Thanks. PS. Sorry for my bad english.
You will receive ratings for correspondence chess as well as for live chess, but they will be two separate ratings--one rating for each.
thanks
Becca wrote:
Rating has its place but its not the most important thing. Sometimes you can lose a game on time and it will seriously affect your rating this has nothing to do with how well you play.
especially if you have over 10 games going on
Wow, how did you get all that?
Oh, thanks. I looks like I was over-thinking it a bit.
Edit:
Okay, well in that case, the game shouldn't be counted at all! This game, which has no effect on my rating, is still recorded, and brings down the average rating of my opponents from 1504 to 1454.
Maybe Eric should consider changing Chess.com so that these games are totally removed from the players records, instead of counting them towards some statistics, but not towards others?