Eloism on chess.com

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Uhohspaghettio1

So a few days ago I was in a thread where someone talked about how they hit 2600 - a highly admirable blitz rating on the site for sure, a level where they would have a real non-zero chance against some of the best in the game. I believe it was no increment which makes the possibility of cheese a hundred times greater, but still a big accomplishment.

And someone of a similar rating said congratulations, what a great win as black, it's hard to see how white who was a grandmaster, went wrong.

And I click on it, expecting to see a great game to be admired - and what I found really surprised me -the game is full of mistakes by both sides, supported by computer analysis. First of all white simply traded off three of his pieces mindlessly and sacrificed the last one for the sake of doing a silly trick where he knew he would win back the piece. This type of trick can be tempting to pull of in casual blitz just for the aesthetic, even if they don't gain any advantage. The thing here is that he didn't calculate a little further beyond the trick and realize that he would also be losing a pawn.

Who cares - it's just online blitz. Sure, but why call it a great game then? And parade around the forum like it is?

There's lots of mistakes by both sides - some tactical errors are of course totally understandable in a blitz game. Black makes one move h5 and say I believe was a poor move, because it just opens up the rook file. Almost immediately white took advantage of this and won that pawn, along with a devastating attack and soon had a mate in 6 due to directly making use of that open file.

White missed the mate in 6 and loses control again, there are mistakes by both sides to leave a roughly equal position, then black wins on time.

So I say, hold on, this isn't a great game at all, and while of course anyone can make a tactical mistake, I say I think h5 was a bad move since it obviously opened up the rook file. That black should instead try checking with his queen, targetting pawns and harassment like that - particularly in a blitz game.

The responses I got to this simple observation and suggestion really took me a aback - blatant attempts at elo shaming. It's not like I'm some 700 player misunderstanding ideas, even the computer put a question mark to h5, not that I was following it when I spotted it as a bad move. Then it was argued that the computer does in fact think h5 is ok later, and can work out some way to play that it's a good move so therefore that "proved" it was correct. And just conversation over because I was lower rated player.

A lot of the reason people have low elo is tactical calcuation, not being able to visualize pieces going to squares as fast.

Even for a complicated position full of pieces you could often give the benefit of the doubt to the higher rated player, that they knew something the lower-rated didn't. That was clearly not the case here.

It's just so weak if higher elo people really take their rating so seriously and as some kind of proof that what they say is the correct and unquestionable truth, even going against all evidence and logic, unless of course someone with higher elo argued differently. Sure I could understand it must be tempting to appeal to elo to try to bolster your point, but just dismissing someone's point out of hand and without giving any serious reason saying it's because of their elo, I really thought people were better than that. No wonder chess struggles in society when you get such snobbery due to elo.

AngryPuffer

it would be nice if you posted the game so I could follow along please