Getting Online Rating up

I just blocked ilikeflags so he won't be commenting here anymore. At least I think that is how it works

Taking on a lot of games can be a little overwhelming (I had about 90 going last month). It all depends on the time you have in your life. It's frustrating to feel that you're rushing the clock and need to make moves in ten games before bedtime so you don't time out, but then realize the next day that you weren't thinking straight because you were too tired :-)

If you suddenly sign up for a whole bunch, and there are a few weaker players in the pool, you might also find that you will win a bunch of the easy ones quickly, resulting in a quick boost to your rating, but that's only temporary - once you start losing those games you deserve to, it will drop back down. If you want your rating to reflect your strength (i.e. you're not trying to "game" the number), be honest with yourself and resign at an appropriate point rather than trying to drag the losing games on - that will limit this false rating spike.

Figure out how much time you think you need or want to spend on an average move, figure out your time-life budget per day, and make sure you're in line with the math.  I set an egg timer for 5 minutes each move to try to prevent myself from moving too fast and making obvious blunders - otherwise I'm too tempted to play like it's a 5|0 game. At 5 minutes per move, and an hour a day, you could easily handle 12 games/day; or 36 three-day games. Of course a few games always have obvious exchanges that don't need the full time but there are others that take more, so the average is about right for me.

Good luck!

@alex, I blocked him because he is a known troll and I don't want him on my thread. @metastable, the timer idea sounds like a good idea. I tend to play it like a blitz game as well :)

If you want to improve your rating rapidly then its best to start many games. If you don't know how many you can handle at once, start a small number of games (say 5). Then 2 days later start another 5, then another 5 and so on until you feel you have enough. It also means that all your games are at different stages. I personally hate playing all my games at the same stage, prefer to have some in the opening, some in the middlegame and some in the endgame.

Now thats if you want to improve your rating. If you want to improve your chess (which to me is more important) then play only a handful of games, but play them well, spending time to ensure you know what your doing during the game, and learning from your mistakes post game. Also play against those higher rated then yourself if you want to improve quicker. You might get beat at the beginning, but over time you'll improve much faster then playing 50+ games quickly. Quality over quantity

Flags isn't my most favorite person either. Good call Pawnpusher.

Thanks Ryan, now back to the topic...

Yeah. Did you see my method? I only have about 8 people who actually move every day, so don't do it all at once. I only do it for the games I don't really know what is happening in. Because, in the opening, I know what to do.

I got up to about 80 games with a rating of 1650. Then I got to 120 3 day per move games and my rating dropped a lot as I couldn't even remeber which game was which, it was just like I was playing a position out of TT. Now I'm down to like 25, and my rating has steadily but slowly (extremely slowly) increased. For me I think the best number of games to improve my rating would be 30-60, as my rating would actually change but I could still focus on all of the games. It really depends on the person though. 

On a side note, ilikeflags contributes many extremely helpful comments. He did tell you exactly how to reach the highest rating, even if we chess players have better ethics than that.

Well, flags still shouldn't have recommended it. I don't use an engine to get my rating up, I just use it to analyze the game from the opening move. Also, I just use the preloaded chess game on my computer to exercise my brain when there is nothing to do here.

I feel like 15-25 games at once is a good intervel. I have seen my rating go form 980 to 990 to 1017 from the beginning of this week, just with the 18 games that I am currently playing. Entering in team matches in groups are also a good way to increase games, indirectly increasing your rating.

An hour on each move??? I doubt anyone has the patience to do that consistently. I always wondered how much time my opponents spent on average and considered i was taking too long when i thought for like 10 minutes on some tough position

Nice.