How can you tell you’re improving? Here’s a possible barometer…
Sort:
Zardorian
Dec 21, 2021
0
#1
Twice in recent games I looked at the history of my opponent, who I had just beaten, and in one case I noticed this was the first time I had beaten him/her in four games and the other was the first in three games. I’ve been doing a lot of learning and intentional playing lately, so it was rewarding to see progress. It’s hard to tell whether you are improving if you just look at games you play against random players, but if you start seeing repeat opponents, then you can measure your progress or lack there of.
Also if you don't particularly like playing people, the way I found out if I was improving was building a whole army of chess engines, and playing them against each other hundreds, even thousands of times. (Most of it was automated through Arena, but hundreds had to be done manually for the engines on my phone and ipad against the computer.) I'll, of course, not use full strength Stockfish. I'll set up Arena, and I got a whole bunch of engines. I set them up at 5 or 6ply, which is a good 1400-1900 range depending on the engine. Then I'll use a barameter, an engine I've been playing for 20 years, called K-chess. It's a great little program. I'll set it as the "anchor" and say it's about 1600 or 1700 or so. Then, I run all the games through Baysian ELO, which then rates all the engines based on their games against each other. Now I have a ladder of about 30 engines, all seperated by about 10-20 points from 1600-2100 or so. Now I have "rated" opponets I can "climb" the ladder and beat the harder and harder engines. I beat Gambitfruit (A really fun engine) 5ply, which and he's ranked 3rd on my list, abotu 1900. Texel on the phone is pretty good. But yeah, that's the most fun way I've been able to tell if I have improved. Setting up engines that always play the same strength and finding one I just can't beat. Then in a few months, or years if it's a lot better, I can beat it. KChess was so great because he's a good litmus test. Also, using the Ply system, you don't have to worry about processor speed and improving technology running the engine better on different computers, skewing the strength. 5 ply is 2.5 half moves no matter what, and that's the same depth on a 1980s computer the Oak Ridge Titan Supercomputer. So you always have the same strength engines on your ladder.