How do you feel about your current rating?
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I do care about my rating because people tend to treat me with more respect if I have a higher rating. My chess.com rating is inflated about 200 points and my OTB rating is very deflated. I have not played in very many tournaments. I usually play around 1600 ish OTB, but to answer your question, I care about my rating.
i care , i protect mine to an extent but not much, because those single blunders affecting your grading are still a genuine measure of your ability as, it shows your consistency or lack of respect perhaps for ur opponent hence it is a true reflection...i am guity of massive blunders but when you make them it is still your own fault whether the guy is lower or not
May 25, 2008
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#4
ThePadre wrote:
i care , i protect mine to an extent but not much, because those single blunders affecting your grading are still a genuine measure of your ability as, it shows your consistency or lack of respect perhaps for ur opponent hence it is a true reflection...i am guity of massive blunders but when you make them it is still your own fault whether the guy is lower or not
Yup, I totally get that. And I'm sort of open to the idea that you should play a broad spectrum of players to make for an 'accurate' rating. I try to balance the part of me that happily plays in open tournaments with the part of me that won't play rated games with much-lower-rated friends. Also, I keep my online chess minimum challenge rating at around 150 points lower than whatever my current rating happens to be. I think that setting your challenge minimum at or above your own rating (which I have seen) is bad karma. 
May 25, 2008
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#5
I do to an extent also. I havent really tried to much to preotect it but when i think about some of the games ive chosen ive usually picked someone slightly below me. I hope to play a few people 2000 or so in the short future when i get back after the summer.(woohoo san diego) I like the satisfaction of beating an evenly matched opponent or better.
Although i dont think my average rated opponent is that bad 300 lower than my rating(especially compared to some people).
I find it funny when looking at peoples accounts whyo only play lower rated players because it doesnt give them a much higher rating as when they mess up and lose they lose alot of rating points which brings them back to square one where they have to win many games to reclaim their rating.
I care about my rating, but is is inflated by about 150 oints because of blunders made by other people. I really am not as good as my rating says.
I'd like a high rating, but I do nothing special to achieve it. It's more like I want to become better, but rating is just an indication.
Of course it's a reflection of your playing strength, but to a certain degree. For example, within a week my rating can raise or drop 200 pts.
I feel my rating in the upper 1600 is deserved, since I was there once, dropped and soon got back. I have taken a pause in chess playing due to life issues, so I can't say it's a realistic show of my current strength, but I got to it without timeouts or too many opponent blunders. I do protect my rating to an extent (1480), as I can consistently defeat any player below 1500 and I don't want to give out timeout/blunder wins left and right to people that don't deserve them.
I started off here barely holding onto a rating around 1200, then after a lot of games I found positions I liked playing with good results, now i'm stuck around 1500, going up and down occasionally. I'm very pleased myself with this progress, so I'm also pleased with my current rating of 1500 :)
my average rating is 1800 on this site, and i have the feeling its way too high compared to players that i play vs that actually have a real life chess rating of 1800+. I was surpised to hear that some players with 1400 ratings on the chess site actually have 1600+ ratings in real life, so I cant really see the exact difference between chess.com and rl ratings.
I was a little surprised to read a couple of comments here along the lines of "blunders can affect ratings." Of course they can! Games are won and lost because of blunders. If a player is rated much lower than you, then you may feel that you "should" win - but you have to play the game on the board. If you underestimate your opponent and make a few careless moves, and they punish your mistakes, then you deserve to lose and they deserve to win. And, you deserve the rating decrease and they deserve the rating increase. What your ratings are before the game is irrelevant - if you think you should easily beat someone, prove it by winning on the chessboard!
If you "protect" your rating by (for example) refusing to play in certain events, out of fear that you may lose too many games and your rating will drop, then perhaps you don't deserve your current rating. My view is: if your rating is deserved, it will weather the storm.
To answer the question(s) directly, I do care about my rating but only in the sense that it is an indicator of my current ability. I want to improve my ability, so I would view a rating increase as an indication that my chess skills are improving. No, I don't try to protect my rating. I'm not Bobby Fischer and my rating reflects that. My rating is what it is and hopefully it will improve as I do.
May 25, 2008
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#12
- Do you care about your rating?
Yes.
- Do you take steps to protect your rating?
Yes.
- Do you think your current rating is reflective of your strength?
- No, I'm really better/worse than what my current rating suggests
I care about my rating, but not too much. It just feeds my ego if I'm doing well. I don't take measures to protect my rating, with the exception of careful (usually) playing. My rating might not be too accurate because I win a lot on timeouts, but I dont' have a reference point for it either.
Surelly, I care abuot my rating, and my rank too. It's a good measure of the real strength, with some variations, +/- 100 points.
However, to have a high rating can't be a first goal as it! The first goal - or the first group of goals - is to achive the best in every game you play! 
In every game in progress, strugle for a win or for a draw. Rating is only a measure how good you are in it.
I had experience on few other sites. I concluded about 100 on-line turn-based games before, with a long pauses (the last time two years ago!) I colected experience and start to understand a method of playing this kind of chess. So, I started here, four weeks ago, as a mature player. However, I know rules: I need to start with 1200 points and play agaist weeker players, to improve it. I started a lot of games, and I was lucky to win my first game here in 30 minutes, with mate in 8 moves. In the first week, I concluded 32 games and rocketed my rating to realistic 1925. After that I had played less games, and don't accept chalenges from much lower ranked. I explain it in the forum, topic: It isn't exciting to win agaist weeker players.
My actuall rating (2032) pretty much reflect my success in last 30 days. I analise my games, especially defeats, to improve my performance. I belive I can arise it in the next months.
My personal statistics about my results, related to the oponent's ratings (two games, when an oponent run out of the time in opening, are not included):
- 2100+ #2 +0 -1 =1 25%
- 1900-2099 #8 +2-3=3 44%
- < 1900 #48 +42-3=3 91%
You can see I am very efficient agaist people with lower rating, but I need more practice agaist people of my level and higher.
As I explained in the discussion here (post #45), if I care about my rating at the first place, my strategy could be to start 70 games agaist people with rating 1500 and less, winn all in the next two weeks, and arise my rating too 2100. (The next 100 games and it can be 2200... 
) However, no fun in it! I concentrate to play against people of my level and achieve, let's say, 60%. And to improve my game in general - I need strong oponents for it!
And my equally important goal is to crate good games - news in openings, combinations, endgames . and to present them with pride to the public here in forum! 
However, I spend a lot of time here in last 30 days. It will be less in future - at the moment, I am on vocation.
May 25, 2008
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#15
The ratings on this site do not depend only on your skill.
They also reflect how hard you work. For example, you can play well for most of a game, but then have a bad day and throw away a win. You may spend lots of time analyzing a position, or you may just rush your moves. When playing OTB, these variables are removed, because both players sit at a chessboard for a definite amount of time.
Also, your rating here reflects how reliable you are as a participant. I have won several games due to my opponent forfeiting on time, that were not winning positions. But I never lose on time, so my rating is probably 200 points higher than it would otherwise be.
Finally, the assumption of this site is that everyone starts at 1200. That is not realistic. If you play in the US Chess Federation, there is a very complicated formula for assuming your starting rating, and you get a provisional rating that develops over your first 25 games. This prevents ratings inflation or deflation.
May 25, 2008
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#16
i do care for the reason that some higher rated players wont play you,i think i play better against higher rated players.i take them more serious i think more.which is bad coz some ;ower rated players are good players and there rating is lower than it should be
my rating seems a tad inflated but all in all i'm pleased.
May 25, 2008
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#18
timmaylivinalie wrote: my rating seems a tad inflated but all in all i'm pleased.
LOL! That's hilarious. I'm actually pretty impressed too. A rating like that requires both effort & discipline.
I think that any rating should be looked at with a skeptical eye. One must not take the ratings too seriously, because not all of the members are hardcore chess people. I think the majority of the people are just on here to have fun. I personally don't take internet chess too seriously, meaning that I don't give it the concentrated effort as I would if I were playing in a tournament I paid to get into. Internet chess to me is more of a leisure activity than a training method, so the rating to me is unimportant.
I take no more steps to protect my rating than I do to protect my king. I give it an honest effort, but at the end of the day it's really ok whatever the result.
My rating on this site is really low, due to my character purpose of testing the practical survivability of the 'bongcloud opening'. Based on the playing strength of the people I've played against, I would have to say that the ratings are a little inflated, because I don't think my skill level has grown substantially since I stopped playing tournament chess.
Well I have not seriously cared for rating I play all players irrespective of their rating status. I t has hurt my rating as some youngsters (who play well) showed me they had class but less opportunities to play higher rated players. Now some of them have reached 1800+ while I have gone down from 1800+ to 1650@
No regrets as I enjoyed all those lost games
It might be a bit of a touchy subject for some, but maybe an interesting topic nonetheless.
- Do you care about your rating?
I do because it's my best index of quality play, and the only way I can measure my progress (hopefully) over time. A higher rating means I get play in higher-rated tournaments and against higher-rated players and (generally speaking) more challenging and instructive games.
- Do you take steps to protect your rating?
I have set a minimum rating for challenges, mostly because I play with some friends who are about 700 points lower rated and, for the reasons above, I don't want to drop 200 points on a single blunder - which I could easily do. I play unrated games to protect myself there too.
- Do you think your current rating is reflective of your strength? Answers could include...
- Yes
- No, I'm really better/worse than what my current rating suggests
- Who knows? I have no real frame of reference, other than the rating itself
- Etc.
Sadly, I think my rating is a tad inflated at the moment - mostly because it's about 200 points higher than I've been able to average on other chess sites I used to play at. I think I got a head-start by playing beginners when I started here, and since then I've watched some very interesting games (some of which I've been disadvantaged in) come my way because of time-outs. This 'problem' is likely to correct itself over time, of course.