rich wrote:
A strange thing happened, I accepted a game from a player rated 878 and I'm rated 1541, and while I was playing him is rating was going up all the time and now he's slightly ahead of me in the game.
Happened to me to I think he was using computers to help him.
I'm not sure he was using computers but if he was he could punch my moves into a computer and it would tell him where to move. I have no way to be sure he was doing this.
I teach (English, not chess) and have the same mixed feelings about ratings as I do about grades. They seem to serve similar functions--as a yardstick of relative aptitude, a means of gauging improvement, and as an incentive or reward. Often I am disheartened in the classroom that my students are so much more concerned with grades than with actually learning or engaging with the material, and I feel the same when players obsess about ratings at the expense of a love of the game.
Ratings are probably a necessary evil, at least for tournament play, but I can certainly see how they can have a negative impact on the game. Lower-rated players may cower before a higher-rated opponent and even play worse because they are intimidated. As others have mentioned, higher-rated players may refuse to play lower-rated ones because a loss would be devastating to their ratings. Maybe it's in the spirit of competition to play against those with similar scores, but at the same time, playing stronger opponents is a much more effective means of improving one's play, if not one's score.
With that in mind, it does not take a mathematician to see just how easily ratings might become a completely inaccurate reflection of one's ability. Take two players of similar ability. Have one play no one but beginners for a year and the other play no one but grandmasters
. At the end of the year, that first player will have won many more games and have a much higher rating, but I bet the second would be the better player.
I used to play quite a few blitz games on Yahoo Chess (sorry). There I would often open a second browser window and place it so as to cover the opponent's rating, so that my play would not be affected by what I thought my chances of winning might be. I am sure the same could be done on this site. It might not be a bad idea, especially for those who agree that playing the board and not the man is the best strategy.
I like the idea posted earlier about having qualitative descriptions of players' styles instead of just a number, but I am not sure how feasible that would be. Of course the better way to determine an opponent's style is to look through his or her other games, which thankfully chess.com makes possible for us.
I have to admit that I like that this site also posts our highest ratings. I am a woefully inconsistent player--depending on mood, level of distraction, the amount of sleep I got the night before, how much of a hurry I am to make my moves, and probably even what I ate for breakfast. I never feel my rating reflects my best play.
On the other hand, I love an underdog, and I often feel that when I have a lower rating I have an advantage: I have much less to lose.
It seems that a really strong player could cause a lot of disruption on this site by deliberating sabotaging his or her rating and then gunning for the highest-rated players and destroying their ratings. By really strong player I mean someone much, much better than I am. It would be interesting. Has this ever happened?
" Out of time" wins, though they might improve ratings may probably make you seem a better player than you are, so I would tend to dimiss this type of win. Nice to have it registered, but can't take it seriously.