Leechers of chess.com

@41, 

I just don't get worked up over any of this stuff. Hikaru and Danya have been used as examples and I just don't see the reason for anybody to be concerned. In the case of Hikaru I don't really find his stuff educational and rarely watch. I did watch his Botez Gambit speedrun and enjoyed that. But as a general rule I don't watch any of his stuff. Daniel on the other hand has fantastic educational stuff and the information he gives in his speed run videos is like grease, it just rubs off on you. Often times he is playing his own subscribers, some of his speed runs were more often than not his own subscribers. Sometimes they were even stream sniping and would be in the chat during the game.

John Bartholomew originated the idea when he did his climbing the rating ladder videos, with the only difference that he didn't set up a new account, he simply played with his existing one. So a 800 player had to pick him out of the pool on ICC which they obviously knew what they were getting into because they had to choose on the map of players. Again those videos were fantastic and at the time were unprecedented educational material. And he also took the risk of losing massive points with no chance for gaining any. Didn't complain one bit and there were hundreds of those videos of 15 minute games.

Daniel has had several players in his that he knows personally. The guy who wrote the book Mayhem in the Mora played him in his speedrun. They in fact did a call after the game and analyzed the game together after the video. Daniel grabbed the book off the shelf when the game was over so he could refer back to it and he did that multiple times in other games against other players where he would check to see if the moves that had been played were Theory from the book or not.

 This just doesn't sound like people who are going to be upset about having played against a gm. 

I believe my seek range is currently set to -100 / +100. The goal is to always play someone around my playing strength, without making it too restrictive.

I tried -25/+25 for a while, but when it's too narrow, it can increase the wait time for a pairing (depending on the time of day or night).

The psychology of why players choose different seek ranges can change, depending on the person.

If playing opponents who are too high or too low frustrates you, try -100/+100. It's a nice, comfortable range.

Chances are, these players would also have their own settings as -25 and +400, so their paired opponents should not be more than 50 rating points below their own.

For regular games, it's probably good to have opponent's ratings not too far off our own ratings. But in tournaments, this might be hard to enforce.

if everyone sets their rating to -50 +inf, we will all get paired with players within 50 rating points of our rating. I fail to see how large of a catastrophe that would be.

Anyways my seeks are -200 +inf, not because I want to, but because I have to, in order to play rapid.

If everyone sets their seeks to -50 +inf... Then we will all get paired with people within 50 rating points. This is the worst case scenario, according to OP: everyone tries to leech off the system.

Well, in the end... the result does not seem to be that dramatic, does it?

What?

They won't always... what? 

And what does lichess have to do with anything? Why would it be different on lichess and how does that relate to the OP?

And it's queue.

This topic:

Another in the long list of things that don't matter but some random person gets unreasonably upset about.

I said "this topic" so I was talking about the OP.

It does help a bit. Natural fluctuations in performance have the biggest impact when the ratings are close.

As a simple example, imagine I'm playing badly against someone rated much higher and I lose... in this case my downward fluctuation didn't hurt me since I would have normally lost. Against a much lower rated player it's the opposite i.e. when I'm in really good form and playing well it doesn't matter since I would normally win anyway.

Yes the rating system is robust so on paper it doesn't matter who you play against, and yes it's a bit silly to say "watch me lose against high rated players, that's how I'll increase my rating" but in practice playing exclusively higher rated players will help boost your rating a bit and I think it's because this is the condition that rewards you the most when you're playing your best, and punishes you the least when you're playing poorly.

Oh, and I mean this mathematically

For example start with two equally rated players (they will score 50% and no rating change)

And now increase one player's strength by 100 points, and they will gain 14%
Increase by another 100 and they will gain 12%
Increase by another 100 and they will gain 9%

See how 100 points helps less and less? This is important because the number of points you win (or lose) depends on your expected score (yes, any version of Glicko works the same way).

In simple terms this means crushing a player much lower than you rewards you less in terms of points per amount of skill displayed than when playing someone equally rated... and this is why I say playing people rated higher than you rewards your good form more and punishes your bad form less.

By the way, I assume your average rating over a large number of games will be the same, but your peak rating will get a little boost by playing people better than you.

Anyway, it really doesn't matter IMO... and I haven't even messed with that setting (I'm at the default whatever that is).

Yes, I know, I use awfully big words for a forum full of 10 year olds, but sometimes someone accidentally posts something worth talking about, and so I talk about it.

If all are accurately rated and play as well as their rating, then the average rating over 100 games for each player is expected to be 1200.

But a thought experiment like this...

Say 3 players, each 1200. One exclusively plays 1100, one exclusively plays 1200, and last plays only 1300.

Then during each game, we flip a coin for each player (the 1200 and their opponent). Heads their skill level goes up 50 points and tails it goes down 50 points. Over a large number of games the average for each player will be 1200, but the person who only plays 1300s will have the highest peak rating...

... at least this is what I expect. I could write some code to simulate it... this could be a fun blog post I suppose. I'll consider it.

If a 1200 flips heads twice in a row, do they go up 100 points? Or does their rating reset to 1200 after every game and can only go up to 1250 and down to 1150?

Yeah, the coin flip only lasts for that 1 game.

And I wouldn't adjust their rating, only their skill level... in other words a 1200 who is playing like a 1250 (or 1150). And that'd be for the purpose of simulating someone having a good or bad day.

EDIT
Then if they win, and their new rating is 2010 or whatever, then the next coin flip could put them at 1250 or 1150... I have to remember there are 3 ratings to keep track of which makes this a bit annoying

There's the intrinsic or base level skill (which will be 1200 and never change)
There's the adjusted skill due to having a good or bad day (which will be 1150 or 1250, and will  be the one that influences win %).
And then there's the actual rating which is what will go up or down due to a win or loss.

import java.util.Random;

public class Main
{
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        
        
        Random r = new Random();
        int x = 1200; //player who plays 1100
        int y = 1200; //player who plays 1200
        int z = 1200; //player who plays 1300
        
        int games = 50;
        for (int i = 1; i<= games; i++) {
            
            int chance1 = r.nextInt(2);
            int chance2 = r.nextInt(100);
            
            //if they play like 1250
            if(chance1 == 0) {
                 if(chance2 <= 57) {
                    x -= 12;
                 }
                 else
                    x += 20;
            }
            //if they play like 1150
            else {
                if(chance2 <= 70) {
                    x -= 12;
                }
                else {
                    x += 20;
                }
            }    
    }
    
    //player who plays 1200
           for (int i = 1; i<= games; i++) {
            
            int chance1 = r.nextInt(2);
            int chance2 = r.nextInt(100);
            
            //if they play like 1250
            if(chance1 == 0) {
                 if(chance2 <= 57) {
                     y+= 16;
                 }
                 else
                    y -= 16;
            }
            //if they play like 1150
            else {
                if(chance2 <= 43) {
                    y += 16;
                }
                else {
                    y -= 16;
                }
            }    
    }
       //player who plays 1100
       for (int i = 1; i<= games; i++) {
            
            int chance1 = r.nextInt(2);
            int chance2 = r.nextInt(100);
            
            //if they play like 1250
            if(chance1 == 0) {
                 if(chance2 <= 70) {
                     z += 12;
                 }
                 else
                    y -= 20;
            }
            //if they play like 1150
            else {
                if(chance2 <= 57) {
                    z += 12;
                }
                else {
                    z -= 20;
                }
            }    
    }
    
    System.out.println("New rating of player who played 1300: " + x);
    System.out.println("New rating of player who played 1200: " + y);
    System.out.println("New rating of player who played 1100: " + z);
    
}
}

This might not be 100% correct since I spent 5 minutes doing this but after 50 games, the player who played the 1100 the most gains the most points.

https://www.mark-weeks.com/aboutcom/aa04l04.htm