Leechers of chess.com

Without knowing the formula im 1200 if i beat a 800 i get like 2 or 3 points i think and a 1300 gets you 11 or something so you need to win 2 times as many games to break even, if youre playing a 1300 your chances for losing i would say are alot worse against a 1300 vs a 1200. So playing against the 1300 over 100 games if you won half your games youd only get like 50 points (11x50-10x50) so against the 800 if you win 75 games, you lose 14 points for every loss thats 150 -14x25=300 points, youd need to win 90 games to get 40 points. So you need to win basically every game to not get a deficit against the 800. And id say the chances are pretty good. Though youll probably lose more than half your games being 100 points lower. Im not sure how the glicko system calculates it theyve worked out the odds using some kind of metric 

The rating system doesnt take into account other variables, but they did consider how long a player has been away i read that when i was learning the formula they use 

Well if I ever start playing rated chess here at chess.com (nah, won't happen, what am I saying?), then I will take @IronSteam1 suggestion and set the margins symmetrically like -100..+100 or similar. Because morally I agree with OP -- it's wrong to want to *only* play against stronger players. Although as stated by another commenter, if _everybody_ chose -25..+infinity then it has the same effect as everybody choosing -25..+25, it's still possible for some action to be wrong where the *intent* is wrong, even when the *outcome* is not wrong.

As for whether playing exclusively up (higher rateds) leads to artificial Elo gain, it does, but not because of the math.

1. The Elo system models the result of a chess game as a continuous function, but an actual chess game can only have three results.
2. As Elo goes up, it's becomes much harder to win a game than to draw one.
3. There are fewer high Elo opponents than low Elo opponents.
4. The high Elo players are trying not to lose Elo in individual games!

It's actually the "draw threat" that transfers Elo from the high rated to the low rated. And we can see this easily by comparing GM Elo changes when they play invitational tournaments vs open tournaments. GMs who regularly play in invitationals tend to maintain rating, the same GM who plays in an open tournament tends to lose rating (Tarjan vs Kramnik, anyone?). Certainly the high but not quite high enough GMs who can't get (enough) invitations and have to play in opens know this bitter truth. Every open they play causes them to leak Elo and drift that much further from the precious next invitation. https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1886224

That said, players who exclusively play up do themselves no favors improvement-wise. Since they are Elo-rewarded for a draw, they learn and reinforce a defensive style, and become incapable (relatively speaking) of turning around and themselves defeating a lower-rated opponent. They may pat themselves on the back with their +50 Elo inflation (on paper!), but a year or ten from now they will still be in the same place.

Cope harder

That's because you didn't quote my argument, which came _after_ my premises.

In the moral calculus we are not concerned with _changes_ in rating over time, but with the _difference_ in rating in a player's games. It's immoral to benefit from the experience of playing stronger players and then selfishly deny weaker players the same opportunity. "To each their own" fails Kant's categorical imperative.

Stronger player A gives player B a game. Player B does not give weaker player C a game because of rating. That's immoral. At the last OTB tournament I played in, an 1800 player actually said to me "I don't analyze with them after the game if my opponent is weaker than me." I said, "I hate players like you. Just imagine if all your opponents did the same thing to you." He agreed it would be a problem, and said he would think about it.

Just Playing devil's advocate here, but if you feel this is so wrong, why do you belong to that club? Are you not doing precisely the thing you say is unethical? 

I guess it still seems to me like there's a big contradiction. I probably wouldn't belong to a club that had so much disparity in ratings unless I had been invited into it, and even then I might be reluctant. I mean if I shared your opinion of this anyway.

No I don't question why you play chess online. It's virtually impossible to play in person in most locations on the planet. Unless you live in a big city you can pretty much forget it.

I have a similar disagreement with the allowing of databases in Daily. But I'm not going to be changing the world anytime soon. They're probably is no solution.

There's lots of interesting viewpoints.

Didn't the rating systems get changed because of some guy in prison who became a grand master by Gaming the local rating pool in the prison and then doing something with correspondence?

Pretty cool.

I've only got an old gold membership so maybe I won't be qualified. How do you even do it?

Well, I deleted this blog because it was misleading, and I found a rounding error that accounted for some of the results.

You can get a small boost to your rating if you only play a certain kind of opponent... but it's such a small boost (like, 10 points at most) and it's hard to explain (better to change your settings after every few games) AND the answer isn't either higher or lower, it's more complicated (lol).

So... not worth a long blog to explain all these details when the answer is it doesn't really matter in the end... but the bottom line is it's best to play opponents who are about 100-200 points higher than you, and the boost is worth ~5 points over baseline (lol).

---

In the end, these are the results I came up with... I don't know why they aren't symmetrical. I tried the things I could think of and now I'm done with it. I suspect the numbers for lower rated opponents are an artifact of some rounding stuff, but I don't want to spend more hours on this. (Averaging over 10s of millions of games, using the actual Elo formula, which I checked vs chess.com games and ratings and verified to be a reliable estimate).

@125, thanks I'll check it out.

There's now been multiple times that you've said this and obviously you must be looking for a response. I actually typed one this morning but the site wiped it out and I really didn't care enough to retype anything.

As to me not being competitive, I'm probably one of the more obsessive people that you've ever come across. In my younger days I was willing to put lots of effort into competitive activities that had no return on investment. I just don't do that anymore. If I put in a huge amount of effort, it will be in my business or on one of my investment properties. It will not be in chess. I like to do things well, but I'm also a realist. I will make $0 playing chess. Exactly how much concern should I place on that activity then?

I went to my first tournament in around 40 years and I won the Under 1400 section while rated about 1100 online. I won enough money to pay approximately 1/3 of the cost of fuel to go there. Never mind the total cost of ownership of the vehicle. Now let's say I would like to improve my financial situation with my Recreation time activities. I'm better off asking my neighbor if he will give me $20 to mow his grass. At least with that I will net some money and it's a guaranteed thing. From what I have heard top players say, being in the top 10 in the world doesn't even make you a 1% earner in the United States. Seems like a lot of effort for not much return. And for the record, I won't be mowing the neighbor's grass anytime soon.

The fact that some of us do not agree with you that this rating selection is some existential threat to chess has nothing to do with competitiveness. And if you are so competitive, why aren't you a higher rated player? In my mind, competitiveness means you try to improve continuously and quickly.

@llama36

It stands to reason that by now they've come up with ways to make sure nobody can exploit the rating system, at least not to any meaningful amount. It's understandable that the math would have been kept simple back in the pre-computer era. But now that they have computers to do whatever math they want, it doesn't need to be so simple anymore.

The best mathematical trick to get a higher rating that I found is... play more games

Which is kinda obvious. If you flip a coin 1000 times you'll probably get a few amazing runs of heads or tails... but if you flip a coin one hundred millions times, well, you'll get something even more amazing.

There are so many other factors that are so much more meaningful... like @ironsteam1 mentions psychology, and the thing I like to focus on is physical aspects (playing when I've slept and ate enough during that day).

IDK, Glicko seems pretty freaking amazing sometimes.

In the resent Carlsen / Caruana speed chess championship match on chess.com, they played (IIRC) 16 blitz games... at the end of those 16 games their ratings were the exact same numbers as before the match, meaning the rating system perfectly predicted the results... can't get better than perfect!

import random

# Keeps track of players and their stats. You can add elements like best win, average rating, etc.
class Player:

    number_of_players = 0

    def __init__(self, skill, rating):
        self.rating = rating
        self.skill = skill
        self.game_history = []

        Player.number_of_players += 1

# This function changes two player's rating and game history. It decides who wins by using the Elo formula.
def play_game(player1, player2):

    player1_wins = False

    #real outcome is based on the player's skill
    real_outcome = 1/(1+10 ** ((player2.skill - player1.skill)/400))
    real_outcome = (real_outcome * 100)

    #expected outsome is based on the player's rating
    expected_outcome = 1/(1+10 ** ((player2.rating - player1.rating)/400))
    expected_outcome = (expected_outcome * 100) #multiply by 100, see note 1 below

    if(real_outcome >= random.randint(1, 100)):
        player1_wins = True
        print("Player one wins!")

    #The result of a game updates the rating, but never the skill
    if(player1_wins == True):
        player1.rating += (((100 - expected_outcome) / 5)) #divide by 5, see note 1 below.
        player2.rating -= (((100 - expected_outcome) / 5))

        #Keeps track of wins and losses as 1 and -1
        player1.game_history.append(1)
        player2.game_history.append(-1)

    elif(player1_wins == False):
        player1.rating -= ((expected_outcome / 5))
        player2.rating += ((expected_outcome / 5))
        player1.game_history.append(-1)
        player2.game_history.append(1)
        
        print("Player one lost!")

# End of function
# note 1:  multiple by 100 (line 26) and divide by 5 (line 34) is the same as multiply by 20. Thus the K factor here is 20.

player_list = []

player_list.append(Player(1200, 1200)) #Adds a new player. Player 0 is rated 1200 and has a skill of 1200
player_list.append(Player(1400, 1400)) #Adds a new player. Player 1 is rated 1400 and has a skill of 1400

play_game(player_list[0], player_list[1])

print("The player's new rating is " + str(int(player_list[0].rating)) + ".")

Example of python I used, FWIW.

You keep disagreeing with the part of my post that you didn't quote. I already said, it is not about the change in rating. Let me repeat: I don't care about it. I don't care if playing up gives a player a boost of +10 Elo, +5 Elo, or +0 Elo. Whether it did or didn't is not what I am basing my _immoral_ charge on.

But you seem to be quite hung up on whether or not a rating system is accurate, and can't let it go.

Chess ratings are fundamentally immoral. When chess players arrange a rated match, they are taking part in a  zero-sum game, which encourages aggression and trickery instead of cooperation. The unfairness of our economic system is then symbolically reproduced here, reminding us of the pervasive logic of capitalism and slowly making us believe in its inevitability.

However, chess could be different. It can be reformed, brought back to a purer state. We have to free our minds from the greed of elo that burns our souls. As long as we keep feeding that fire, there will be suffering, despair and sorrow. Be wary of the evil hidden behind ratings, divest yourself from the passion they inspire in your heart, and you will become free.

You too can join our movement, OP. Leechers are not our enemy, ratings are to blame. Reject Glicko. Embrace unrated games.