Petrip, that's a good point. I assume since the sheer number of players in both is so vast, that the respective ratings should be at least similar.
Online vs "live" chess
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OTB chess (especially tournament chess) is, in my opinion, the best way to improve your skills as a player. Few things will help you learn as much as Postmortems with stronger players. Online chess, in my view, really is just there to relieve boredom. You'll learn much more from getting crushed by stronger players face-to-face :)
Jan 16, 2014
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#4
Clunnney, I initially believed the opposite. That online chess is higher quality because both players have a chance to analyze potential moves in depth and the result is fewer blunders, sharper tactics, etc. Very often in OTB chess, I can see my own blunder shortly after making it. I suppose that's better than not understanding it at all, but it's still frustrating that I can't do the analysis in my head beforehand.
Jan 16, 2014
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#5
SagoB wrote:
Petrip, that's a good point. I assume since the sheer number of players in both is so vast, that the respective ratings should be at least similar.
They are not. For example, the average online rating is 1347, while the average live standard rating is 1161. I don't know the exact mathematical reasons.
SagoB wrote:
Clunnney, I initially believed the opposite. That online chess is higher quality because both players have a chance to analyze potential moves in depth and the result is fewer blunders, sharper tactics, etc. Very often in OTB chess, I can see my own blunder shortly after making it. I suppose that's better than not understanding it at all, but it's still frustrating that I can't do the analysis in my head beforehand.
But what better way to learn to check for that type of blunder again than suffering catastrophic defeat for it?
Jan 16, 2014
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#8
The distributions show that the player pools here on chess.com are probably not at all representative. Of course it's difficult to find out in which ways they are special.
Jan 16, 2014
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#9
clunney wrote:
OTB chess (especially tournament chess) is, in my opinion, the best way to improve your skills as a player. Few things will help you learn as much as Postmortems with stronger players. Online chess, in my view, really is just there to relieve boredom. You'll learn much more from getting crushed by stronger players face-to-face :)
LOL--you're probably right.
I play online mostly but since i have anybody to play otb i set up a game im playing on my board. Dont know if it will help me but i figured it wouldnt hurt
Live chess takes some getting used to if you've been playing Online. Just keep playing and you will learn to calculate without an analysis board.
Hi sago. The player pools are very distinct. You can see the population bell curves by clicking home/online/view players. Then you select any bucket you wish. Standard on line, blitz, bullet, etc. you will see that the median rating online is 200 points higher than live. Maybe someone can post a screenshot of the curves.
BulgarianMachine wrote:
I only play online chess at the computer and i usually set up my analysis board for every non obvious move after the opening. Mixing real live play with computer screen play somehow messes with my vision, so i only play "live" in real OTB chess.
i guess the reason why online ratings are higher than live ratings are just simply due to the fact that a pretty large percentage of the playerpool does not use the additional ressources (time, databases, and so forth) properly, so it's easily possible to achieve a higher rating there.
This would have zero net effect on rating average. Rating averages have no relation at all to quality of play.
I am think the reason has to do with how players who are no longer active calculate into the average rating, but not sure.
I'm rated 1498 in "online" chess and 1258 in "live chess-standard". That's quite the difference and I'm having trouble bridging the gap. I find that I'm improving in online chess but am relying on being able to play out several moves and difference scenarios. Then when I move over to live or OTB chess, I try similar tactics and often miscalculate. When I review my live/OTB games, I see my mistakes by playing out the scenarios but have trouble doing it all in my head with the time crunch.
Since I'm growing in online chess, I'm confident in my improving chess theory skills but would like to be able to play those kind of games in live/OTB. Any suggestions?