Opponent's Average Rating

If it looks like he did so to get under the tournament's rating ceiling it is sandbagging and should be reported using the Report Abuse link at the bottom of the page.

i'll look closer.  it's seem a bit fishy though eh

It really depends on the context -- it might have just been an inadvertent mass time-out, or a cull of games via resignation to deal with a game load that is too high.  If it's deliberate and without any apparent legitimate reason though, it may be rating manipulation and really shouldn't be allowed

yeah i'm looking at it now.  he's timed out on like 150 games in a row.  he's in the middle of it right now.  i suppose he'll time out against me too.  i really wish there was a way to see a person's rating now counting time-outs.  for AND against.

Good question.

If you start from the tautology that if everybody's rating accurately reflects their playing strength, then OAR doesn't tell you anything additional about their playing strength. What it does tell you is the types of opponents they tend to play against.

In a fair and liquid rating system, I still have trouble accepting that a player's strength is fundamentally different given a different OAR and same rating. What I think it means is that the two players are good at different things.

I'm inclined to believe that playing lower rated players develops the skill of "winning the games you're supposed to win", and playing higher rated players or players the same rating as you pushes your envelope of becoming a better player. I think both skills are important. Another description of the types of players is the first is a very careful player who makes very few mistakes (a mistake will punish their rating dramatically), and the second is a dynamic aggressive player who will much more often make game-losing mistakes.

So, this brings me to an interesting point. I think that the playing strength has perspective. I think that (as a higher rated player) I would rank the player with the higher OAR as harder to beat. But perhaps a much lower rated player would feel the opposite.

Interesting insight, however I don't know that the lower rated player would necessarily be able to capitalize on the mistakes of the opponent with the higher OAR as readily as you might ozzie.  I wonder if that doesn't mean that you'd find the lower OAR harder to beat, but to a lower ranked player they might not find that there's a distinction bewteen the two opponents with respect to how easy (or rather difficult) they are to beat.

ozzie...I think you might be onto something.

yes, this is good stuff

Well, my rating has been hovering between 1400 and 1480 for months now! And my AOR is 1431.. I accept opponents of any rating. Not so picky about it :D

@TheGrobe I think the same ideas would apply if you raise all of the ratings we're talking about. Let's compare two 2400 FIDE rated players, player 1 with an OAR of 2200 and player 2 with an OAR of 2600. How would you expect player 1 to do in a match against a 2600, and how would you expect player 2 to do in a match against a 2200?

I think you're right though, if you go too low, then the lower rated player just won't know anything about how to take advantage of anything at all. (How does the horsie move again?)

 It really isn't all that lame.  For instance my rating is 1744, and my opponents rating average around 1450.  It should too, because I came from the very bottom here to get to where I am now.  My first three games online I lost and was a 900 player rating.  What I did was play people by levels... If Im beating 1250's, then I started playing 1300's, then 1400's, etc all the way to 1700+ now.  A person should prove that he/she beats people at or below their level to go up.  So many people have for instance a 1500 rating, but their average opponent is 1700.  I guess it works for some people, but I like my approach.

It's someth9ing I look at, in my case, my rating at the moment is 1475, and my AOR is 1391, believe it or not- this has risen by 30 points recently. Point I'm trying to make, is that I complete 6 games a day, and I've played 2400 games, for a long time I have been 1350. I now find that I have climbed 100 points or so, if I rise another 100, to be 1575, my AOR will drag behind for a long time. If I now play 100 players at 1800, my AOR will only rise by 10-15 points, so I'll still look like a 'bully.' I do in general look at AOR as an indicator as Mark (Ilikeflags) said however, but in some cases like mine, they might actually mean that the player was low rated for a long time and was playing players of similar ratings, and that they've suddenly improved.

Good point.

The rating of a player disproportionately weights their most recent games, but the OAR is simply an average.

What does OAR stand for, Guys?

opponents average rating

A rolling average (ROAR) might actually be a better indicator, particularly when it comes to players who've played a lot of games and have continually improved -- the bigger the ROAR, the bigger the bite.

ROAR  lol.  My best friend is right, we are such geeks.  

i'm not quite sure (i suck at stats) what is meant by rolling.  can you explain what you mean in more layman's terms?  do you mean rolling as in the average would reflect more recent games?

i agree with lionel, i think i hover around the same rating all the time.  mid-1500s here and probably to stay.  i hope to get better. but i'm not really a 1900s player in the making right?

i sure do love morrissey