Opponents Ratings

Hi All,

                I have been playing for about a week now and am hooked!   I am only playing correspondence (24 hour move) chess, and only one game at a time.  I have played 7 games and won two, which I think is OK.   

But what I would like to know though is, what should I realistically set my opponents min & max rating levels at, so I can improve, without getting too dismayed, should I leave it on the default set by Chess.com or change either of the options? 

Is two games out of seven, good, bad or average?

Thanks for any input,

Simon.

Hey!

I don't know if I can answer you in french so I'll do it in english so that others can follow the subject :-))

2 wins out of 7 is really good if you're just starting out ! You already felt the thrill of winning ;-)

As for your opponents ratings I think you can set a range going from -200 to +200, or even -100 to +200 for instance.

Playing slightly better opponents than you (not much better of course) is really one of the keys of improvement as you start realizing your mistakes. As we say people learn from their mistakes, so you shouldn't be afraid to do a lot of them and go over your games afterwards to learn from them. In my opinion, this is the best way to improve quickly !

Cheers and good luck with your games!

Thanks for the quick reply.  That sounds like very good advice, just keeping the upper level comparaitively higher than the lower level, I like it.

I am English by the way, I just live in France.

Sorry. For some reason my Ipad would only post half of what I wrote.

At only 7 games it is difficult to tell because that can fluctuate so wildly with just a few wins.

My recommendation would be to find a turn based tournament (24hr per move or something) rated below 1300, or maybe 1400.

In a tournament like this you will be placed in a 1st round group with a range of different players with varying ratings. You'll probably find that there will be a few better and a couple worse. As the rounds continue, your rating will fluctuate but, by the end, you will have a better idea of the range of opponent you should be looking for in future.

Edit: Choose carefully though. As a basic member, you are only able to enter one turn based tournament. Try and pick one with a timescale and an amount of participants you are happy with. Also, watch out for the no vaction ones. Not a problem to most, but you do see people on here moaning because they got timed out and can't work out why.

That is a good idea.  Do the tournaments have seperate ratings like blitz?

Some do and some don't. There are 'Open' tournaments, where players of any rating can join. However, many of them are divided by rating class. You might find ones like, '1201-1400', '<1350', '1001-1200' etc. Just depends on the tournament creator.

Thanks.  I am hoping to upgrade to Diamond soon anyway, that will help.

I'd definitely recommend Diamond. It works out to 16p a day, as a man from the UK I'm sure you appreciate how little that gets you here.

If you do, take a look at the Daniel Rensch videos. Quite entertaining at the same time as being instructive.

Will do.  Thanks

Ratings don't really makes much sense here so don't be obsessive about your opponent's ratings. I'd say make an open challenge, and try not to care about ratings.That way you'll get used to playing both 'beginners' (and punishing their mistakes) and experienced players.

2/7 is okay, just keep playing, and analysing the games. You move pretty fast if your done 7 games in a week, so maybe use more time and think through the moves?