Playing many online chess games.

What is it about playing multiple online (turn-based) chess games? I'm not completely binning the idea but sometimes I play an unknown opponent and find he's also in the middle of a number of other games. I recently saw an opponents rating change during our game and had a look at his games and he had 71 other current games!

I can see if you just joined chess.com then you could reach your natural rating and thus your opponent level quicker by clocking up a few games quickly but, to be honest, part of me thinks that a player with many ongoing games is arrogant. Am I being unfair?

Perhaps.

You are being unfair... Whats arrogant about playing many games, and how does it detract from your enjoyment of your game with your multitasking opponent?

I have the image of Fischer (and others) playing OTB against a number of players but a regular guy playing all those must at the very least not have full concentration on a game (not to mention time taken to move a piece). I can understand the desire to be thinking about your turn at any given point and thus maybe need a couple of games going on but over 10 seems to remove the intensity of each game. I wouldn't feel that the player was engaging in me (or my game) if he had 70 other games going on.

It doesn't detract from my enjoyment other than if they lose a load of games during mine which I win then I don't get as many points because they are then a lower rated player.

Thankyou Estragon. I'm new to this really so I had no idea how the etiquette or practiality of having many games worked. I may have a few on the go but definitely under 400! Perhaps I'll start with 3 and work my way up as I get better.  Thanks for the great post. It really helped me understand how people play more games.

For me I started with too many games and have gotten lower and lower (from above 50 to about 5. The opponents rating usually tell more about rating strength then the number of ongoing games, so don't think much about how many games they play, but only about how many you can manage. A good idea is to not join tournaments that requires too many games starting at once, at least until you know how many games you can manage.

Take your time against players with lots of games and wait for them to burn out mentally.

I'm playing someone now with 84 games hes got 9 hours left to make a move on my two games and 50 minutes on other games...looks like i'm going to get some free points if he doesn't log in soon.

It's very simple. If you have a lot of time on your hands that you wish to spend on playing online chess, then you can play many games. If you have little time, then you play fewer games. It doesn't require any multitasking at all.

If I sometimes end up analysing for ours for one move (using an analyses board) how would I ever be able to play over 100 games? I'm even thinking on my games sometimes when it isn't my turn. I think it really depends on how much time you have and how much time you want to spend on each game.

Be careful though, its definitely easy to bite of more than you can chew. As some have already alluded, critcal middle game positons take up a lot of time. You may enter a tournament and finish the first round, enter a few others in the meantime, and end up unexpectedly with a lot of games when the second round starts. 

I think for most its hard to play at your best when you've got over 20 games.

This isn't the first thread on this subject by any means.  A year or 2 ago someone played a guy in India who had over 1500 games going at once!  Supposedly he played a decent game as well.  

It seems to me my problem is with boredom.  I love playing but once I've made the moves available in my six (currently) games I have little to do.  So I'm tempted to start up some more right then to have something to do in chess.  Soon I'm rushing through ten or twelve games.  ("Game creep"?)I must admit I don't play as well with more than four games going.  I suppose I should play more US games because people in distant time zones tend to be asleep while I'm awake. 

I have about 50 games going right now. The idea is to get a wide variety of positions from these games that I could analyze and impove my playing skills.

There's a guy I've been playing in a team match since the beginning of July. He seriously has 80 games going on at the same time. I know he can't handle the 80, because he takes the full time for each turn in our games. And sometimes he even takes vacations just to not run out of time. 

For now, I've settled on 9. A few are early, and the rest are in early to late middlegame. Nine fits nicely on the display grid when I call them up to look at their progress, and most of my opponents play rather quickly, so I always have 5-9 moves to make a day.

My plan is, as soon as one of the 9 is finished, to sign up for a new game immediately. That should keep things clocking along nicely. But 20, 50, 80?! That's just crazy talk--to me anyway.

I'm playing 10 right now . I forgot I entered myself into two tournaments. Starting to feel like I am rushing my moves.....I guess not really though...it may be a bit much for me to keep up with at this point in my development as a player, but At least its all 2-3 day time controls.

Im obviously confused right now...

Well 100 games is a bit much.. But so is spending 4 hours on each move even if u can use the analyze function o.O

I think one reason is the attitude some take towards the Online games than others. For myself, I don't do any deep analysis on my games and treat them as casual games that take up anywhere from 5 seconds to 3 minutes of my time on any given move. I don't take time to do extensive analysis on them, so having a dozen or more isn't that big of a deal to me. I like the online chess feature because it allows me to play a lot of games resulting in lots of different positions against various styles of players without having to play one game at a time like in live, and I don't have to finish the game in one sitting, I can log on and make several moves a day or every few days depending on my schedule or mood. I think players who have so many games going at a time are either very serious chess players who are spending a lot of time daily with chess or players more like myself who treat those games very casually and don't spend a lot of time on any given move.

I've lowered my game count to under a dozen for awhile now, but i'll probably begin to bump it up again after the holiday season. I don't concern myself about how many games my opponents might have going on, I just concern myself with the game I am playing against them. :)

Maybe I should add that it is very rare that I look at one position for several ours, but it happens and when I can't deside I can look at it again the next day. Sometimes I think about the position while walking to school and such. That flexibility and focus is hardly done with many games. I try to keep myself at a maximum of 6 games, but having joined tournaments over a year ago that will not be possible for too long.

I prefer playing many online games than playing live blitz. Multitasking is a chronic habit and I can't multitask playing live blitz. When I do it in blitz, I usually lost.