Rating 2000

Regularly could be once every 1000 games, it doesn't mean often

It just sounds odd to me. If he's over 2000 and corrected his problems, would that put him at about a master level then? I took a gander at a few of his games and i just don't see that.

If he's 2000 while dropping pieces a lot I'd guess he'd be somewhere around 2700 if he stopped.

Yeah he was probably being loose with his language. You can't be 2000+ and drop pieces "regularly." Club players around 1500 dont drop pieces all that often...

I would say against players rated under 2000 about half of my wins come from them dropping a significant amount of material. I'm over 2000 USCF, and my area is not what one would consider weak (Chicago area). I don't mean 'regularly' as in several times per game, but once every one or two tournaments, and sometimes more than that. And I don't mean blatantly hanging pieces - this did happen in my penultimate tournament where I played Nd6+?? overlooking Bc5xd6, but there were other reasons for that - I had just gone to the bathroom after quickly playing a move and forgot that once he took my Bishop on e3(which was his previous move) it wasn't pinning his c5-Bishop to his Queen on b6 anymore and the capture on d6 was possible.

In my most recent tournament(the same one where I played an Expert who dropped his queen to a simple capture), I lost a game to a 1700 because I missed that at the end of a forced sequence, his rook would be defending a square I was planning on giving a winning check on. I dropped two pawns from a won position where I was up a pawn and ended up losing the endgame, which we had to go into due to my incorrect forcing sequence.

I also won a game against a 1666 who missed that I had dropped my queen to a simple series of checks. If he saw that, I would have been dead lost. Also, he blatantly hung a piece and lost his queen against me in the same game.

My simplest game was my win over a 1550 who dropped his queen on move 15.

And my other game was a win over a 1650 who played the Sicilian (basically a forced loss if you're under 2000 and playing me)

In this tournament, my rating stayed roughly the same(I lost one rating point) so it should give a reasonable example.

And as far as strengths go, I am generally better than sub-2000 players at finding tactics that lead to positional gains for me, and finding tactics in general. They say chess is 99% tactics, but below master level I think it's much closer to 100%.

Thank you for your response. You seem to mostly mention players under 2000. How are you against players around your rating? I think that would be a better way to determine your true rating.

Here's a game:

White's mistake seems to be 13. Qb5. It doesn't do hardly anything. It protects b3, but that could've been done by moving the knight on c3.

This game looks better than the few of your online games i looked at. 

This is perfect!

Sunshiny - In Online Chess, I rarely spend more than a few seconds per move, and in Live Chess - Standard, I am usually playing multiple games at once while doing other things, or playing while cooking/eating, or on cell phone while doing other things, etc. I don't take chess.com games very seriously. I'm about 2400 in ICC 5-minute and 2300 FICS standard.

Same, but I'm normally drinking and juggling too.

Having a rating of 2000 will ensure you respect from the large majority of chess numpties and ridicule from the real players

yeah, the real players who dedicate their lives to chess (or... almost)

I used to average having 50 games going at once. But I also was employed and also sometimes talked on the phone and also sometimes drove my car [but alas no cell phones back then] and sometimes i would play duplicate bridge and poker and maybe get lucky with my wife... yes that is mulitasking! 

I never took my duplicate bridge very seriously but was quite a good player.  Nowadays I play only 15 minute chess but while doing this I bowl on wii and now have 348 perfect 300 games [which is not bad at all]

I only take a few seconds to line up and throw the bowling balls.

kenpo - the competition is much stronger on the other sites, generally speaking, and there are far fewer cheaters. I've run into a number of obvious cheats in 15 minute live chess (which is basically all I play, while cooking, eating, playing multiple games and doing whatever else...it helps pass the time and adds some spice) as well as online correspondence. Because of this and other factors, I play on other sites when I want to play some serious games. There is hardly any high-level standard to be found here.

Scottrf  

Expertise, are you saying you don't get serious matches with the 2000+ players here?

Find out how many players are rated over 2000 in standard Live Chess and how regularly they play. I can say it's hard to even get a game sometimes let alone with a reasonably high-rated player.

I doubt I could get over 2400 in Standard because of the lack of competition at any reasonable level. In Online Chess it might be possible but I've already played a few cheaters on there who have been banned, and I would have to stop hanging queens. ;)

possibly my favourite quote, i thought it was hilarious when i first read that

Are you sure you're not thinking of Sir Arthur Eddington's response to being asked whether it was true that only 3 people in the world understand general relativity - 'who's the third?'

'Good and bad' are too absolute for chess, I prefer 'better and worse'. I am better than some people, I am worse than others. I have got better since I started playing, I am worse than I (hopefully) will be in the future. Of course, that doesn't stop IM Pfren telling me how bad I am.

Anyway, to what extent does any particular rating continues to represent a particular level of play over time? Surely inflation or deflation (as well as your own improvement) will just mean you have to continually redefine what you call a 'good' rating.