Ratings:high,higher,highest!

you seem one of those very few honest guys prawn. Tellme this, if you not mind:) Currently I am at TT puzzle's strength of round about 1550. What I want to know is where does these ratings stop, do you get puzzles that would be at 2300 strength, for example. /or do they give combinations of simpler puzzles that need more moves to solve? I never redo puzzles that I missed the first time, but what I find is that the harder they get, the simpler they feel to solve. the lower rated puzzles felt harder to solve, why is that?

chess engines will give the shortest lines to mate, but for humans, we use longer and weirder way's to loose rather to win. anyhow, there are some pretty good players that can win chess engines, and allow the engine to function without pulling the plug and switching it off.

creativity is what would win an engine, i am sure that when you go with a line that is creative enough, one can change the outcome, or be creative and challenge the engine with another engine of equal strength, and that woul leave your creativity unchallenged:D

You have answered your own question nicely, isthatso. Plus the other inputs, we get a clearer picture of why non-titled players have higher ratings than titled players here.

However it's disturbing to see people readily jumping to the conclusion that just because a non-titled player is higher-rated than titled players, he/she must be cheating. Such blanket accusations are unjust.

The truth is that titled players don't play that many games as non-titled players. They don't have as much time to spare on online games due to OTB commitments. And the games they do play online seem to be selective games, mostly coaching games for their students.

The non-titled players on the other hand have no such constraints. They play as much as they like, take part in as many team matches and tournaments as they wish. So of course they are piling up rating points, unlike the titled players who play far fewer games and therefore not earning as many points. At some point in time, their rating points will overtake and surpass that of titled players.

fireballz, :) normally the tactical exercizes that i have done were  book based., chess.com has wonderfull tools to help actualize those skills., i look forward of using them ....in short i dont know?

Fireballz,

the puzzles keep get harder i.e. they are longer and often include more than one theme (say an interference idea leads into a mating tactic).

I sometimes miss the easy ones too, I think it's because I'm looking for more than the solution requires i.e. I consider the position so strong that winning a minor piece seems insufficient.

Working out the solution to any problem is much more difficult than simply "knowing" how it ends. Practice and experience (spotting recycled themes) helps greatly.

For instance:

Problem rated 2337, average time 310 seconds:

http://www.chess.com/tactics/server.html?id=46782

I solved it on first sight, checked my work and was all done in 8 seconds. No way I had time to work it out from first principles, the solution just flashed up in my mind, as soon as I saw it.

p.s. Mind you, it does seem so simple for a 2337 problem,  that I don't understand why 45% have failed, especially given the huge amout of time they've used. Maybe it is too easy.

well, thx for those honest answers guy's. It sure helped to see the bigger picture, and to make inner piece with the challenges at this site.

greetings from sunny south africa:)

Call me naive, but the fact that people here automatically ASSume that very high-rated players without any USCF or FIDE title are ALL cheaters leaves me underwhelmed, to put it mildly. For one thing the rating system here is grotesquely inflated and getting credit for all forfeit wins doesn't help curb inflation in fact it makes it worse. I'm rated 2114 here and part of my rating is based on several forfeit wins, at IECC I'm rated about 1560 and my USCF OTB rating is about 1825. Of course, maybe I'm only cheating here for some reason...

But on the other hand, assuming better players cheat is one way to rationalize one's own lack of skill. Personally I'm very willing to believe that it's possible for other players to be rated several hundred pts higher than me based on their higher skill level (and partly on the very inflationary rating system used here), regardless of whether they have a FIDE or USCF title or not.

And of course, someone (or someones) out there is/are undoubtedly cheating as I type this...although the management here claims that they have super-secret methodology for catching these nefarious villains (and in fact players do seem to be getting kicked out for cheating on a regular basis here)

What to think of sub 1800 ( OTB ) players here with turn based ratings over 2700 ?! I know what I think...  

:P

I would agree, Cystem_Phailure... actual improvement should be the goal of every chess player... but I'd still like to see how the numbers work out...

I just realized that a good way to inflate one's rating would seem to be to enter a tournament with a lot of people rated over 2300. If you have a much smaller rating, you won't lose much by losing against them; but if a significant portion of the high-rated players are cheaters, and if they are caught while you have an ongoing game against them, you win by forfeit and get a lot of rating points.

That's (possibly) how I jumped from the 2100's to the 2200's, anyway...

Your only two games that had rating increases over 100 points were your very first two games, and this is common because everyone starts out with a very high Glicko RD value until they get some games under their belt-- translation: ratings swing wildly with wins and losses until your Glicko RD value starts to get lower.  Even now, having played 18 games your RD value is still 129; as a comparison, my RD value is 60 after 194 games.

Recently they started listing the rating of players as "unrated" for their first few games, because of the volitility in the values for the first few games.  The results are still used to determine someone's rating, it just isn't reported until they've played a few games.

I think non titled players under 2300 turn based rating are mostly innocent of cheating, and if like me you are really good at tactics, decent at limiting pieces/controlling squares, and can use a database to survive the opening which is perhaps your one true weakness, you can get a rating a couple hundred points higher than your OTB rating (1816 uscf), inflation probably plays a part in this. For example I was pushing 2200 before I fell into the pitfall of playing too many games and came back down to 1800 after blitzing out the majority of my games or losing on time. However in my games against non titled players in the 2350+ range I take as much time as possible on my moves and so far the majority of times Ive won those games because my opponent got caught cheating and was forced to resign before the game ended. I dont play many of 2350+ players, but of the ones I have only one wasn't caught cheating before our game ended, and I actually won and drew against him.

As far as how to do well against titled players, my sole draw to an FM on this site was thanks to complicating the position, keeping his king in the center with a sacrifice, and then just spending a lot of time calculating out the moves compared to his faster possibly less serious responses. In tactics Im close to the titled players, so thats where my chances lie :).

Just to add my own opinion - while there are certainly those who cheat, it is possible to have a turn-based rating on here well above your OTB rating quite legitimately.  My USCF rating is around 1600, though it is about 10 years old (i.e. no tournaments since then), while my turn-based rating has been in the 2200s lately.  Personally, this is a combination of a few things:

• I play very few games at once, so I can concentrate on them a lot better and put in a lot more time per move than I ever could OTB.
• I sift through Opening Explorer to both make sure I am following a decent line and to get ideas for what to do (by viewing complete games) once we exit the database.
• I try to learn new things by reading the various articles posted on this website - as a result of which I think I am improved as a chessplayer.
• I have always been better at endgames than middlegames (or memorizing openings), so by having a ton of time, I can usually avoid any middlegame tactical whatnot that might cause me to lose and then be able to convert in the endgame (while also trying to steer toward the endgame better than my opponent who might be working on an attack and ignoring pawn structure, for instance).

So I think it is entirely possible to have widely divergent OTB and turn-based ratings depending on your own skillset and approach to playing.

Yes, you are right, but the chance is very small, because you are not the only one who did "everything legal" just to win the game. You are competing with those who use engines. That is the reason why the chance is very small.

You have 2271 rating with an average opponent rating of 2000+ with 70% winning percentage. That is impressive for 1600 USCF. I believe that your USCF is underrated. Try to join OTB tournament again, I strongly believe that you will have at least 1800.

I will any day underestimate 1600 FIDE (even more) over the board, but not players above 2000 here on chess.com.

Many of them is probably cheating.

You can click a box before you move on here, and can make illegal moves, I have never attempted it, but have noticed the box. That is probably the primary source of cheating.

most of them use engines

Most cheaters can be caught iff they have bullet rating around 1500-1800 and Blitz 2300+

That's a lie!

Not so fast Zinsch! I am unrated in the real world, but have a 1014 rating on here. This is because I haven't played but in one torunament. So, take that with a grain of salt.