Some People Say I Play Like Tal: Is this true?

 The poster above me knows what he is talking about. Here's another game and then I'll explain why I expected more people to evaluate my game from the perspective of the poster above.

I totally expected people to see the way I move the pieces, the way I make moves, and evaluate how close I am to Tal based on that. I don't think Tal only played boring positions, I think he found sacrifices everywhere. In that Ruy Lopez game, I think the moves 12. b3, 15. Ne3, and 17. h4 are indicative of my style. But those moves also happen to be very Tal like moves. From the commencement of this thread, people have told. "Your style is too positional to be Tal", "Your style is not positional enough to be Tal", "You're a tactical player and not an attacking player", "You play more like Bronstein", "You can't be Tal cause your sacrifices are sound", "You can't be Tal because your sacrifices are unsound", "You can't be Tal because you're below 1500 blitz", "You don't play like Tal because I don't know why". Not one player has actually looked at a Tal game, then looked at my games, and tried to evaluate whether I indeed "play like Tal". That's what I thought people were gonna do. I have games where I rip the guy I'm playing to shreds. I have games where I win won endings, I have games where I don't even goddamn sacrifice I just maneuver my goddamn pieces. My opponents have started to play better, maybe some of the next few games I post will illumine whether I actually play like Tal.

 LOL... JUST LOL

This guy loses to me on time, then when my four-year-old son starts hopping up and down on my legs while I'm playing I blundered a mating combination I set up... I then TELL HIM I'm dealing with my son and I went ahead and blundered away an opening the next game...

And what does he do?

He annotates them and posts about how fucking grandiose of a player he is and how I'm a liar... Even though I went from setting up a combination, being ahead on time both games, then just inexplicably start giving away pieces...

Oh my, he's so good that I just started to blunder away pieces...

BTW, Mr. Tal... I even talk about how hard it is to play while distracted in another thread... because I have adult ADHD. I need 100% quiet and no distractions to even function over a chess board.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/fun-with-chess/listening-to-music-while-playing?page=2 (Comment #33)

THEN, I actually tried giving him advice and posted something positive before I leave and what does he do? lol He gloats over it... Listen buddy, I see your rating has fallen back down to the 1400's and that's probably where you really belong. Your ego is so goddamn big it'll never let you work on your weaknesses... You literally made a whole thread about how you're the freaking reincarnation of a world Champion. LMAO

Then when I log on today, see you online and challenge you... you see the challenge and sign off.

Okay, I can accept that you beat me.

But, our ratings are going in the opposite directions right now and I'm not professing to be any reincarnated world champions...

I actually know how big of a patzer I am compared to them.

It's people like you that make chess unenjoyable, you're probably the kind of guy who'd slam down his pieces and yell check when you're in a winning position.

I would tell you to keep on being a gentleman, but the truth is pretty simple... You're a child and you want to be told you play like Tal...

So, here you go.

YOU PLAY LIKE TAL & IT'S AMAZING. KEEP IT UP! :-)

Excuse me? You were fine right after the game, what has gotten you so mad? I'm seriously confused right now so sorry if I offended you.

step 1 sac all of the pieces

step 2 no more sacs abandon game

step 3 post on forums

TAL AAAAAAAAAA IM TAL AAAAAAAAAAAA I SACD A PIECE

 I have to believe HH is just trolling and knows he isn't very good, but imagine how Tal would feel being reincarnated into the mind of a C class chess player.

It must be like a bad Twilight Zone episode for Tal.  What evil in his past life did he commit to deserve this?

I'm a class A player at heart ;)

I wouldn't put too much stock into rating when evaluating a player. I can't help but feel most people do that on this site because its easier, but its not the best. Rating can go up and down, it can fluctuate more easily with certain players(I am one of them), but it will never tell "the whole story". I didn't make a single error in my game versus SunGerard. SunGerard perhaps made only one, moving his knight way too many times. In the end, rating does not tell the whole story. We can go on and off about class this, class that, but at the end of the day, its the way a player plays, and not their rating which determines whether they deserve to win or lose, and there doesn't have to be much more than that. For the record though, 1499-1799 is class B, but on chess.com, anyone over 1600 is pretty much Class A and anyone over 1900 is closing in on master level.

For the record, USCF Class C rating is 1400-1599.  Also, online ratings - including mine here - are generally higher than OTB ratings in tournament settings.

And, yes, ratings are the best way for us to evaluate skill level because over time they show how you score against opponents at different levels.  It isn't about opinion or "style"  It is results oriented.  

I agree "getting hung up on rating points" can stall a person's growth, but when you have over 700 games of record, as you do, you can establish some trends as to your level of strength.  As you improve, so will your rating, but most of us tend to fall into a norm and will stay in a given range.

In your heart, you may be a class A player, but to really be one, you will need to improve your rating by 400 points.  Try it, it's not so easy.

Mikhail Tal had a 2520 rating when he died.

Nice try but ratings are here on LOWER than OTB. Google chess.com rating conversion. I am a 1600 rated player if you notice. That translates to ROUGHLY 1800 FIDE and 1900 USCF.

In addition to this, who cares about my rating. My rating is never going to be "how well I play". Generally, if I am in form, I am winning and if I am out of form I am losing REGARDLESS OF WHOM I AM PLAYING AGAINST. I've been as high as 1800 and MAINTAINED IT FOR SOME MONTHS. Does that mean I now play like a 1400 because my BLITZ RATING(which I have never cared about) says I'm a 1400? That's absurd. I came into this thread wondering whether my playstyle was similar to Tal's. I have not gotten a single comment about that, and even though I made this thread for my own amusement, it is kind of saddening. Not a single person on this site can identify the differences between the styles of the players and their strengths and weaknesses. All they know is their ratings. People debate whether Morphy would be as HIGH RATED as GMs today. Anyway I've ranted enough, its so silly to me. Its as if everything can be quantified. Yes, everything can be quantified, but qualifying it will always be more specific. And quantity is not quality, don't pretend that quantity equals quality.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/fide-ratings-vs-chesscom-ratings-explored 

A statistics professor says otherwise.

The conversion isn't so simple. The pools are completely different and its best not to take guesses. Some rating ranges are overrated compared to FIDE and some are underrated compared to FIDE. For example, super grandmasters who play bullet will get 2900+ rating, but super grandmasters who play standard will struggle to go beyond 2400. This doesn't mean bullet Is overrated and standard is underrated, it's just an example of how the correlation is complicated and scales different amounts at different levels. It's best to not try to guess. Somebody on here did a statistical analysis of (if I remember correctly) almost a thousand people who said their chess.com ratings and their FIDE classical rating. The correspondence was strongest was blitz but only around 0.7. 

EDIT: I just checked the link and it turns out that's exactly the thread H&H is referencing. Glad to see I remembered the number correctly off the top of my head!

That being said though, the chess.com ratings are still meaningful and can at least place you into a certain class. It's just not good to say "A player is 1900 blitz, therefore he can't be master level as its definitely lower." He'll be anywhere between 1700 and 2050 over the board which means he is solidly class a, but not much can be said about his rating.

At the extremes of high and low chess.com rating, the correlation diminishes greatly, so it's not good to say that someone is under 1200 OTB or a grandmaster based off of chess.com rating either.

It's hard to gain rating because you have to beat people. But I don't generally get "stuck". I just don't care. There are times when my rating will rocket up, and there used to be times when I would fall 1700 to 1200 and then CLIMB BACK UP. It's about form. My form is everything, and my form can fall far and then come back. In that way at least, I must be so similar to Tal. I can only imagine, almost reminisce what it must have been like to be ill all the time, to sometimes have everything working like you are guided by a star and to have it crash down. But one thing no one ever did was judge Tal by a number attached to his name and not by his moves. Nothing makes me angrier than making a rating system, or a masters degree, or any form of acheivement, into the only signification of doing well. And it comes from a need to quantify things because you cannot understand quality. Quality is tough, it requires real knowledge to understand. I know what a good move is only because I was trained to know what a good move is by a very, very strong American International Master who quit chess but is probably the stronger player I have ever met...in any life(har har)...he taught me the value of qualitative thinking. Because the truth is, I used to be one of the quantifiers. I used to calculate line after line but he taught me how to think differently. Rating is great. It's a great way to see "what we've earned". But in the end, rating is just how much money you've made. It's the byproduct of working hard and making good moves. But some people don't care about making money. That IM I told you about? He's a genius. He could have had money or been world champion or anything other than a teacher at a high school with a family. But he wanted a simple life. The American Dream. In my time with him, I have only ever beaten him once, even though, I'm probably becoming one of strongest players in the world the way I'm defeating people now. I think we have to be careful with things like ratings. It is the materialism of our age that drives to want to have a representation of our skill, but can skill really be represented? Anyone who really studies my games will see I am making some very strong moves, even if not against very strong players. I have a feeling that people have been looking at my rating and then not understanding the moves I have been making to beat people, even as the games get progressively more decisive as the thread goes on.

Your game is certainly aggressive and dynamic, but I wouldn't say Tal-esque - your sacrifices make too much sense

Have you ever heard of Rashid Nezhmetdinov? If not, treat yourself to some of his games - IMO his attacks were just as good as Tal's!

You play like Tal when he first learned the moves!

Don't hold back... tell us what you really think...

You have never been above 1600 standard until a few weeks ago. You have been between 1500 and 1600 for the past year. Then you fell down to 1475 a couple of weeks ago then have come back up to 1570ish. You have never been 1700 strength and you never will until you accept that you haven't and you need to improve.

Do you realize we all have access to your rating history?

RD roller coaster brought you up to 2100 after your first 3 games, but you promptly got utterly destroyed game after game until you reached your real strength of around 1550. Would a premium player care to post those games on this thread and see how much of a class A player H&H is at heart?

Or maybe he is class A, but the players who beat him were GMs.

His rating was that high because he started at 1800 then won his first three in a row. He beat a 1745, 1805, 1661 in that order... He then went on to lose more than he won against 1600-1700's and his rating fell to 1511 by the end of that month.

 
First three wins:

https://www.chess.com/live/game/1677752148?username=hungryhungry

https://www.chess.com/live/game/1681559448?username=hungryhungry

https://www.chess.com/live/game/1684979633?username=hungryhungry

Then Three Losses In A Row:

https://www.chess.com/live/game/1687880606?username=hungryhungry

https://www.chess.com/live/game/1681559448?username=hungryhungry

https://www.chess.com/live/game/1696322570?username=hungryhungry

He didn't win again until he played a 1500s player:
https://www.chess.com/live/game/1696346758?username=hungryhungry

 The funny thing about this whole thing, which somebody already alluded to, is that Tal considered himself a positional player... When I think of super sharp, tactical players Tal may be the most popular misnomer... I'd think of someone like Alexei Shirov (who studied Tal). Even then... It's not great to compare yourself to the greats when you're so much weaker than them... When you're playing under the GM level your "playing style" is really just a way to highlight your weaknesses.

So when you're saying, "I play like Tal"... You're probably really saying "I need to improve my positional and strategic play". 

I personally feel more at home in slower games, so I'm working to improve my tactics and board vision... That doesn't mean that I play like Karpov... It just means that I'm not standing on even legs.

Even then... I REALLY think HungryHungry can be much stronger in a few years if he focuses heavily on trying to improve rather than sitting back and patting himself on the back.

I'd advocate spending more time training than talking about how great you are. lol

This isn't my only account dude. I've had at least 6 accounts on and off since 2011. But whatever. See your precious "stats" just led you astray. You can look up accounts like JohnnySaysThankYou and Guavaguy30. I've been as high as 2000 actually but it doesn't matter.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to belittle me. I apologized to you in a private message, I apologized to you on here. If you look at the posts at the start of the thread, people are telling me I'm too positional! People(not me) say I play like Tal because of the way I play, not because I am super tactical or super positional. I don't really want to make excuses because I don't have to, but the way you talk about me is different than everyone else in the thread. I sense legitimate malice in your constructive criticisms, as if you have a bone to pick with me. Can you tell me what that bone is and why you have one to pick?