The Climb to the Deserved Rating

Hello Fellow chess Community!

Have you ever thought/known you were rated higher than your real rating actually represents? Well what if you were? You would assume that your rating would balance out after awhile and that is a correct assumption  but the time it takes for your rating to balance out is likely much more than you originally thought.

If, for example, I haven't played chess.com too much recently and instead spent more time pouring over chess books, then it would be likely that after awhile my rating would be lower than my actual skill level.

So, let's say I am a 1000 rated player on Chess.com but my actual rating was closer to 1200. Well, if I played people 1200 with my current 1000 point rating then the odds are that I would win and lose the same amount of games (because we would have the same skill level). At chess.com, if you play higher rated opponents than you get more points for winning and less for losing.

So, if I were to win half of my games and lose half of my games against these higher rated opponents, and each time I gained 10 points for a win and lose 6 points for a lose, then I would gain a total of 4 points after two games (on average). 4 points for 2 games! That is by no means a lot.

And of course as your rating increases the amount of points you win decreases since you are becoming closer to their rating and the number of points you lose increases because you are becoming closer to their rating.

So now we are going to look at how long this would take.

Even if you played only 1|0 games, they still take about 2 minutes to play (1 for each side and time to find a new gmae). So 2 minutes x 2 games (since you play to games, win one and lose one) = 4. You just spent 4 minutes gaining 4 points. So to reach your 200 point difference, with he adjusting rating increases as mentioned aboce, equals about 250 minutes or 4 hours and 10 minutes.

4 hours of playing chess to make up for a 200 point difference!

Well that if you think that is bad, those are the shortest possible chess games on chess.com. Now imagine trying to increase your rating while playing 15|10 minutes games. That would take considerablly longer.

So, the point I am making is this: Its hard to get better at chess. But it seems even harder to get a better rating.

It does when it stops you from playing people that you are equal to in skill level. Rating is a way to match people up.

Interesting post...

You wouldn't get 10 points for winning and 6 points for losing all the time, because your rating would increase and gap between you and ex-higher rated opponents would be smaller and You would need more time I think.

Well I have thought about this but it will be difficult to find that many players who want to play against a player rated 400 points below them.

I don`t think it is so hard to get a rating that corresponds with a player`s level. My turn-based standard one is about 2040 (after 594 finished games). I would expect my live chess (standard) to be about the same and it is 1866 after only 12 games. My blitz rating should be sligthly lower than that and it is 1710 after only 8 games. It is hard to say anything about Chess960 but my 1806 after 64 games seems to be reasonable. My bullet rating (c. 1300 after 1625 games) will always be very low because 1) I am not good at 1/0 games; 2) my Internet connection is an issue.

It all depends on what opponents you play. The higher rated they are the faster you can get where you belong. Ratings are not that important but they help you play opponents who are not too weak/strong for you. 

Starting a new account may seem like a good idea unless you have a premium membership in which case it would be a waste of money.

The other thing about raising your rating from 1000 to 1200 is that, unless you only play opponents rated ~1200, you will play a lot of opponents around 1000. Since your skill level is 1200, empirical data suggests you will win about 75% of games against 1000 players. Since you are also rated around 1000 (at least in the beginning) the rating adjustment will be +8-8=0, so every 4 games against 1000 players you will gain 16 rating points. Playing 1|0 means games will take 2 minutes each so you spent 8 minutes and gained 16 points. I think this might be a good strategy at least in the beginning.

Well this very well could be but after awhile it becomes less and less attractive. Because as you gain points you will lose more and more from those 1000 point players.

I personally perfer to play higher rated players than myself, I feel that if I play against those that are better than me, eventually, I will be better than them. So I don't really play against people my own rating but this may be a good stratergy in the begining.

Why don't you play tournaments? there are a lot tournaments with higher rated players.

I guess the simple suggestion is to figure out what you value the most; time or money?

If you truly deserve an increment of 200 points, it will come to you quite rapidly as you should be able to beat players of a lower technical level consistently. If this is not the case, you probably need to solidify and crystalize what you've learned from books, which (if you're anything like me) doesn't nescessarily happen the moment you put the book down.

As far as I can see, there's no real difference between the money you spent on books and the money you spent on your membership. Both categorize under 'improvement expenses'.

In my own case, I got all kinds of conceided when I'd read the first half of My System and the idea of creating a new profile sprang to mind. It didn't really work out, or rather; I had a quick rating peak which immediately went right back to where I was on the old account, probably due to aforementioned conceidedness and... well... being in an awful hurry to win quickly... Meh.

All chess players are 100 points underrated.

Funny; I'm actually a lot more calm and collected playing OTB, so it's vice versa for me *points to avatar*.

In any case it's mainly a psychological problem and I'm trying to deal with it as best I can. I've sort of worked the 'being in a hurry' thing out, but I'll still need to adress the stress problem for several reasons.

All part of the proces, I suppose. :)

...and the funny thing is that it's impoosible to correct this problem. :D

Well my over the board rating is 1776, Scottish Chess Federation - that is for matches that last 2-3 hours.  My 15/10 rating here is 1740 after 109 games.  I think that is fair; I do better with more time to think so I would expect my real world rating to be higher than my "speed" rating, certainly higher than my blitz and bullet ones where I cannot cope with the time.  I think chess.com does fine with ratings.  The more you play the harder it is to go up but that is fine as having played a lot you should be close to your "correct" strength anyway.

finally an interesting topic in this week.

my true rating was 1350  i lost a few games and got disconnected in a few i have been trying since 2 weeks to get my rating back 

If people were running around increasing their rating 200 points in 4 hours or less, you'd have a point.

What about 15 minute games?  4x15=60.  And at 2 hours a day that's just 1 month of study.  So again, if people were running around increasing their rating 200 points in 1 month, you'd have a point.

And of course, it's easier to apply what you already know to games for 4 (or 2) hours than it is to learn something new for four hours (or 2 hours every day for a month).  For this reason also your reasoning is flawed.

Perhaps you should reinterpret both your thought process and topic title more along the lines of:

The Climb to a Better Rating.

"So, let's say I am a 1000 rated player on Chess.com but my actual rating was closer to 1200."

My first question would be, to what actual rating are you making a comparison? The point being, as soon as you factor in the differences between your playing conditions and community environment, the comparison would end up being a redundant one. There would be inevitable reasons why one rating would be higher than the other.

The second point would be made by extending your sentence:

"So, let's say I am a 1000 rated player on Chess.com but my actual rating was closer to 1200 [on Chess.com.]"

Obviously, such a statement would be a fallacy. As your "actual" rating is represented by what it is currently. You may want your actual rating to be higher, (who wouldn't?), in the light, perhaps, of what it once was previously; but then you end up asking yourself, do you want to be a better chess player or do you just want a higher rating?

Divorcing the goals behind these two questions is a display of arrogance. It can be hard to get better at anything, if you don't invest the time and energy to study it and any or all of the related peripheries. If it seems even harder to get a better rating, the real epiphany would be that you don't deserve that rating. (At least not yet.)

The Elo rating is a relatively sound mathematical model, especially considering how un-mathematical a rating system is when you're dealing with humans. Nonetheless, it is true that the Elo system is somewhat difficult to gain rank in.

If your ranking was 1000 and you played a 1200 player, you would be expected to win (approximately) 25% of the time (this is to say that if your success against your opponent is 25%, then your ranking doesn't change). Because Elo treats a draw like half a win, you could win 25% of your games and lose all others, or you could draw 50% and lose the rest of the time, or any other combination such that you get 25% and still keep the same score.

Now, let's say you play 20 matches against your opponent, winning 10 and losing the other 10. Your expected score was 25% of 20, which is 5 (actually, the exact number is closer to 4.80506). Because you scored 10, this indicates that you are doing better than expected and that your rating must then be raised. Your new score will be (using FIDE standards) 1077.92 (which can be rounded up or down, I don't know which). However, if you have only played a few games (and that FIDE considers your rating a provisional one), your new score will instead be 1155.85, which is quite close to 1200.