To summarize: "You are what your record says you are!" - Bill Parcells
The Climb to the Deserved Rating
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I know where you are coming from, wanting measurements for the different facets of your game. That is not practical and the current ELO system is a fair way of establishing your level in the game. I have known a 2000 OTB player with awful opening skills but awesome middlegame ones, where he would easily recoup the advantages he had surrendered. Overall, on average, the rating will record your skill level.
joesdaking wrote:
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.
I think you have just about covered the ins and outs of this dilemma, but you missed one thing. Quite often as you are playing, some of the people you might be put up against, can be people who are in the same boat as you, or who may be even truly better than you are. So you will take loses from players who could 400 or 500 points higher, not just 200 points higher, but you will only be credited for losing to a player nearer your given rating.Thus you will be penalized more than you really should have been.
I wish there was a good test for ratings to help place people closer to what they actually are, instead of a static starting point. This would get rid of the huge initial fluctuations and the ridiculous lengths of times for people to get to where they truly belong.
Actually I purposly did not mention that point because you may also end up playing player who are over rated. I figured the number of over rated and under rated players would even out so I did not mention this in my post.
nameno1had wrote:
I think you have just about covered the ins and outs of this dilemma, but you missed one thing. Quite often as you are playing, some of the people you might be put up against, can be people who are in the same boat as you, or who may be even truly better than you are. So you will take loses from players who could 400 or 500 points higher, not just 200 points higher, but you will only be credited for losing to a player nearer your given rating.Thus you will be penalized more than you really should have been.
I wish there was a good test for ratings to help place people closer to what they actually are, instead of a static starting point. This would get rid of the huge initial fluctuations and the ridiculous lengths of times for people to get to where they truly belong.
Actually, I imagine chess.com implements a method of raising the k-value (a constant that essentially dictates by how much a player can win or lose rating points) when a player has just started playing, that way it can be highly variable at the beginning, then become more fixed after awhile. But I don't know for sure.
Boheme wrote:
nameno1had wrote:
I think you have just about covered the ins and outs of this dilemma, but you missed one thing. Quite often as you are playing, some of the people you might be put up against, can be people who are in the same boat as you, or who may be even truly better than you are. So you will take loses from players who could 400 or 500 points higher, not just 200 points higher, but you will only be credited for losing to a player nearer your given rating.Thus you will be penalized more than you really should have been.
I wish there was a good test for ratings to help place people closer to what they actually are, instead of a static starting point. This would get rid of the huge initial fluctuations and the ridiculous lengths of times for people to get to where they truly belong.
Actually, I imagine chess.com implements a method of raising the k-value (a constant that essentially dictates by how much a player can win or lose rating points) when a player has just started playing, that way it can be highly variable at the beginning, then become more fixed after awhile. But I don't know for sure.
You are correct. In the start of someone's account they have a high variable that slowly decreases as they play more games. The same is true when someone doesn't play a type of game for a long time.
joesdaking wrote:
Actually I purposly did not mention that point because you may also end up playing player who are over rated. I figured the number of over rated and under rated players would even out so I did not mention this in my post.
Point taken, but with the allowed use of book openings for online games, coupled with this aformentioned phenomenon, I would say that what you encounter is closer to playing a tougher line up that what you should be for a given rating level, especially the below a certain level. In turn your climb is that much harder than compared to true OTB ratings.
I realize that you aren't supposed to use any aids for live chess, but the longer time lengths can still accomodate it. Chess.com says it doesn't happen below a certain rating level, but there are pages of closed accounts that say there were a ton of players who started at 1200 and were caught cheating. I am going to say they were doing it from day 1.
nameno1had wrote:
Point taken, but with the allowed use of book openings for online games, coupled with this aformentioned phenomenon, I would say that what you encounter is closer to playing a tougher line up that what you should be for a given rating level, especially the below a certain level. In turn your climb is that much harder than compared to true OTB ratings.
I realize that you aren't supposed to use any aids for live chess, but the longer time lengths can still accomodate it. Chess.com says it doesn't happen below a certain rating level, but there are pages of closed accounts that say there were a ton of players who started at 1200 and were caught cheating. I am going to say they were doing it from day 1.
Well if this is correct, then it only further proves my point that increasing your rating is very difficult even if you are underrated.
joesdaking wrote:
nameno1had wrote:
Point taken, but with the allowed use of book openings for online games, coupled with this aformentioned phenomenon, I would say that what you encounter is closer to playing a tougher line up that what you should be for a given rating level, especially the below a certain level. In turn your climb is that much harder than compared to true OTB ratings.
I realize that you aren't supposed to use any aids for live chess, but the longer time lengths can still accomodate it. Chess.com says it doesn't happen below a certain rating level, but there are pages of closed accounts that say there were a ton of players who started at 1200 and were caught cheating. I am going to say they were doing it from day 1.
Well if this is correct, then it only further proves my point that increasing your rating is very difficult even if you are underrated.
I edited this because, my post originally was a response to something I read wrong unless you edited your post.
Are players using opening book going to play better than players should for their respective ratings or a skill level below 1800, once they start their climb from 1200?
So in effect, what you could be encountering at lets say 1400, is suddenly better that it should be, especially if you have chosen to not use book moves because, you don't want a crutch, thus this makes your climb tougher, even if the players are overrated.
If you have a player who started at 1200 and is at 1400 but is really an 1800 without book use, who is suddenly using it, should count a lot less against you than it does when you lose....do you see my point now more clearly?
It's odd to me that his stated point is not supported by his long long post. Either I'm taking it too literally and no one wants to bother telling me, or... I don't know it's just weird to me everyone ignores that :p
Back on topic though, on sites like FICS, inactivity increases your RD stat (rating difference) which assumes the rating is inaccurate proportional to the length of time you're inactive (you may be studying or getting rusty). So that when you do play a game after a long absence your rating adjustment is much larger, much like when playing your first few games on this site.
waffllemaster wrote:
It's odd to me that his stated point is not supported by his long long post. Either I'm taking it too literally and no one wants to bother telling me, or... I don't know it's just weird to me everyone ignores that :p
Back on topic though, on sites like FICS, inactivity increases your RD stat (rating difference) which assumes the rating is inaccurate proportional to the length of time you're inactive (you may be studying or getting rusty). So that when you do play a game after a long absence your rating adjustment is much larger, much like when playing your first few games on this site.
I have been taking advantage of that in live chess lately... I am going to do it standard online chess as soon as some tourney are over and focus on 960 and book study of standard.....than come back and play standard to see if it helps to make bigger gains faster than playing continually....
Your rating represents your skill. If you study a lot, but your rating never goes up, perhaps you need to focus on some other aspect of the game.
Also, some knowledge is only necessary at certain levels. Knowing the KID 15 moves deep isn't going to help a 500-rated player, whose opponents probably don't even play 1.d4.