what's the main difference between a 1300 and a 1800 player?

One is chess obsessed; the other has a wife and a girlfriend.

Having a wife OR girlfriend is ok but having BOTH  is NOT !  

The 1300 will focus on his own plans. A 1800 will try to achieve his plans while preventing his opponent from executing his own. This is the main thing, but obviously, what makes the 1800 way better than the 1300 also depends on differences as for tactical/positional skills, opening knowledge, etc.

Lol so the 1300 is playing hope chess? Main thing is experience.

Exactly. I mean, if the 1300 sees there could be a fork if he moves his knight here or there, he will play the move without looking for a potential nasty refutation.

Or maybe your vision has improved. When I was 1400 online I was sure I was loosing, and I did, but GM Georgiev showed me later that I had winning chances I wasnt aware of.

So I guess that you with your strenght are able to see possibilities that is invisible to many players. Because they dont see them, they resign. If you dont see your chance, you practically dont have it.

I'm 1300 and I don't do that. It' a fallacy.

First of all 1800 is NOT an experienced GOOD player, It's the rating that goes with a very average mediocre club player.

And a 2000+ is NOT a very experienced GOOD player.

I was between 2350 and 2500 Fide for 25 years and I still play like an A***.

I know there is a ratingsystem which could be used to predict expected scores but that doesn't represent reality.

The higher ratings get the more difference in strength they represent.

For instance the difference in strength between a 2200 and 2400 player is much bigger than the difference between a 2000 and 2200 player.

The difference in strength between a 2000 and 2200 player is much bigger than the difference between a 1800 and 2000 player.

And so on.

As an example the difference in strength between Carlsen and me (about 450 points) is WAAAY bigger than the difference between me and a 2000 player. Even though my expected score against the 2000 player is 100%

And to finish. Don't call me a stupid idiot. According to your own logic (see above) I am just overwhelmingly intellectually superior, a quicker thinker and better at all aspects in life than you are. (a 1800 player).

Thank you for pointing that out.

NR.

FM Nobodyreally, you are kind of telling some truth. 1800 chessonline is in my clubchampionship the nr four player in the c-class, which places him ca nr 30-35 out of ca 40 players who participated in all classes.

But even if he is by your standards mediocre, I dont like that label. He did beat me. He is very clever, and is playing well. I think he is good. And I also think that this level is common for good players that has done a serious effort a couple of years.

I guess 1800 online is inside the top 5% on chess.com. It is a fine strenght.

When a masterplayer doesnt appriciate the strenght of a 1800, it s like a collegestudent doesnt appreciate the maths skills of a small kid. Thats not right. The kid can be very strong, but he hasnt developed yet.

Another player in my club, the winner of the c-class, is 10 years old and coming up fast. He has been selected for gatherings in the national team. He was Elo 1073 in january, and got Fide rapid 1612 in june. He isnt mediocre at all, and told to the press last year that he was aiming for 2500 rating. I hope he continues playing, and understands that he will climb up there in some years. He too did beat me.

This is an interesting topic!

Could you try to explain why/how the difference between a 2000 and a 2200 is bigger than between a 1800 and 2000?

While watching the latest super-GM tournament in Norway for instance I was always wondering what exactly is between "the big underdog" Simen Agdestein (ELO 2620) and one of the 2750 guys. What does the 2750 better? Tactics/calculation? Opening preparation?

@DjonnDerevnja,

You got some good points. Of course using a word like "good" or "mediocre" is always totally subjective since there is no rating attached to the word. 

I don't know if 1800 is in the top 5% in chess.com but even if it is you have to realize that huge amount of players here are people that just learned the rules, are just here to have a look around, don't play chess at all, make troll accounts, have accounts to watch their friends play and chat with them, etc.etc.etc.

Somebody that just knows the rules of chess in NOT a chessplayer imo. To me a chessplayer is someone that plays on a regular basis and/or joins a chessclub of sorts. In other words someone who is involved in the game.

In that case, if we go back to 1800-players, it seems reasonable to call them mediocre. Maybe top 30-40 %.

I consider myself a pretty weak player even though I beat almost every active player in the world at the time I was playing actively. The better you get as a chessplayer (and also in other areas) the more you see your own weaknesses.

When I just learned the rules and was playing for 6 months or so in my mind the only reason I wasn't world champion yet was because I just hadn't had the opportunity yet to play/challenge him.

p.s. Oh yeah, in my last post I wasn't trying to be arrogant. Of course I don't consider myself to be intellectually superior. 

I just wrote it to show how Kasporov_jr as usual was completely out of line. It was pretty easy to put him in his place. I just used his own words.

In the US Chess Federation, which is not terribly atypical for Elo ratings, an 1800 player stands above 88%-90% of all rated players. That's not the normal meaning of average.

 

.

How many USCF rated chess players are there? It can't be too much if a player rated 1800 is stronger than the 90% of all other USCF players. 
In June, there were 103270 players who had FIDE rating.
The last player who had an 1800 rating was placed 59206. on the list.
So 1800 is still below the average. 

Typically the 1300 puts less attention on his opponent's options than the 1800 does.

Every 400 rating points represents a QUALITATIVE leap in playing strength.

It's a corpus of knowledge and experience that you must learn cold in order to advance.

The "main difference" is fewer higher ranked players.  Very Simple.

FM nobodyreally, I have a feeling that women that looks perfect are the ones that takes plastic operations. They are really the ones that sure dont need it, but perfectionists never stops hunting for perfection. It looks like you are at that level.

I dont have your perspective. In chess I am like a kid. I have less than two years of high chessactivity, one as a teenager , and a half year now. I compare myself to kids, and competes with very talented kids, and also adults that are improving less.

From your perspective a normal clubplayer is mediocre, from my perspective he is a strong player who I desires to catch up with. 

You are not able to see the strenght of lower rated players, because you have elevated to a higher level, out of sight. 

To me the clubplayer looks like elite. Most of them. When I started in Nordstrand Sjakklubb in January i knew that all of them could beat me, and most of them where far above my level.

When I meet a player online here that has risen very fast in rating, I think he is a clubplayer, so clubplayer is too me a high standard itself, and those clubplayers are top 5 %  or at least top 10% here.

I am not finished getting my game toghether, but I have travelled a long distance on our rating and the main bunch online is around 1400, and playing them were interesting games for me. The 1400-players is not fully developed and often lacks overview. I too have severe holes in my chessknowledge and are just not able to see all the treaths, so we are far , far from masters, but interesting games and cool combinations happens, inbetween the games that are hurt by blunders.

So from a 1400 point of view(early march I was there) the 1800 and 1800+ clubplayers were the hard guys, nearly invincible.

It would be fun to try a game against you, just too feel the strenght of a master.

Edit: I did look at the rating-graph. Most players here are rated at between 1000 and 1600 online, peaking at 1300. I am at 1690 ca top 7%, and have some work to do to catch up with the clubplayers. This autumn a want to jump from the c-class were I have scored 4 of 7 or 4.5 of 7 up to B-class. I guess I will struggle hard there with not to much points.

Only a couple of years ago, you could not get a FIDE rating below 2000. Then, they lowered it. To have a FIDE rating, one must be significantly above average.

A friend of mine who is 1811 is 

 Rankings include only those with activity in the past year.

Your effort to dismiss a percentile distribution based upon the quantity in the pool is absurd. To see how, extend your logic to Chess.com, where the number of players dwarf the number of FIDE rated players.

Here's a player just below 1800 on Chess.com:

Yes, but what the FM said about the number of accounts is accurate.  When looking at those numbers, a person should look at what kind of people may be making up the other 1,000,000 plus active users.  Keep in mind, that only about 15,000 people are on at a time.  So, those accounts may still be open, but not in use.  If anything, chess.com's statistics are polluted due to some of the afformentioned statements.  It's not that 1800 isn't a respectable rating for the average player and club player, it's just that the FM is providing a view from the top as opposed to a view from the bottom, and to be quite honest, he makes a very strong arguement.

When I first started out, people who play at about my strength now seemed like they were very good, and a level worth aspiring to.  Now that I am where I am, I realize how much I don't know, and how objectively bad of a chess player I am.  When I look at players who are just over 2000, they seem like they are worlds apart from me, because the difference is started to get to nuances.  A tempo, the right choice of exchanges, the minor pieces, and all around understanding needs to improve exponentially and I need to play at any given level more consistanty than I do now.  That really goes for anybody at any level when looking up to other ratings.