Why rating matters

Well when I have played live here, especially the 1/0 games, I'm really playing coffee house chess and sometimes I'm just trying to win on time regardless of how awful my moves are... so it's hard to estimate someone's strength from a few throw away coffee house games.

That said, even though a few of the games I looked at of yours were as fast as 2/1, I don't think you can explain the difference in strength by simply saying, well fast time controls made me play weaker moves.  I think you'd have to admit blitz just isn't your strong suit.  Not that I'm poking fun at you -- I'd much rather be a few hundred points stronger on my long game even if it meant sacrificing a few hundred points of blitz ability.

It's more like 2500 and 1400... so "only" an 1100 point different.  Yeah that's pretty far outside the bell curve, but lets say to begin with he's always been bad at blitz + he only plays blitz at the end of the day after a couple of beers to unwind + just throws moves out for fun because he's not talking it seriously.

Or he's just seriously a bad blitz player, and is so used to CC that he doesn't know how to calculate anymore without being able to move the pieces around.

This isn't so much an attack on you geek -- I think you'd have to agree that this case lends itself to speculation.  I'm sure you've noticed 95% of players here have their blitz within 500 points of their CC (and most often more like 200-300 points).  Also among your CC 2550 peers such a low blitz rating may be unheard of.  So even if some of this offends you, surely you can agree that the case lends itself to speculation.

You got me here. It's hard to find a game with [-100;+3000] rated player. I've set the range between 1750; 3000 which with 19xx rating is more like [-175;+3000] -- shame on me. But it's hard to find decent player.

All I want from the rating is some practical indicator. I want it to help me to find me a good opponent and a good game. That's all I'm asking for. Rating by itself is only a number but if it helps you find a good game -- then it has done its job.

Indeed, that's all rating does (until egos become involved).

It may also give you something to aim for and a tool to keep tabs on any progress.

ive yet to play a bullet game

networkchess at 4200 is the daddy

he must have nimble fingers together with expert play

would anyone care to share their secrets for one minute mouse use

>:)

I think you have a better chance of improving your  rating if you vs. players about 100 points above your rating. If you lose to someone over 200 points below you, it will take you many games to get back to where you were.

I seem to win or lose at about the same rate regardless of whether I am playing below, at, or slightly above my rating. I prefer to play my betters. Its like playing with house money.

Do you really care about the answers to these questions?

I asume your goal is "in person" chess. Then online chess is your exact solution! :) You can practice as much as you want on the net and then go to your buddy/co-worker and amaze him with the lessons you've learned.

Rich--I think you need to edit this from your post. I do agree that in general (for most people) the more time the better they play but that probably is expressed in the rating pools at each time limit

I make to claims to being a GM, IM, FM or whatever.

For sure my fast games are much weaker than my long games in absolute terms -- and you're right it's all about the pool of players.  Even though of course I make more errors in blitz, I used to have a blitz ICC rating 100 points higher than my standard simply because I was a better relative to that pool of players vs the standard pool.

So I know ratings are relative, but I don't think my rational was unreasonable.  For one person who is active and has a stable rating in two distinct pools of players there will be some difference.  That difference itself means nothing as you said.  When you take many people though who have such ratings in both distinct pools you should be able to graph their differentials and form a bell curve.  What that means for an individual may mean nothing.  It's just that, as I said before, from what I've seen (and admittedly just the relatively few I've run into) you're probably 3-4 standard deviations out there which is why I was trying to come up with an explanation.  Of course it needs no explanation and means nothing by itself, it was just curious to me.  No there is no actual formula or graph, but simply from experience. 

Whether this is a scientifically/mathematically verifiable reason to be curious doesn't matter, the point is simply that it is the reason that I was speculating and I think my speculation was reasonable.  For "real" chess players it makes the most sense that their long game would be much better than (comparatively) throw away blitz games, and if your gap is larger than what I've seen then it really does mean nothing.

Except it's fair to say from what I've seen, that relative to your peers on this site, you're not a great blitz player, so I hope you don't mind me saying so

personally, I am much better at slow chess online but my blitz rating  offline is around 100 points higher (basically 1720 compared to basically a 1620).

It is more that I find it difficult taking blitz seriously.

Edit; as in seriously online.

My personal best game is 15 minutes which is considered standard time while 15 minutes offline is Rapid.

The real qustion is: Does there exist a thread where a postal game with GM Reshevsky is not relevant?