This is because most people competitively play players close to their rating. This means that everyone (regardless of rating/ability) should win roughly 50% of the time and lose 50% of the time as they are playing players near their level often. A Grandmaster doesn't have a high winning percentage because they are playing other Grandmasters.
WOW!! I have won more rapid games on chess.com than three top 10 ranked grandmasters (NOT CLICKBAIT)
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KeSetoKaiba wrote:
This is because most people competitively play players close to their rating. This means that everyone (regardless of rating/ability) should win roughly 50% of the time and lose 50% of the time as they are playing players near their level often. A Grandmaster doesn't have a high winning percentage because they are playing other Grandmasters.
I was surprised by how few games some of them play in rapid. I was expecting to see like 5000 games or something.
I guess they prefer to play less so they can deeply analyze more
Sep 13, 2022
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#4
davidkimchi wrote:
KeSetoKaiba wrote:
This is because most people competitively play players close to their rating. This means that everyone (regardless of rating/ability) should win roughly 50% of the time and lose 50% of the time as they are playing players near their level often. A Grandmaster doesn't have a high winning percentage because they are playing other Grandmasters.
I was surprised by how few games some of them play in rapid. I was expecting to see like 5000 games or something.
I guess they prefer to play less so they can deeply analyze more
Actually this isn't the reason.
The main reason GMs don't play rapid more often is because the most common chess.com time control is 10 min chess (rapid), but statistically so few people are rated as high as the GM under that time control. chess.com can only pair you with an opponent close to your rating if a close rated opponent is online. This sounds obvious, but not an issue if online takes everyone from the entire world right? Well, for players like you and I, there won't be a noticeable difference. Of the billions of people on Earth and of the millions of chess.com accounts, even if thousands are online in our rating pool and near us in rating, we only need one opponent at a time, so we probably only need to wait a few seconds for a game to load...however, what if you are a player playing 10 min chess and your rating is as high as someone like GM @Hikaru ? You basically have to wait for one of the few best in the world to log online AND want to play you by searching for a game at that same time. For a GM, they could wait several minutes just to load an opponent; even at around 2200+ level we see noticeable difference (or so I hear, I've only experienced this occasionally to a lesser extend and typically only when searching under longer time controls for a game), so it becomes less appealing to wait for a 10 min game to load an opponent.
Most GMs and high rated players play 3 min blitz (or 5 min blitz sometimes if not 1 min bullet). A lot of this could be because high rated players like this are often streamers and blitz is more entertaining for viewers than watching a GM stare motionless at the board for minutes at a time in deep thought.
You'll see GMs more commonly playing in the bullet/blitz time control (especially around 3 min blitz time control) than 10 min rapid. If there were more players as good as the GM in 10 min rapid time control seeking a game, then maybe the GMs would play 10 min chess more, but a lot of the time if they want to play a longer time control than blitz with a decently high rated opponent, they need to manually setup a series of games with an opponent they message and schedule to play.
KeSetoKaiba wrote:
davidkimchi wrote:
KeSetoKaiba wrote:
This is because most people competitively play players close to their rating. This means that everyone (regardless of rating/ability) should win roughly 50% of the time and lose 50% of the time as they are playing players near their level often. A Grandmaster doesn't have a high winning percentage because they are playing other Grandmasters.
I was surprised by how few games some of them play in rapid. I was expecting to see like 5000 games or something.
I guess they prefer to play less so they can deeply analyze more
Actually this isn't the reason.
The main reason GMs don't play rapid more often is because the most common chess.com time control is 10 min chess (rapid), but statistically so few people are rated as high as the GM under that time control. chess.com can only pair you with an opponent close to your rating if a close rated opponent is online. This sounds obvious, but not an issue if online takes everyone from the entire world right? Well, for players like you and I, there won't be a noticeable difference. Of the billions of people on Earth and of the millions of chess.com accounts, even if thousands are online in our rating pool and near us in rating, we only need one opponent at a time, so we probably only need to wait a few seconds for a game to load...however, what if you are a player playing 10 min chess and your rating is as high as someone like GM @Hikaru ? You basically have to wait for one of the few best in the world to log online AND want to play you by searching for a game at that same time. For a GM, they could wait several minutes just to load an opponent; even at around 2200+ level we see noticeable difference (or so I hear, I've only experienced this occasionally to a lesser extend and typically only when searching under longer time controls for a game), so it becomes less appealing to wait for a 10 min game to load an opponent.
Most GMs and high rated players play 3 min blitz (or 5 min blitz sometimes if not 1 min bullet). A lot of this could be because high rated players like this are often streamers and blitz is more entertaining for viewers than watching a GM stare motionless at the board for minutes at a time in deep thought.
You'll see GMs more commonly playing in the bullet/blitz time control (especially around 3 min blitz time control) than 10 min rapid. If there were more players as good as the GM in 10 min rapid time control seeking a game, then maybe the GMs would play 10 min chess more, but a lot of the time if they want to play a longer time control than blitz with a decently high rated opponent, they need to manually setup a series of games with an opponent they message and schedule to play.
Oh I get it now, makes sense. Yes blitz and bullet is definitely more entertaining to watch. I have watched several GMs playing 1-3 minute time control games. Its insane how fast they think and analyze moves. I was always curious though why lots of the times they would resign in bullet games, with few seconds left, sometimes i see them resign when they are winning on time by a lot. Maybe resign is a sign of respect or something
Sep 13, 2022
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#6
Some of it is respect, but the main reason is because even with just a few seconds they know the opponent could checkmate them in their losing position...so they just resign. Even just having 3-5 seconds is a LOT of time for these world class bullet players because they are professionals at chess technique and premove sequences.
Premoves (currently displayed by red squares on chess.com) are when the player makes a move (or many stacked moves) while the opponent is thinking and the computer will automatically (in 0.1 seconds) make that move when it is their move again. This means that by utilizing premoves efficiently, a GM could stack 10 premoves into a sequence and the 10 moves will be played within one second (0.1 seconds per move). This means that hypothetically, one could make 40 premoves and only require 4 seconds of time to make those moves. The average chess game is 40 moves long, so even if two GMs reach an endgame on move 30, statistically, the game will be decided in the next 10 moves and they only 1 second (10 premoves) to make those moves. This means that having even just 3-5 seconds could be a ton of "extra" time for them if they already know the winning technique and simply need to make the moves.
Here is a good premove example in a game from one of the world best bullet players GM Daniel Naroditsky:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KNw72vSjQpI
and here is another example of him vs GM Andrew Tang (another bullet player who is one of the best and fastest in the world)
Edit: I had to change the links a few times as chess.com doesn't format YouTube shorts too well for the 1st video.
So I was just checking out the profiles of the top 10 chess players in the world, and came across interesting statistics. I have won more games in total for rapid than three of these grandmasters in the top 10. They have more draws compared to losses though, and also played against higher rated players, but still interesting stuff
Don't believe me? Check out their stats on their pages
https://www.chess.com/stats/live/rapid/hikaru/0
https://www.chess.com/stats/live/rapid/lachesisq/0
https://www.chess.com/stats/live/rapid/gmwso/0