1. For an opportunity to try out new (and sometimes bizzare) openings without fear of destroying your rating.
2. Because I play at work during my office hours sometimes and if a student walks in I have to resign the game. Playing rated games makes that sting a bit.
3. I enjoy playing for the beauty and enjoyment of the game and nothing more. That is ideal chess to me. If rating points are tied to the outcome of the game I tend to play a bit more stodgy.
1. For an opportunity to try out new (and sometimes bizzare) openings without fear of destroying your rating.
2. Because I play at work during my office hours sometimes and if a student walks in I have to resign the game. Playing rated games makes that sting a bit.
3. I enjoy playing for the beauty and enjoyment of the game and nothing more. That is ideal chess to me. If rating points are tied to the outcome of the game I tend to play a bit more stodgy.
thank you for the clear and thorough answer. It all makes sense to me.
Fair question... Sometimes I'll play unrated games if I'm going to experiment with openings that I'm not experienced with; then if I lose my existing rating is not affected; it's that simple. However playing unrated games is a double-egded sword: on the one hand, if you lose you retain your rating (and perhaps your ego (lol)), but on the other, if you win you do not gain any points. In this sense, playing unrated games is not much different to an athelete training for the Olympics.
There's an old saying in the army: Train hard; fight easy (or something like that...). The general idea is you put all your blood, sweat and tears in the training so that you are more than prepared for war on the battlefield (Because in battle you are likely to be killed if you don't know what you're doing...). By the same token, I "train hard" in unrated games so that I can "fight easy" in rated ones.
Fair question... Sometimes I'll play unrated games if I'm going to experiment with openings that I'm not experienced with; then if I lose my existing rating is not affected; it's that simple. However playing unrated games is a double-egded sword: on the one hand, if you lose you retain your rating (and perhaps your ego (lol)), but on the other, if you win you do not gain any points. In this sense, playing unrated games is not much different to an athelete training for the Olympics.
There's an old saying in the army: Train hard; fight easy (or something like that...). The general idea is you put all your blood, sweat and tears in the training so that you are more than prepared for war on the battlefield (Because in battle you are likely to be killed if you don't know what you're doing...). By the same token, I "train hard" in unrated games so that I can "fight easy" in rated ones.
very smart. And very well said (written?).
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can someone please tell me why they create unrated games on live chess? I just don't understand it. Whenever I want to play a live game I prefer to click on the rated ones; I often see a preponderance of unrated ones. Can you people who create unrated games tell me why you do it? No judgment, just puzzled interest.