Some of you wont be interested either because it's chess.com or you have better things to do but I figured it'd be a laugh:

http://www.chess.com/groups/view/2plus2

To join (changed): request to join the group on chess.com and mention your 2+2 username, then post the request in this thread.

I don't actually play games or have a meaningful rating on chess.com, because FICS is better for that imo, but I do have an account for some of the training tools, so feel free to throw me onto the "team"

BobJoeJim there as well.

in

4 of us now. Would be good to have a few more and maybe we can analyse things here anfterwards?

Will try to get a match for some time near the end of this week. Any preference on time controls?

No preference for me...thanks for setting this up.

First match is available now.

Please remember to write here or message me if applying otherwise there's a chance I might reject your application if I don't recognise your username.

appropriately we are bumhunting in the first match ;p

I just put an open challenge out and that's what turned up :P

Should either be a quick and easy win... or an embarrassing choke job if we get overconfident

Today's Rank: #4,957 of 4,891 (0%)

You guys already achieved the impossible!

feel free to add me, username is TVEDAS.

lol your correspondance rating is 1200.

Is there a way to manually change who is on which board?

You on the bottom board would be just wrong

LOL, that rating should improve quickly enough.

Haven't played on chess.com in ages, so my rating is lower than my fics rating but i haven't played chess in awhile so it's probably accurate of my current strength. I'm in if you are accepting low rated players.

Name is hungryhippo

I started working on that already

is there a maximum amount of games one can play at a time?

Nope. Not as good as it sounds though. I always end up playing too many games at once then spending around 5 seconds per move and wonder why I blunder winning positions.. :/

I've created another game but I've set it to manual start so I can wait until the ratings balance a bit.

Genreally I'll probably try to keep 2/3 games running at one time as long as we have interest.


Might end up being bum hunting again until we get to a point when I can put a min rating on the games to help a bit..

I'm lastchancexi on chess.com.

That chess mentor thingy is so tilting that I constantly have to stop myself from punching the monitor. Example:

White: Qh8, Kd8, pawn b6
Black: Qc6, Ka8, pawn b7.

I play Qa1+ and lose several % from my score because apparently Ke7+ is mate in two, while Qa1+ is only mate in 3! It is not an alternate winning move or anything, it is simply incorrect.

Lesson learned: when you have a forced made in 3 and a forced mate in 2, going for mate in 3 is simply incorrect.

Aite.

Yeah, chess mentor is pretty frustrating at times, in a lot of ways. Not so much so that I don't keep coming back though...

Heh, yeah, same here, I keep wanting to go back and do more.

It really is a pretty good tool I think, stuff is explained quite clearly and the positions are normally very interesting.

I just wish that they had a bit different scoring system... For example, most of Silman's positions are from the openings, like 8 moves in the game or so. It is extremely rare that there is just one supermega move in such cases, there is most often 3-4 good moves, with maybe 2 of them being a bit better than others and you choose between those 2 depending on your style. However if you choose "wrong" (not the move Silman intended) , you lose 30% immediately, even though it is a perfectly sensible and good move. You also lose 30% for making a completely ******ed move, so to me this does not make any sense whatsoever..

I just recently had to solve this standard position in French, were black basically had 3 choices: 1.. Nf5 (Attacking B on e3) and after 2. Bf2 play 2.. h5 , then 1.. h5 with the same idea, or 1.. Ba6 trading the bad French bishop immediately. I choose Ba6, because black can always play Nf5 followed by h5, while it might be too late to trade a bishop later on. The comment after the move says that Ba6 is a very good, sensible and CORRECT idea, but game continuation was better - boom -30%. Ok, give me -5% or -10%, but this is just cmon..

And then this might be nitpicky, but 1..h5 was the main move, while 1.. Nf5 and 2.. h5 was "alternate" move - why on earth wouldn't it be vice-versa, seeing how Nf5 and h5 is completely forced, and h5 has zero upside over it..?

Anyway, it is a pretty nice learning tool, maybe I am just a stat whore

/rant

Yeah, the scoring is inconsistent. There are *some* lessons where a REALLY bad move gives a huge deduction, while other "good but not best" moves give smaller deductions. More often, though, it's either a huge deduction for ANY "wrong" move, making it really hard to pass the lesson, or else a tiny deduction for any wrong move, even if you walk into checkmate, and it's really easy to keep trying until you find it while still having 51%+ and "passing" the lesson.

Basically, as a training tool it's great. There's a ton of good info, solid explanations, great positions to practice and work on. Ignore your rating though, because it is "scored" very inconsistently.

I'm a stat whore too though. I padded my rating with all the beginner lessons (always worth one point, no matter how high your rating is). Because I've demonstrated my knowledge of the rules of the game a few hundred times my rating is like 2500-something. Now I'm not able to learn anything from it without "risking" my ridiculously inaccurate rating by trying the harder lessons, which so far I'm reluctant to do. Also, it's hard to resist the temptation to use the hints, which significantly reduces your actual learning from the lesson, but usually makes it quite easy to pass.

So yeah, it's really useful, but I haven't gotten much value out of it because I'm a stat whore. If you want to actually learn, it's a great tool, but you need to be prepared to just ignore your rating completely.

Great post and I agree 100%, especially with the last paragraph.

At first I for some reason thought that this site is directed more towards a bit weaker players and even though in general that is probably the case, I was quite surprised to see that they have TONS of valuable lessons or even problems for 2300+ or maybe even 2400+ rated players.

However if we assume that the site is directed toward a bit weaker players, then these flaws in the scoring system create a big problem IMO. Stronger players most often have dealt with various ratings (FIDE, USCF, local, ICC, playchess, etc.) for years and they know their strength pretty much, so it is a bit easier to just not pay attention to the rating (except if you are me, even though the main reason for my displeasure is not my own rating, but wanting for everything to be just!). A lot of less experienced players probably take this rating as a strong indication of their strength, which is understandable with their lack of experience in dealing with ratings. And that's when all those things you mentioned come in to play - instead of trying to learn, they are likely to just try to increase their rating because to them this IS the main rating, not FIDE, USCF or any other stuff. And that of course then leads to people being delusional about their strength, which is never a good thing

I am clearly in a mood to write TL;DR today, maybe I should do something useful while I am in this writing zone lol

Yeah I tried chess mentor once and it tilted the **** out of me. Tactics trainer is fine though

Tactics trainer is a lot better, though it makes me feel guilty any time I get 4/5 and gain rating points, despite the fact that after my mistaken finish to the combo I actually would have lost the game had it been OTB...