It really disturbs very little, since we only started this tournament up last week, and it won't change anything going forward unless you go out and actually win a few games, and if you do that I'd say it warrants the disturbance. The swap makes a lot of sense, also, since you are even rated pretty similarly to Joshua_Livingston. And if nothing else, you could just play the games for the sake of getting in a few games against fellow 2+2ers, with the understanding that it doesn't actually count toward the tournament standings no matter what happens.

If you would prefer not, though, that's of course fair; it's your call.

Thank you again for your apology and offer, but I feel that coming in late is unfair to the other players/standings.

Are there any more events before the end of the year?

Probably won't start up the next event until after the Holidays, but if I can dodge the laziness bug then look for another FICS Tourney to start some time in January.

Damn you guys are good. I'm getting owned

One of the guys in my group timed out but us rest are going to be very close, all my 3 opponents are in the same strength ballpark (1900s-2000s in rating maybe) and seem also pretty hell-bent on not losing to me

Just be a little patient, I promise to give you your chances :-) (And I expect to have a rooting interest in you going 6-0 against our mutual opponents.)

It does look like that group's the toughest by rating, though...leaving off the forfeit, it's 2382, 1908, 1686, and unrated. Luck of the draw!

Don't hang pieces!

but its my forte!

Current standings here.

Ajezz looks close to wrapping up his section already!

Indeed. I am going for the shutout.

and always look out for caveman attacks...

ND is kicking my butt but I feel like I'm at least making him work for it.

actually i'm not so much kicking your butt as cursing myself for following too much of mainline theory, at least in my black game...

The weirdest part about this tournament for me was that I'm new to the site and unrated. It's hard for me to get a sense of what the ratings on this site really mean. It's difficult to choose openings when you don't know how strong your opponent is, and we started all 8 games all at once.

Just curious if any other chess.com newbs felt the same way?

Yeah, I have no idea what the ratings mean. All I know I'm a significant dog to the guy with FM in front of his name.

The existence of a mobile app for chess.com mostly destroyed my opening selection, as I was not always able to resist just playing whatever popped into my head at the moment instead of, you know, actually looking up the proper move.

Understandable complaint, though I figure you had a fair chance to get a sense of what the ratings meant by using a few known players as data points:

smilingbill (wlrs) is an FM, whose strength I think any active poster probably has a good feel for, and he has a 2384 rating on chess.com

BobJoeJim is a crappy class D player, ~1250 USCF (though the rating is provisional and nearly a decade old) with a chess.com rating just under 1800.

That's pretty much your spectrum

1417 uscf (and going up and current) and my chess.com rating seems to hover around 1700.

still a lot harder for us to assess your strength, so you shouldn't complain imo

Josh: Since you're probably at least a little stronger than me OTB, but rated behind me on chess.com, I'm curious. What your playing style is in the correspondence games? Do you use opening databases? Do you put a lot of time into each move? Or do you kind of just blitz out your moves without thinking too hard about them?

I do use databases, and any time I can't quickly find a move I like I'll just skip the game and come back to it later to look at the position again with fresh eyes. I often use close to my full time allotment, looking at it numerous times over several days, before actually making a move.

Basically, I'm wondering how much my approach helps my results...

I play my moves constantly throughout the day as soon as it's my turn. I spend no longer than maybe 2-3 minutes per move.

I've been using database on the white side b/c I've been changing up my openings so using it to help me learn. As black I very rarely use a DB.

True.

By the way, since I asked this earlier, the first tiebreaker given on the site is (sum of [your score against a given opponent] * [given opponent's raw score]).

I think a good approach helps a lot. My OTB is higher than chess.com and I expect it'll stay that way. I make way too many rushed/drunken moves on chess.com

Still, you just won the first upset of the tournament: http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=48723410

Hmm, I actually hadn't thought of that. Yay for me! for round 1 at least.

Some day I might get into correspondence chess for reals. Now it's just a blitz game that I play in parts.

And managed to completely throw away two games against Ajezz in the process