Absolutely the truth. It's true for all fields, too. That phenomenon is pretty much the reason poker exists.

Meh, obv variance is far more important.

BJJ, if anyone could reasonably believe they're better than their rating, it'd be someone who hasn't played a rated game in 8 years. Iirc Dire's USCF rating is only 15xx and is at least as old as yours. Obv a ridiculous rating for him. What people don't seem to want to believe is that technique and tactical acumen are pretty darn important. I've met several NM's who were 100-200 points higher rated than they probably "should" be because they were so good at scrapping for those half points. Ah well, it will never cease to amuse me when I see players lamenting how they're so much stronger but just can't seem to prove it

Well yes, there is a reasonable chance my 8-year-old provisional rating actually is below my playing strength. If it is, I will hopefully be able to prove it eventually. I did NOT prove it over the board this past week, though, and I was mainly commenting on the thought process that falsely makes it feel like I did.

I hope to find (or create, see the chess club thread) an opportunity to play some rated games, and see if I can bring that rating up. That's tangential to the point of my last post though

There's a difference between knowing your playing strength is better than your rating because you've gotten better since the pool of rated games was played, and using confirmation bias to discount your mistakes and uplift your successes.

I'm pretty sure I'm better than my current USCF rating. I'm in the portion of the bell curve where the gains are still relatively (very relatively) easy and I'm studying very hard each week. I've provisional through nine games, and six of those games are from November. I'm pretty sure I could score 75% against myself from November, probably higher. But my ICC rating? I play there all the time, it's pretty dead on, even though I get annoyed by the mistakes I sometimes make there.

Also, sidenote: I'm suddenly convinced that I could shoot up another chunk of rating points if I forced myself to look one ply further on every move I considered.

I have constantly believed deep down I am worse than my chess rating. I think because I was a scholastic player and in the USCF kids are arbitrarily provisionally rated lower and my competition was always those other same kids. And since we only played each other and all had crappy ratings and were all improving the ratings never got batter. I truthfully could say I was under-rated so now I sometimes just feel the opposite. Goodnight all, haha.

ICC is tilting me hard at the moment. The idiots over there decide to screw with timestamp. So now the max lag it 'tolerates' is .3s. So if you have a 1s lag and play a 60 move game, you are giving your opponent time odds of .7*120 = 84 seconds. Whatever. That's fine, but now whatever cheap servers they are using have been lagging out insanely hard the past week. The entire site has been unplayable for blitz. Of course I'm too much of a fiend to accept so this so I continue to play while giving my opponents 4:1 time odds every game. And I get to pay for this privilege.

I have no idea how ICC maintains its 'monopoly' amongst the traffic of strong players. Their hardware and software is crap compared to sites like playchess or even chess.com, they offer less 'extras' than the other sites, and they also are vastly more expensive than the other sites. Yet the best competition is still on ICC.

@#%!!@ Let's see how low I can get my rating! Ahoy!

ICC is definitely over-priced imo.

Lag killing blitz games is a serious problem.

Yeah I just played a flash tournament today. I think I had about 30 of my 60 seconds available so had to try premoving every move. Ended up baaaaaaad.

Solution: Don't play blitz.

It's amazing how often that one solution solves a chess problem

all the chess diagrams are messed up cuz the site we use (http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-diagram-generator.php) is down.

I was in Las Vegas for 13 days and the local chess club has a free non-rated blitz tournament every Monday. There were 12 people. There were six rounds of swiss, but each round you played the opponent twice, once with each color. There were 4 or so 1700s, one 1800, and one 1900, and I won the tourney 9.5/12.0!

lol at "not playing blitz" on the INTERNET. What's next, use a webcam and DON't show your tits or ****?

Standard games give more time for webcam nudity while your opponent is thinking.

gotta rub $$$ on your tits.

Brag: Reached my highest ratings on ICC in blitz, standard, and 5 minute.
Beat: Only 1037 in blitz, 1326 standard, and 837 5 minute.
Variance: They'll go down soon.

What are you in ICC? That's right in my wheelhouse, we might have played.

lol @ wheelhouse

chess mice itt

chaos post a recent standard game, let's see the fireworks!

MRoth is my name.

I looked thru the games I have saved and didn't see you in there. From what I've seen of your posts on here, it seems like you play longer games, which I don't really play. Unfortunately, I don't have the attention span to play long games so everything I've played is 25 minutes or less. I know it hurts my chess advancement, but I have a heck of a tough time focusing on one thing for that long.

Here is a 15 3 game played on ICC on Wednesday. I know it's not really a true standard game, but as I said above, I just can't focus to play the longer games. Feel free to laugh at my tactical ability and stupid moves.

EDIT: I'm black.
http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=41722

Now that I know all these cool openings I can play them on autopilot, right?

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=41731

nm

Tired of waiting on ICC on Saturday nights, reviving my old FICS account. High blitz rating of 1166 was set on Nov. 4 1998

lol :<

I did something similar the other day. Figured my opponent would move to a certain square and pre-moved to capture. He, of course, didn't move to that square and I dropped a piece. Pretty embarrassing.

It's been one of those weekends. I've scored something like 1.5/5 in games where I had, at one point, what should have been a decisive advantage. With the latest loss coming from a mouseslip.

On the bright side, I'm definitely playing better chess and seeing improvement even when the wins aren't there.

Saw this post in the chessgames.com threads. want to kno this forum's opinion

"in addition to the problem of draws, i think there is another problem for US chess popularity that i've never heard discussed.
i'd like to hear your opinions on this.

the system of titles is a problem. in the US, if you walk around calling yourself "life master," you will not be taken seriously. if you go around expecting people to call you "grandmaster" so-and-so, people are gonna think you're talking about quidditch, and you will not be taken seriously.

these titles are unnecessary and counterproductive. the PGA isn't going to call tiger woods a "grandmaster" of golf, this would be laughable, and would bring no benefit to golf or mr. woods.

i understand that the grandmaster title is an honor to chessplayers, but to the average sports fan in the US, it sounds like something out of harry potter.

if chess players want to popularize chess in america, one thing we can do is to abandon the anachronism of titles."

lol. i will happily admit that i'm terrible at blitz and my rating is a true reflection. but i like to think i'm much stronger at classic time controls.