LOLOLOL

hey question:

Is there a way to compute one's ability to evaluate a position? This seems a lot more telling than FIDE ranking, and I'm interested in the general analysis. After playing around 1500 games the past year or two I still am not great about the arrows.

For those who know I've been following Alireza Firouzja closely for a while now, let's all congratulate the 14 year old on a 4.5/9 score in the A section at Aeroflot, which puts him over the top for the GM title! 24th youngest GM of all time, not too shabby!

This clown is bragging about his 1500 "rapid blindfold" rating.

https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comme...pid_blindfold/

Is this one of you posting a parody thread?

Jeez.

Never heard of such a thing. I don't see how you could measure that in isolation. How would that be more telling than a FIDE rating?

I may have been exaggerating as I don't have a rating myself. Learning chess is voluminous and abstract, but positional awareness is
mathematical, and in my opinion more beautiful than just raw scores.

To answer your question, someone could have incredible chess knowledge but for various reasons be less formidable (rated) than their chess IQ.

Tarrasch had a similar observation:

Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany did something along those lines. They give you a test of positions which aren't necessarily tactical in nature, and then try to estimate your Elo based on the moves you choose.

Not sure if that is exactly what you're looking for, but it's a start, I guess.

http://www.elometer.net/

I don't see it. What is chess knowledge, if not the ability to play a good chess move?

The brass tax is that an anxiety disorder might keep someone from making a splash in the live scene, I don't think they should be denigrated for it.

I see titles next to commentators' names like it's a guarantee they'll be good. Or that their offerings are better than lower ranks. Seems a bit silly.

I'd recommend using the terms chess skill and chess knowledge. One involves just knowing more patterns, theory, etc and the other is actually making good moves. There is actually a big difference between them. Chess for zebras goes into this very well. There are so many more things going on in a game besides knowledge.

Omg I ❤️ Chess for Zebras.

There is definitely something about having knowledge/theory and then the successful application of that knowledge/theory in practice.

Nobody's denigrating, but, chess is a competition. If you want to be evaluated as a chess player, you have to compete. Taking some kind of abstract chess-based test, whatever form that would take-- that is not chess.

If someone has anxiety so debilitating they can't play live, there is still correspondence chess, or online chess. Not the same clout as straight tournament play, but still something. They have ratings and their own titles in some cases.


I agree to some extent. The title is a guarantee they're a good player. Maybe it's not a guarantee they're a good _commentator_, but, all things being equal, a random GM is going to give much more insightful commentary than a random club player. But, there is probably too much emphasis on having big name GM commentators, when probably there are FMs/IMs who would be just as good if not better. When it comes to being a commentator, your brand/celebrity is as much of a currency as your commentary skill (same thing with televised sports). Media want to hire the big names and promote them, and yes, in chess, the titles are a big part of that.

"Put the clock on. Put the show on speed, I'll chew his ass right up!"

I have something to add to this one:

Army Eye, chess as a sport is a competition, indeed. However, there are many people who do not view it as a sport at all, but rather as an art I guess, they just don't care about the sporting aspect of it. Some of them can reach quite an incredible strength because they spend thousands of hours just analyzing, marveling at opportunities/patterns/etc. chess provides. However, they never transmit it to chess competitions (emphasis here), either because they don't care, or they cannot make themselves to(more on that later). So, if you look at it from purely chess is a sport perspective, you would call these people lesser players, however, their actual chess knowledge/skill or whatever you wanna call it is actually very high. So, how to define then them?

I actually have a real life example very close to me.

My main coach when I was a teenager/young adult was only ~2350 ELO (however, he reached this ELO back in Soviet times and then barely played ever again, so in current day it would probably be an equivalent of something around 2500). He was also a long-time coach of a female player who was (and is, though she does not play anymore) firmly in the World Top-10, brought her from nothing basically, as well as some other very strong players, world youth/junior champs and such.

He was (probably still is) an absolute chess fanatic. I don't mean it in a bad way, he just loved it so much that he could spend just unimaginable number of hours looking at anything he could get his hands on. I've conversed with many a GM in my life (no one from the super elite, though), yet never encountered anyone with better profound understanding of chess than him. The thing is, though - he just did not like/want to compete, like at all.

Back in the day, computers were much weaker and therefore the human element was still very important in correspondence chess. He reached some individual success there, but still didn't enjoy it, because he felt competing takes away from his ability to get pleasure out of it. Same with over the board chess - he just didn't like the competition aspect of it and сouldn't live with the fact that he has to constantly make moves that he knows are mistakes/inferior due to time constraints. He liked to compete through his students, if that makes sense, that was all the sense of competition he needed.

So, how to rate this guy? The above mentioned World's top 10 female player, many of her oppnents, Shirov, Peter-Heine Nielsen (main second of Anand in his Wch runs as well as currently main second of Carlsen) have said that his chess understanding is at an incredible level. As a matter of fact, some of his ideas/advice in concrete lines has reached Magnus himself through Nielsen.

And yet, he is clearly a rather weak OTB player and would probably shed a lot of his ~2350 ELO should he start playing again.

So, how to rate him? Everything is not so clear cut

I just read it so hard not to mention it given the previous posts.

You should post more. Best post in this forum in quite a while!

Omg we should have a 7DCS and CFZ discussion thread!!!

#ZugzwangLite #BlackIsBetter yo

Why would a non-competitive player need a rating at all?

Whether or not he needs one is irrelevant. Evidently he did compete, so he did receive a rating. That rating reflects your overall chess knowledge, as well as your time management in relation to said chess knowledge, as well as your managing your anxiety levels in relation to your time management in relation to your overall chess knowledge etc.

@YKW You mean female top-ten player itw, right? Otherwise you're talking about Judit Polgar, and I wouldn't call any coach she ever had to have brought her up from "nothing".

I made the thread:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1.../#post53553175

You added "etc." so your statement covers everything. But based on what you stated it makes it sound somewhat simple. However, I don't think it is at all. So many non chess things go into playing good moves at the board. I suspect that chess knowledge is even further away than you think from chess playing ability.

I guess somewhat of a caveat to this is that perhaps the weaker a player is the larger impact increased chess knowledge has. For instance, there is a lot of "low hanging" knowledge that makes such a big impact on the results of a game it trumps all the other factors.

Yeah, I put the "etc" there so as not to make the post go for a hundred pages.

And yeah, the lowest hanging fruits in chess are clearly tactics. If you have no knowledge of basic tactical patterns, just drilling a few of them will increase your, for the sake of the discussion "make good moves ability" (which obviously we could (and normally would) just call "rating") manyfold.

To me, chess is clearly a competition. I can appreciate the beauty of chess, and a game like Short - Timman (one of my all time favourites) can absolutely mesmerize me. The sheer audacity of walking your King up in the middlegame, Queens on the board and everything, to checkmate Jan ****ing Timman, just has me sitting in awe watching the brilliancy unfold. In those moments, to me, chess is clearly art.

But mulling over a position for days on end to find the "truth" has never been something I found particularly appealing (and at that point I'd argue it's more science than art). There are endgames as "simple" as a King and a Pawn each that are so complex that grandmasters won't find the "truth" OTB, and they draw where a win could be achieved, lose where a draw could be achieved. Obviously studying these can be of benefit, but to me only if they have some relevancy in actual practice. To this day I can't checkmate with Bishop and Knight, and I don't plan on learning it anytime soon, as the probability of me having to perform that in an actual game are too low. And as an (ex-)Poker player, I just can't help but think that the time I would spend on learning it for the 0.00x% chance to gain half a point is better spent on lower hanging fruits than that particular checkmate pattern.

speaking of the other Judit, when I was a baby I was pretty sure she was named after me, but then I realized that she is a lot older than me so that isn't possible

I have created a Candidates thread.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1.../#post53555646

Come and post in it you fine chess players!