What is your chess rating/ranking?

How long did it take you to get there in terms of study hours?

At what point do you actually have to win games and stop relying on opponent blunders?

Takes countless hours of study...


After like 1-2 years of study I reached like 1900 FIDE strength or so(I don't have an actual FIDE rating, but my Chess Tactics Server rating has been 1700 and I have also reached 2050 on ChessCube.com at my peak)...with a LOT of study. I am at about 2.5 or so now but I very rarely play anymore and am definitely weaker than I was when I still played 10+ blitz games everyday.


Blunders are relative so thats a hard question, especially with time control. People still drop pieces online in blitz all the time.



Seriously though, if you don't play a lot you definitely start sucking again. Playing and studying a lot...helps a lot. After I got into poker and started making money I stopped studying chess. I still think chess is a more appealing game...though poker has monetary gains that cannot be ignored.

I hate to be a nit, but it's foolish to extrapolate an OTB rating based on your "chess tactics server rating" (wtf? That doesn't even come from playing chess!) or an online blitz rating. In high school I was 1700/1800 USCF and 2500 ICC Blitz.

1700 USCF and 2500 ICC blitz? I just don't buy that, provided you didn't get it by beating up on the lowbies

edit: my ICC ratings are severely higher than what my OTB rating would be if I was still active, but that difference is just hard to believe, given my experience online

If you don't have a rating, be careful trying to guess what it might be with any expectation of accuracy. In my experience people overestimate close to 100% of the time.

g-bebe,

I actually bothered to try and figure out what my USCF rating was at the time. It was indeed more like 1800. And I didn't sustain 2500 ICC Blitz; I popped over briefly and went back to the 2400s. I played exclusively 3 0 and flagged tons of people; I also had a huge score vs strong players in 2. c3 Sicilians as white. Maybe I was an underrated 1800?

I'm not sure if you can look it up; my handle was VivaArgentina. Now if you look that up it probably gives you my "next" VivaArgentina handle (lol), where I believe my blitz rating was lower.

QFT. IMO you should also be careful asserting that you are "underrated" unless you're a kid or have played practically no tournament games.

You can do "search vivaargentina" on ICC. For specific results you can do: "search vivaargentina winner=vivaargentina"/etc. I'm not seeing anything 2400+ though. What in the world was up with the 3 1 against SmallVille? Do you remember it? lol

No idea what my rating is.

It took hoards of hours to obtain that uncertainty though. I just love the game, and each game feels that much more satisfying when playing and doing well against very strong opponents.

I think your third question is very ambiguous. Even in a world championship match, I think the dictum that the winner is the person who makes the second to last mistake still holds true. Those mistakes just become increasingly subtle as you become stronger. Maybe you mean at what point are games decided by something other than somebody giving away material, but then that also kind of begs the question of what "giving away" is. Is dropping material to some subtle tactic just giving away material?

Took me 14 years. Sad, isn't it.

Dire, the old VivaArgentina handle is forever gone, it seems. Alas. I had a bunch of games against DropZone back then I remember.

The SmallVille game we were just screwing around.

I know.

I know online chess is different, but it's not THAT different. I play live as well.

I used to play for my school, I don't anymore because it's too time consuming...but I was the best player in our A League team(scholastic players are very very weak so thats no accomplishment).

I had a perfect score of 8/8 last year in the League and the 3rd to last game that I played I played against a guy with a 1750 CHESSA rating, which is considerably stronger than 1750 FIDE(on average 300 points, but much less at the higher levels and at the highest there is no difference to FIDE really). I know players that are 1800 USCF that are 1550-1700 on CTS and so forth. I have done a lot of effort to estimate my fide rating strength.

The time control I played OTB was like 1 hour each... I know they were weak players...the average player was probably like 1500 FIDE or so in the A league, but still my score of 8/8 must mean something.

I am atleast 1850 FIDE if I am still playing, I am probably weaker atm.

But how much did you lose?

You could, you know, play a FIDE rated tournament?

I feel its impossible to estimate chess strength without playing actual tournament chess because it's impossible to get into the same mindset for some stupid game on the internet that isn't a REAL game. And even if it is possible for you, it isn't for half of your opponents. Chess online is gay

(yes, im one of those people that somehow has LOWER FICS/ICC/GK ratings than real life rating)

I live in South Africa...

Chess online isn't gay. It's chess...the same chess you plan on a board. Most people just make excuses because they get paired against tougher opponents most of the time. A lot of people take online chess very seriously. This whole internet chess is not chess thing is kinda getting really crappy and lame.

Its chess but I just can't put any kind of mental concentration to it, and even peopel that can i have to imagine still dont put in 100%. It's fun and enjoyable but it just isnt a basis of talent. Online games can be gone over, they can be anlyzed for improvement in your chess etc etc, but the goal is to make your OTB chess better. Who cares if you beat people on FICS or ICC? No one.

If online poker has taught us anything, it's that you clearly suck if you don't play live!

Too long

Pyramid, have you ever stopped to wonder who cares who you beat in a live game?

There's no pot of gold waiting at the end of the live rainbow. It's just an incredibly enjoyable game where if you're playing to impress somebody you're probably going to end up disappointed.

And even the argument about live is where the money at isn't so true anymore. Dos Hermanas, Brunei Blitz, etc show lots of online only tournaments with thousands in prize funds - often free to enter! Heck, there was even an online qualifier to one of the most prestigious otb tournaments (Corus).

This analogy is so foolish that it defies belief.

And don't get me wrong. I have an insane amount of respect for those who do extremely well at otb play and I'd like to myself as well in the near future. I just also have a ton of respect for those that do extremely well at online play. And if there was some sort of strange chess format where you play upside down (obv with magnetic pieces) in an oxygen deprived chamber while rotating at such force that inertia kept you hugging the wall while playing I'd also have much respect for those that excelled at the format and would also like to try it out myself.

The qualifier was for the C section. I doubt anybody playing in that section (what is the average rating?) is making much of a living as a professional player.

Yes, I know some young supertalents have played in it.

If it's so foolish, you could at least provide a simple clear rationale as to why.