On 17 Mar 2007 16:42:08 -0700, "help bot"
wrote:

I see a few players whose Playchess ratings seem pretty stable over
time, but many who experience up and down swings of several hundred
points. I think this is relatively rare OTB.

I'd be interested in other players' perspectives on this.

Many times I have seen people talk about how they
sometimes (or even often) allow others to play under
their handle at rated chess online, and I have also
witnessed several cases of this first hand. I have also
seen players who wanted to "teach someone a lesson"
who fired up a chess playing program, to deal a blow
to some fellow's ego -- someone who had ticked them
off. Obviously, it is much harder to do this sort of
substitution OTB, so the online ratings are far less
meaningful than an OTB rating.

Good points, although until proven otherwise, I'd think this
relatively rare.

This also would explain (in part) why the online
ratings are more volatile, even apart from any added
playing activity as described far above.

But added to this is another aspect of online play:
often it can be hard to find an opponent unless you
are willing to play fast time controls, such as blitz.
Because of this, even a player who much prefers
slower chess can be forced into playing blitz or
even bullet chess, where he fails miserably --
relative to his OTB skill level, that is.

Playchess maintains three ratings: slow, blitz and bullet. And there
are many players with a w..i..d..e difference between their ratings at
these three modes.

Lastly, there is the small matter of mouse,
typing, or touch-pad speed differences among the
machines themselves to factor in. I have known
players who claim that typing the (blitz or bullet)
moves is significantly faster than using a mouse,
or who even use a third party to do this for them
while they call out the moves verbally! Obviously,
this makes any closely-contested games depend
all too heavily on secondary issues, rather than
what we normally consider to be real chess skill.
It also seems to give the younger players a big
edge over their older, slower-reflexed rivals.

For this reason, players with a bullet rating over 100 points higher
than their blitz rating go on my "ignore" list. It's also why I have
pretty much settled on 3.2 (three minute game with a 2 second per move
increment). It's fast enough to discourage alternate computer
cheating and slow enough to make mouse skill less decisive.

As an experiment, I played quite a few 3.0 games and found the rate of
lag cheating unacceptably high. Doesn't seem to be as much at 3.2,
although it does take longer to get an opponent sometimes.

-- help bot

"Mike Murray" wrote in message
...
On 17 Mar 2007 08:25:15 -0700, "Jerzy" wrote:


Rating on-line is not the most objective criteria. It is mainly about
blitzes and bullets and does not say much about real OTB strength also
in OTB blitzes.

Jerzy, are you saying there's not much correlation between OTB Blitz
and online Blitz ? If so, why is this? I would think strength at one
would correlate pretty closely with strength at the other, given that
it takes a while to get used to mouse techniques.


Jerzy is a spineless coward that doesn't know his head from his ass. You
should know better than to try to have an intelligent debate with this guy.
He doesn't even have enough balls to meet online for a few games.

Anyway, I can tell you from not just my experience, but everyone else I know
who plays on playchess.com that the blitz ratings there and otb are very
very close. And you're right, it does take a bit of time to get comfortable
with the different format. After a few weeks or so of playing online you
will get a rating which is very close to your OTB at similar time controls.

JMR

"Mike Murray" wrote in message
...
On 17 Mar 2007 09:08:45 -0700, "Jerzy" wrote:

On 17 Mar, 16:51, Mike Murray wrote:

Rating on-line is not the most objective criteria. It is mainly about
blitzes and bullets and does not say much about real OTB strength also
in OTB blitzes.

Jerzy, are you saying there's not much correlation between OTB Blitz
and online Blitz ? If so, why is this? I would think strength at one
would correlate pretty closely with strength at the other, given that
it takes a while to get used to mouse techniques.

Mike, I have already written about correlation between on-line and OTB
ratings. Of course I cannot give you exact numbers. There should be
done statistical work among population of chessplayers who play chess
both on-line and OTB.

From my observations the better a player is in OTB chess the better
the player is in on-line chess. However the rule has its exceptions as
well :-)

FWIW, I think the online Playchess Blitz ratings over time probably
correlate pretty closely to OTB Blitz ratings, but the online ratings
are less stable. Why is this? Because, we all have our hot and cold
streaks, days when we play well and days when concentration flags for
one reason or another. If you're playing rated OTB Blitz, the number
of games you can play while in a streak is constrained by the length
of whatever event in which you're playing. In online Blitz, you can
keep playing and playing. When you're hot, the rating goes way up.
When you're cold, it goes way down.

For me, my playchess rating very rarely ever goes below 2100, but has on
ocassion when i'm playing drunk, hungover, or really really tired. Over 90%
of the time it's relatively stable between 2200-2300. I've been over 2400
but that's rare for me.

I agree with your comment about there being a greater rating fluctuation in
general, with online ratings. I think this is due to the greater volume of
games played, and also to the greater diversity in opposition. Styles are a
factor. I've had games with 2300 players who I found much easier to beat
than certain 2100 players. There is also a steady stream of new players on
free trial accounts whose rating at the time you play them may not be that
of their true strength yet.


JMR

"help bot" wrote in message
oups.com...

Rating on-line is not the most objective criteria. It is mainly about
blitzes and bullets and does not say much about real OTB strength
also
in OTB blitzes.
Jerzy, are you saying there's not much correlation between OTB Blitz
and online Blitz ? If so, why is this? I would think strength at one
would correlate pretty closely with strength at the other, given that
it takes a while to get used to mouse techniques.

Mike, I have already written about correlation between on-line and OTB
ratings. Of course I cannot give you exact numbers. There should be
done statistical work among population of chessplayers who play chess
both on-line and OTB.
From my observations the better a player is in OTB chess the better
the player is in on-line chess. However the rule has its exceptions as
well :-)

FWIW, I think the online Playchess Blitz ratings over time probably
correlate pretty closely to OTB Blitz ratings, but the online ratings
are less stable. Why is this? Because, we all have our hot and cold
streaks, days when we play well and days when concentration flags for
one reason or another. If you're playing rated OTB Blitz, the number
of games you can play while in a streak is constrained by the length
of whatever event in which you're playing. In online Blitz, you can
keep playing and playing. When you're hot, the rating goes way up.
When you're cold, it goes way down.

I see a few players whose Playchess ratings seem pretty stable over
time, but many who experience up and down swings of several hundred
points. I think this is relatively rare OTB.

I'd be interested in other players' perspectives on this.

Many times I have seen people talk about how they
sometimes (or even often) allow others to play under
their handle at rated chess online, and I have also
witnessed several cases of this first hand. I have also
seen players who wanted to "teach someone a lesson"
who fired up a chess playing program, to deal a blow
to some fellow's ego -- someone who had ticked them
off. Obviously, it is much harder to do this sort of
substitution OTB, so the online ratings are far less
meaningful than an OTB rating.


The only thing obvious here Help-Bitch, is that you're a very dumb guy who
makes alot of assumptions and has no capacity for reasoning. For starters,
you're assuming that we're talking about playing on the crappy free chess
servers that you're used to playing on where cheating with a program is
possible. If you had the ability to read and understand English at a level
beyond elementary school, you would have understood that we were talking
about the playchess.com server where it's not possible to "fire up an
engine" for speed games.

Additionally, I wouldn't expect a mentally-defective imbecile like yourself
to understand this concept Help-Bitch, but on average, the biases, such as
playing on overrated player one game and an underrated player a different
game tend to balance out. Net result: Your online rating will be very close
to your OTB rating at similiar time controls.

JMR

"Mike Murray" wrote in message
...
On 17 Mar 2007 16:42:08 -0700, "help bot"
wrote:

I see a few players whose Playchess ratings seem pretty stable over
time, but many who experience up and down swings of several hundred
points. I think this is relatively rare OTB.

I'd be interested in other players' perspectives on this.

Many times I have seen people talk about how they
sometimes (or even often) allow others to play under
their handle at rated chess online, and I have also
witnessed several cases of this first hand. I have also
seen players who wanted to "teach someone a lesson"
who fired up a chess playing program, to deal a blow
to some fellow's ego -- someone who had ticked them
off. Obviously, it is much harder to do this sort of
substitution OTB, so the online ratings are far less
meaningful than an OTB rating.

Good points, although until proven otherwise, I'd think this
relatively rare.

Not only is it rare, but the way an elo chess rating works is that even if
you throw some games, for whatever reason, and take a rating dive, it will,
at best, be very temporary. Your rating will quickly get back to a normal
level. What I think is the biggest factor in this whole issue is honesty and
objectivity. I believe that the majority of chess players, especially those
at the lower skill levels, do not have either the ability, or the desire, to
assess their skill level in an honest and unbiased way. They will make
excuses and say nonsensical things such as "blitz chess isn't chess" and
"online chess isn't real", etc. to rationalize their poor performances.
You'll find that even when you beat these people at slower time controls and
OTB they'll come up with some new excuses to try to discredit you. In the
end it's the result that tell the tale.


This also would explain (in part) why the online
ratings are more volatile, even apart from any added
playing activity as described far above.

But added to this is another aspect of online play:
often it can be hard to find an opponent unless you
are willing to play fast time controls, such as blitz.
Because of this, even a player who much prefers
slower chess can be forced into playing blitz or
even bullet chess, where he fails miserably --
relative to his OTB skill level, that is.

Playchess maintains three ratings: slow, blitz and bullet. And there
are many players with a w..i..d..e difference between their ratings at
these three modes.

Lastly, there is the small matter of mouse,
typing, or touch-pad speed differences among the
machines themselves to factor in. I have known
players who claim that typing the (blitz or bullet)
moves is significantly faster than using a mouse,
or who even use a third party to do this for them
while they call out the moves verbally! Obviously,
this makes any closely-contested games depend
all too heavily on secondary issues, rather than
what we normally consider to be real chess skill.
It also seems to give the younger players a big
edge over their older, slower-reflexed rivals.

For this reason, players with a bullet rating over 100 points higher
than their blitz rating go on my "ignore" list. It's also why I have
pretty much settled on 3.2 (three minute game with a 2 second per move
increment). It's fast enough to discourage alternate computer
cheating and slow enough to make mouse skill less decisive.

There's really no such thing as "mouse-skill". I'm assuming you're using a
decent, wired mouse thats comfortable, doesn't skip or have a mind of it's
own (logitech are known for this) and that you have it set to an
appropriate speed. Beyond that, it's about the judicious use of premove and
in making good decisions quickly.


As an experiment, I played quite a few 3.0 games and found the rate of
lag cheating unacceptably high.

Lag cheating does occur. After you iggy all the usual suspects who do this
you won't notice it that often, and the vast majority of the cheaters are
under 2000, so if you set your formula above that you won't have to deal
with them.

JMR

On Mar 17, 8:26 pm, Mike Murray wrote:

Many times I have seen people talk about how they
sometimes (or even often) allow others to play under
their handle at rated chess online, and I have also
witnessed several cases of this first hand. I have also
seen players who wanted to "teach someone a lesson"
who fired up a chess playing program, to deal a blow
to some fellow's ego -- someone who had ticked them
off. Obviously, it is much harder to do this sort of
substitution OTB, so the online ratings are far less
meaningful than an OTB rating.

Good points, although until proven otherwise, I'd think this
relatively rare.

Perhaps you should think more carefully; this is not
just some unsupported claim, but a retelling of what
has been *observed* in practice. In addition to my own
experiences, there are innumerable comments strewn
throughout rgc postings by others which confirm this.

One recent example was in response to an attack
on someone by Mr. Repa, who ridiculed another of the
many claimants to chess fame for having a slightly
lower online rating than his own. Now, even though
no one takes Mr. Repa seriously, it was patiently
explained that the "ad-hominee" has allowed his son
and friends to play under his ID, and these boys were
about 10 years of age! This was typical, as all the
online players I knew allowed others to use their
account to play with a member ID, to avoid being
shunned as an "unregistered" (presumed) weakie.
Unregistered players have trouble getting decent
opposition -- or at least they used to. In fact, not
one of the many players I knew ever said "no! You
can't use my ID because that would be unethical."
I'm not arguing that this is right, just relating the
facts of my own experience to add to all the others
which can easily be found in rgc postings along the
same vein. I can't recall anyone ever posting that
*nobody* ever played under their account, although
it may have happened just the same.


Playchess maintains three ratings: slow, blitz and bullet.

Yes, I keep hearing about this Playchess. But this
was not around back then. Back when I played it
was ICC and other sites, and the top-rated players
were rather protective of their ratings, flatly refusing to
give an unrated or new player a shot at them. On top
of that, the very idea of "testing" a recently purchased
chess program is defeated unless you can find decent
opposition, and that means the top-rated players. In
fact, the thesis works best if you conduct these tests
against players who have known USCF or FIDE ratings.


And there are many players with a w..i..d..e difference between their ratings at
these three modes.

Hint: typical computer cheats prefer to savor the glory
by taking it slow and easy, so they don't muck things
up via operator error. (Okay, I did not know enough
computer cheaters to make such an assessment.) :D

Lastly, there is the small matter of mouse,
typing, or touch-pad speed differences among the
machines themselves to factor in. I have known
players who claim that typing the (blitz or bullet)
moves is significantly faster than using a mouse,
or who even use a third party to do this for them
while they call out the moves verbally! Obviously,
this makes any closely-contested games depend
all too heavily on secondary issues, rather than
what we normally consider to be real chess skill.
It also seems to give the younger players a big
edge over their older, slower-reflexed rivals.

For this reason, players with a bullet rating over 100 points higher
than their blitz rating go on my "ignore" list. It's also why I have
pretty much settled on 3.2 (three minute game with a 2 second per move
increment).

That is precisely the time control that I used to prefer.


It's fast enough to discourage alternate computer
cheating and slow enough to make mouse skill less decisive.

And also to eliminate the strategy of winning on
time by quickly shifting wood in a random endgame.

As an experiment, I played quite a few 3.0 games and found the rate of
lag cheating unacceptably high. Doesn't seem to be as much at 3.2,
although it does take longer to get an opponent sometimes.

I noticed that certain favored players had a big time
advantage in terms of this lag -- occasionally finding
one who gained large time advantages despite my
moving instantly. Later, I read complaints by others
that a few of the admins were abusing their special
privileges in this and several other ways, and some
of these complaints came from other admins!

Maybe I will give this Playchess.com a try.

-- help bot

On Mar 17, 9:30 pm, "Good Moves are worth BEANS!"
wrote:

The only thing obvious here Help-Bitch, is that you're a very dumb guy who
makes alot
of assumptions and has no capacity for reasoning. For starters,
you're assuming that we're talking about playing on the crappy free chess
servers that you're used to playing on where cheating with a program is
possible. If you had the ability to read and understand English at a level
beyond elementary school, you would have understood that we were talking
about the playchess.com server where it's not possible to "fire up an
engine" for speed games.

Poor, poor imbecile. Hint: it takes *two* machines or
another, hopefully stronger player, but cheating is not
at all difficult on any server. Those arrogant admins
may have you buffaloed, but not everyone is quite as
dumb and naive as you, Skippy.

Additionally, I wouldn't expect a mentally-defective imbecile like yourself
to understand this concept Help-Bitch, but on average, the biases, such as
playing on overrated player one game and an underrated player a different
game tend to balance out. Net result: Your online rating will be very close
to your OTB rating at similiar time controls.

This only works out if the overall rating pools have
similar ratings, which is a neat trick when the USCF
giveth or taketh away bonus, feedback, etc., willy
nilly. It could be done with FIDE, but there would
have to be an active attempt to correlate the two pools
so they match up. Presumably, the established
players would not take kindly to having their numbers
toyed with, so the tinkering would have to focus on
something subtle.

It really is amazing how easily the masses are
talked into believing their online ratings have great
merit; how willingly they are led to believe that
cheating is impossible, and so forth.

-- coach bot

On Mar 17, 9:47 pm, "Good Moves are worth BEANS!"
wrote:

Lastly, there is the small matter of mouse,
typing, or touch-pad speed differences among the
machines themselves to factor in. I have known
players who claim that typing the (blitz or bullet)
moves is significantly faster than using a mouse,
or who even use a third party to do this for them
while they call out the moves verbally! Obviously,
this makes any closely-contested games depend
all too heavily on secondary issues, rather than
what we normally consider to be real chess skill.
It also seems to give the younger players a big
edge over their older, slower-reflexed rivals.

For this reason, players with a bullet rating over 100 points higher
than their blitz rating go on my "ignore" list. It's also why I have
pretty much settled on 3.2 (three minute game with a 2 second per move
increment). It's fast enough to discourage alternate computer
cheating and slow enough to make mouse skill less decisive.

There's really no such thing as "mouse-skill". I'm assuming you're using a
decent, wired mouse thats comfortable, doesn't skip or have a mind of it's
own (logitech are known for this) and that you have it set to an
appropriate speed. Beyond that, it's about the judicious use of premove and
in making good decisions quickly.

You seem very quick to make silly assumptions,
Skippy.

These days I am using a notebook computer, which
has no mouse, no trackball, and no mouse-pad. What
the boys at Dell and HP and Apple do is this: they
incorporate a new thingie called a touch-pad, and you
use your finger to manipulate the cursor. Here's the
rub: although this keeps from having annoying wires or
external devices get in the way of easy portability, the
touch-pad has a serious drawback of registering any
unintentional tap exactly as though it were a deliberate
mouse-click! Yuck. As you already mentioned, there
are also problems with mice which don't always seem
to work exactly as they're supposed to.

Just to put this thing into somewhat better perspective,
consider this: both Taylor Kingston and I have "lost"
games at GetClub where, apparently, the "resign" button
registered a click on his site. Imagine that -- resigning
against Sanny's program, and not even three Queens
down yet!

I'm glad to hear you have mastered tricky items like
"pre-move" and such, especially in view of your serious
difficulties with language and thinking. Well done.


As an experiment, I played quite a few 3.0 games and found the rate of
lag cheating unacceptably high.

Lag cheating does occur. After you iggy all the usual suspects who do this
you won't notice it that often, and the vast majority of the cheaters are
under 2000, so if you set your formula above that you won't have to deal
with them.

And now Skippy freely admits that there *are* cheaters
on his Web site; wonders never cease with this clown.

-- help bot

On 18 Mar, 02:09, "Good Moves are worth BEANS!"
wrote:

Jerzy is a spineless coward that doesn't know his head from his ass. You
should know better than to try to have an intelligent debate with this guy.
He doesn't even have enough balls to meet online for a few games.

Rzepa, don`t be so pathetic. I often play on playchess.com under nick
"Jerzy64" (check my stats there) and I have never met you there.
Rzepa, you are a coward who runs away when challenged.


Anyway, I can tell you from not just my experience, but everyone else I know
who plays on playchess.com that the blitz ratings there and otb are very
very close. And you're right, it does take a bit of time to get comfortable
with the different format. After a few weeks or so of playing online you
will get a rating which is very close to your OTB at similar time controls.

Rzepa, there is no such a thing as OTB rating in blitz. So you cannot
compare OTB blitz rating with on-line one.

On 18 Mar 2007 00:07:14 -0700, "Jerzy" wrote:


there is no such a thing as OTB rating in blitz. So you cannot
compare OTB blitz rating with on-line one.

The USCF has ratings for events as fast as Game-10.

For many years, U.S. GM Walter Browne ran an association dedicated to
blitz chess, which published a magazine and maintained a ratings list.
It's been defunct for a couple years now. Here's a link about it:
http://www.chessdryad.com/articles/mi/article_174.htm

I played in some Seattle Chess Club blitz events in the early 1990s
that were WBCA rated, and my resulting rating corresponded roughly to
my current Playchess ratings.