The Chess Wanderer

"Les pions sont l´âme du jeu" Francois-André Philidor, 1749

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Speed chess and ratings

Quick question to the Knights. I once played a guy OTB who said that his ICC blitz rating was 1500. He didn't have a standard rating but pointed out that it should be 100 to 200 points higher than his blitz rating. After thinking about it I speculated that playing only speed chess should have a ratings cap while slow chess shouldn't, since the former consists of only tactics and intuition and the latter includes thought process. So my question is this, has anyone read anything about the approximate number for this cap?

2 Comments:

At 4/27/2006 8:58 AM, Blogger sciurus said...

In my opinion we should not take absolute chess rating numbers serious at all. It is all relative: Your blitz rating is based on playing blitz against a certain group of blitz playing opponents. Therefore, this rating does not give much information about your ability to play slow chess at all.

But it is not only a matter of time control, but also against whom you play: let's assume I am tired of loosing and set up my very own chess server. You can play for free there, IF you are a weaker player than myself. On a server like this, I, even though I am a blunder-happy beginner, would receive a stellar rating because everybody else plays worse than me. Does my superstar rating say that I am better than, say, you? I guess not.

 
At 7/04/2006 7:39 AM, Blogger Dr Munky said...

I think it depends heavily on the time control and the quality of the opposition he plays. He might 1500 but if he has played against only players rated 200 plus points less than him then his real rating is going to be lower. Also with blitz you have what I call the 'throwaway' factor, if you have 2 hours to play a game then you invest more into it, if it's three minutes then, well, who cares if you lose?

 

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