*** The Chess Thread ***

[CoccoBill]

You can't, for example the games I play with my friend, for me a loss is like -14, a win 0. Not much incentive to play rated games with him.

[OngBonga]

You can't, for example the games I play with my friend, for me a loss is like -14, a win 0. Not much incentive to play rated games with him.

I'd expect your rating loss to be 20 if your gain is 0, that's the usual extreme. If it is 14, maybe their K-factor is 7, but that seems low.

[CoccoBill]

I'd expect your rating loss to be 20 if your gain is 0, that's the usual extreme. If it is 14, maybe their K-factor is 7, but that seems low.

Against equally rated it's indeed +7 so checks out.

[Poopadoop]

I was just thinking it would be funny if someone became a GM by beating 10,000 players rated as <1000.

So if Cocco's average opp is 1042 how is he still climbing? I guess some of them he gains points on but a lot of them must be freerolling him as you say.

[CoccoBill]

Assume I'll play the next 50 games only against players rated 3000. After that my avg opp rating would be 1234, and my own rating would be 2247 if I won all games.

[Poopadoop]

Ok, let's see it.

[OngBonga]

Against equally rated it's indeed +7 so checks out.

I'm surprised it's this low, I'm almost certain it's K=10 on gameknot where I used to play a lot (haven't player a proper game for a while now), and figured that was the online standard. A low K-factor means slower rating response to form, and less extremes in rating fluctuations, so some would say it's preferable. But you don't want it too slow, so it's not as simple as the lower the better. 10 is unlikely to be optimal though, that's just nice round human numbers in action. Maybe chess.com are getting this right with 7.

[OngBonga]

To answer poop's question, you can inflate your rating a little if you play -150 rated players and basically perform slightly above expected over a large sample, but it will be tediously slow progress compared to just playing people closer to your rating.

You're also going to slowly run into better players, and if you're not challenging yourself and improving, your rating gains will decrease in value and ultimately start receding.

There's really not much incentive to club seals in chess, other than to massage your ego if that's your thing.

[OngBonga]

From what I can tell, expected win with 200 ELO difference is 76% for the stronger player, so if you're winning 80% of games against -200 players your rating will gradually rise. But as your rating rises, so too does the floor of an opponent at -200, so it's a self regulating system.