Chess | Forum

I believe my rating started getting too high, and it became very difficult to get a game. So I played a couple dudes(random games). Rocky1000000(1467), and they resigned after 16 moves, and then siddu4502(1643), offered draw(refused), they resigned after 25 moves.

Chess.com rapid rating is now 1681.

At Chess.com rapid games are 10 minutes. Initially I created an account with the same name as here, but felt I wasn't getting enough games, so I created another arbitrary account(ChloeGirl2000(coincidentally random)), and used a pretty picture of my roomie - she has plenty of selfies to choose from.

After that I was getting more games via the powers of deception, uncommon for me, but once again, now that my rating is near 1700 the games have once again dropped off as far as the tailor made opponents go, but I can instantly get random games when the wait becomes too much.

I see a lot of sore losers. If an opponent is losing they try the old 'disconnect' trick. Now in the old days if an opponent disconnected the game would be canceled and neither rating would be affected. Not so these days though, they have wised up to that and a disconnect now counts as a loss, and that is absolutely the way it should be.

Disconnecting users always return to the game to see if it has been forfeited to claim a win, I am aware of this tactic though and wait for the 60 second auto resign. So they usually play on when they see you are still there and disconnect again, or lose anyway.

Some users here prefer lichess.org, and that place is more agreeable to me now that I have customized the board, pieces, and other settings to my liking.

At times I feel an opponent is using a chess engine, but it doesn't seem all that common really. A chess engine would either be well above 2000, or on their way there.

What's your basic approach to chess? (Not necessarily the online version, just chess in general.)

I find among amateurs like myself there are, broadly speaking, two styles:

1. Elaborate multi-move strategies that may or may not pan out, sometimes short-circuiting after a single move by the opponent.

2. Playing for position on the board. Constantly pushing as many of your pieces as possible as deeply as possible onto your opponent's side of the board, and then opportunistically taking advantage of vulnerabilities.

My tone in the above probably makes it obvious that I use style #2.

There is also the super-genius style of the truly great chess players: they can actually do what the AI players do, which is envision whole board configurations branching out into the future from any particular move they choose to entertain in their imaginations. I can't come within a million miles of that.

Actually the chess engines have surpassed humans, even the greatest. I'm not exactly sure when, maybe it's been a decade or so.

My style of playing varies quite a bit, and I don't take chess too seriously at the moment. It's mostly for fun, and I seem to do better with the ten minute games than the five. I am slightly housebound at the moment, so taking up chess again alongside of passing some time here are a couple of options

Sometimes when I play weaker players I will use alternative openings that I would not otherwise. At times I look at the development of the pieces as a form of artwork, and other times I will play super aggressively and sacrifice a piece for a pawn to expose the king and prevent castling.

I notice the fastest way to get a game on the sites is by random query, but I prefer to select my opponents, and the higher your rating the more difficult it becomes. The random query will generate an opponent with a similar rating as yours which somewhat similar to playing chess against yourself. Weaker players are more fun, whereas a serious game is more complicated, long, and drawn out, but those have their place at times as well, depending on mood I suppose.

I did notice that lichess.org has a lobby with various players and their ratings so maybe that's another more favorable alternative to a randomly generated opponent.

I was strictly using chess.com; it was a player from here that got me started on lichess. The former may be frowned upon by some where it is more commercialized, mainstream, and not 'open source', if I got that right.

For fun I wanted to pit the stockfish(lichess) engine against chess.coms' at the maximum rating, but this is where the commercialism of chess.com shines through as they want you to register and 'pay' to access the engines' highest rating.

Went to this new thrift store up the street yesterday and got this really nice wooden chess set for five bucks, and they also had a backgammon set, and I got that for two bucks. Anything with red on it was half price, and the backgammon box had some red on it.

Both are really nice and in mint condition.