I have not yet played any rated OTB games. I do play a lot on the computer, particulary Chessmaster. I was wondering how close is the rating you get on Chessmaster or any other program to a player's OTB (FIDE) ratings? I was just wondering how I stand, and what my chances will be when I start playing rated OTB games.
Chessmaster ratings, or any other ratings generated by play against a computer program, are notoriously inaccurate. They fail due to playing conditions and hardware. That is, playing conditions that you will face in a human tournament, and your performance under such conditions, cannot be predicted by your play against a machine. Second, Chessmaster does not know its own strength. That is, it's sense of its own ratings are based on a "typical" hardware configuration: your system almost certainly differs.
Consider for example, my best sparring partners among the Chessmaster personalities a few years ago were in the 1900-2000 range. I could win 30-40% of the time (an ideal percentage for improvement). When I bought a new and faster computer, the 1500 players beat me 85%. Chessmaster's prediction of my rating on these two machines varied by ~600 points.
