Originally posted by hintjultake it you still believe in santa , the easter bunny and the tooth fairy?
Kaoslos and Cohonas in my opinion are definately not engine users, because their records seem perfectly normal to me. The other two are more than a bit suspect. I always look at records as most obviously do.
I know a few of the English players on the front page. One is clearer better than me (my ECF grade is 197, which corresponds to a FIDE rating of about 2100), and easily FM standard. Two are now about the same OTB strength as me now but both have been much better in the recent past. One of these was a correspondence chess specialist.
I can easily believe that someone with a lower OTB rating than me can play much better correspondence chess. What I find difficult to believe is that someone graded approximately 40 ECF points lower than me (which means I should beat him nine times out of ten OTB) can have the highest rating on this site whilst playing 188 moves in 7 days. Anyone playing 25 moves a day is clearly not spending hours analysing difficult positions.
Does anyone know how many games the great correspondence chess champions of the past had on the go at any one time, and an estimate of their move rate?
I don't think you would need to be anywhere near FM strength to get on the first page here (although I like hedonist's point).
Remember, this site is essentially a pairings free-for-all, and a person's record (and to a certain degree, rating) is almost meaningless without conducting a very deep and thorough study of who they played, when they played them, and how often they played.
Unlike an OTB tournament situation, we get to pick our opponents, choose how often we play them, and avoid anyone we want. Clan, league, ladder, and tournament play mitigate this somewhat, but they are all voluntary, and they can also be avoided easily.
The rating system is so easily manipulated, that it amazes me that anyone takes it all that seriously.
Even more so, the motivations for playing on the site also vary considerably more than they do OTB. People play to win (in the pure sense) far more in OTB play, and they usually play the opening they think will give them the best chance in the tournament to be successful.
On the site, there are plenty of people (of which I am one) who don't always make winning the absolute number 1 priority. I certainly do in clan and tourmanent games, but in casual games on the site where the outcome only matters to me or my opponent, I have experimented with all sorts of different openings to broaden my palette and deepen my exposure to new ideas.
Some of those games have been less than successful for me, to say the least. I have also been the beneficiary of such games, including one player on the first page who told me in advance what the best move was in our game, but then played an inferior move as an experiment and lost. He crushed me in the other game, of course!
I'll also more readily sac or play speculatively- if I lose, I just start another game.
Re-entry opportunities in tournaments are fewer, and cost money!
The bottom line is that we can tell very little by looking at a list, and those who read into it with only speculation of malfeasance are here merely for the entertainment of gossip.
It makes for some fun forum reading, for sure, but there are only a handful of players on the site with the evidence and ammo to press charges, and the rest are just the internet version of the loud guy at the pub who should have stopped before the last pint.
Originally posted by Paul Leggettum, "tournament", not "toumanent". Scrabble champion I am not!
I don't think you would need to be anywhere near FM strength to get on the first page here (although I like hedonist's point).
Remember, this site is essentially a pairings free-for-all, and a person's record (and to a certain degree, rating) is almost meaningless without conducting a very deep and thorough study of who they played, when they playe ...[text shortened]... e internet version of the loud guy at the pub who should have stopped before the last pint.
Here are just some pertinent facts of our top 4 for your convenient viewing. 🙂 , interesting. All are from May 7th, 2012
Kingshill
Won-923
Lost-7
Drawn-48
Highest Rating-2470
OAR for year (Opponent Average Rating) 1620
Win/Draw/Loss ratio-94.4%/4.91%/0.72%
Concurrent Games-34
Moves this month-201
Cohonas
Won-538
Lost-173
Drawn-27
Highest Rating-2448
OAR for year-1833
Win/Draw/Loss ratio-72.9%/3.7%/32.2%
Note: 96.95% of losses are timeout losses (so in theory-only 0.71% of the games are losses due to resignations or mates)
Concurrent games-38
Moves this month-132
Kaoslos
Won-715
Lost-201
Drawn-116
Highest Rating-2467
OAR for year-1852
Win/Draw/Loss ratio-69.3%/11.2%/19.5%
Concurrent games-12
Moves this month-30
Kings and Pawns
Won-150
Lost-5
Drawn-36
Highest Rating-2426
OAR for year-2031
Win/Draw/Loss ratio-74.4%/22.5%/3.1%
Note-33.33% of losses due to timeout (I presume that means 2 of the 5 losses were unrated???).
Concurrent games-32
Moves this month-125
They do have a history of playing each other too (some)
Kingshill v. cohonas 3-4-1
Kingshill v. Kaoslos 0-0-0
Kingshill v. Kings and Pawns 0-2-0
cohonas v. kingshill 1-4-3
cohonas v. Kaoslos 1-0-1
cohonas v. Kings and Pawns 0-2-0
Kaoslos v. kingshill 0-0-0
Kaoslos v. cohonas 1-0-1
Kaoslso v. Kings and Pawns 0-1-1
Kings and Pawns v. kingshill 0-2-0
Kings and Pawns v. cohonas 0-2-0
Kings and Pawns v. Kaoslos 1-1-0
But I totally agree, a tournament between these 4 would be interesting!
I also think the average time they have to move in each game would be an interesting statistic to know, but I did not bother that much lol.
EDIT-I said it wrong for cohonas-0.71% of games are losses not that many losses a result of resignations or mates