Originally posted by usmc7257 You have to let me know what books you are studying. Thats an impressive graph you have going. Are all cops this dirty?
He has won 34% of his games via timeout- just another reason why we should take all ratings on the site with a grain of salt.
We should all take pride whenever we play a good individual game, and not pay too much attention to a number assigned purely on result without regard to what happened on the board.
That graph does look a wee bit dodgy, I must admit. But let me raise the question - what level of improvement within a certain timeframe can been seen as non-suspicious? I've recently gone from 1550-odd to 1700 in the space of a few months (bit lower currently due a series of time-outs against lower-rated players). And I haven't really done much to earn it - started taking a bit more time over my moves and begun following a few youtube annotation channels. No genuine study whatsoever.
I've no doubt a committed student starting at 1200 level could legitimately improve by several hundred points within the space of a year.
I'm always suspicious with respect to long winning streaks (indicated by continuous increase in rating). This can of course be caused by a number of things, such as:
- using a computer or other (unallowed) assistance
- playing much lower rated players
- large number of resigning opponents for non-chess related reasons
- time-outs
A dedicated player may increase several hundreds of points a year, but nevertheless in a gradual way. You can't learn without making mistakes, so at least once in a while there should be a blunder or so resulting in a loss.
Originally posted by Paul Leggett He has won 34% of his games via timeout- just another reason why we should take all ratings on the site with a grain of salt.
We should all take pride whenever we play a good individual game, and not pay too much attention to a number assigned purely on result without regard to what happened on the board.
I've got a game against him at the moment. He was 1400 when the game started at the beginning of November. If you look at the games he's won during his winning streak only a few have been because of timeouts.
Originally posted by Paul Leggett He has won 34% of his games via timeout- just another reason why we should take all ratings on the site with a grain of salt.
We should all take pride whenever we play a good individual game, and not pay too much attention to a number assigned purely on result without regard to what happened on the board.
Time Bandit
30 Nov '11 03:37
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