Ratings

Ratings are a way to judge your current skill level in chess. When some inexperienced chessplayers first learn that ratings are a measure of chess strength, the first thing that they want to do is rocket to the top of the chess rating charts as soon as humanly possible. This is not a healthy goal, and is one that brings many people unhappiness. It is for this reason that I am devoting a section to ratings. The goal of playing chess competitively should be to improve your skills, rather than improve your rating. While this may sound the same, it is not necessarily synonymous, for losing a game via a foolish move results in a loss of rating points but not a loss of skill. Rather, losing a game usually results in an increase in skill! Ratings work quite simply: the higher the rating, the stronger the player. When a higher rated player plays a lower rated player, he is essentially "wagering" more of his rating points than his opponent. For example, if I were to play the world champion, he would be "wagering" about 30 of his rating points, while I would be wagering only two of mine. If (when?) he won, he would get two of my rating points. A draw would result in a relatively large rating transfer to me, because Kasparov is rated an enormous amount higher than me. A beginner usually has a rating between 0 and 800, while the world champion Gary Kasparov has a rating that usually hovers around 2800 (my rating usually is around 2300). The chess rating table below details the meaning of each rank.

Rating___________Title___________People Worldwide of Listed Level

none-800________Beginner________~6 billion

800-1000________Class F_________~15 million

1000-1200_______Class E_________~8 million

1200-1400_______Class D_________~7 million

1400-1600_______Class C_________~5 million

1600-1800_______Class B_________~500 thousand

1800-2000_______Class A_________~60 thousand

2000-2200_______Expert__________~20 thousand

2200-2500_______Master__________ 3500

2500-2700_______Grandmaster______390

2700-infinity______Super Grandmaster_ 4

As can easily seen by this table, attempting to be one of the best becomes exponentially more difficult as the ratings increase. Reaching Master Class from Expert Class took me almost twice as much time as the rest of my chessplaying time combined. The problem is that some people become so obsessed with ratings that they ignore improvement and study of their losses, rather focusing entirely upon the game. This is not a problem for most people, but it is something to be wary of when playing.

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