8 ms·

I've recently started playing chess again a bit (after doing it a bit when I was a teen), and there's an interesting aspect of online chess that I began to real

by hannob 3y ago

I've recently started playing chess again a bit (after doing it a bit when I was a teen), and there's an interesting aspect of online chess that I began to realize: When I was young you needed a local opponent to play chess, and that wasn't always easy. Why? Because most people around you were either significantly better (you always loose) or worse (you always win). It's not an interesting game if the outcome is almost always the same. It's obviously a complete gamechanger when you have a plattform like chess.com which automatically figures out how good you are and matches you with a roughly equally skilled opponent.

danmaz74 3y ago
Yes, the rating system is fundamental to be able to enjoy the game, and also to lower the impact of cheating: if my rating is 1500 and I play against other players around 1500, I don't care if they are at that level thanks to cheating or not. I only care about being competitive with them and trying to do my best. -- Shameless plug: I recently released a platform to improve tactically with puzzles and spaced repetitions, https://chess.braimax.com https://chess.braimax.com - feedback very welcome!
- 10000truths 3y ago
  You're assuming a steady-state equilibrium. It takes several games for a player to settle into their Elo, and a cheater will have ruined the experience of their opponents in the meantime. You're also discounting the fact that griefers will deliberately create new accounts to continue playing against novice opponents.
  - danmaz74 3y ago
    How is this different from good (non-cheating) players joining a new website and having to get to their realistic rating? This happens, but as a percentage of games you play it has a very low impact; moreover, platforms usually tell you that a player has a not-yet-established rating with a question mark, eg 1620? My suggestion is to just stop thinking about cheaters when playing online rated games. I started doing so years ago, and have increased my enjoyment of the game A LOT, without any visible downside.
    - saiya-jin 3y ago
      Yeah seems like a trivial issue to fix - first 10 games are for evaluation, heck they can be had even against computer. Very few people are so pathetic/psychopathic to invest so much time into getting a rank and then cheating on real opponents and tank their account quickly. And for those few, just don't care about them, its just a game after all.
quijoteuniv 3y ago
Imagine when you discover Lichess!
- qsort 3y ago
  I can't recommend Lichess enough. It's free (freedom & beer), it has no ads, and it's feature-complete. It even has stuff that other websites make you pay for, like post-game computer annotation. It offers a web interface where you can play without even registering an account and free (again, freedom & beer) apps for iOS and Android. The only downside when compared to chess.com is that fewer top-level professionals play there. Which is not an issue unless you're literally a super GM.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Lichess is amazing, I play there exclusively. However, I am plagued by a terrible bug: the Android app has half a second of lag when opening any screen for some reason. It doesn't matter what connection I'm on, and the website is always instant, but the Android app always takes half a second to load any screen. It's infuriating when you want to view the analysis, or just navigate around the app.
    - prollings 3y ago
      I've taken to "installing" the webapp version on my phone. It's only a little bit different, but doesn't come with the frustrating issues the android app does.
      - stavros 3y ago
        I've tried, but the analysis UI is different enough to be a bit more frustrating :(
    - stefncb 3y ago
      Weird, it's always worked perfectly for me. Now that I think about it I haven't updated in a long time, and after this I probably won't.
zpeti 3y ago
I had a similar experience in jiu jitsu, everyone is way better or way worse, so it’s very frustrating to play usually. Unfortunately there isn’t an online jiu jitsu platform :) I’ve also found there’s many many parallels between chess and jiu jitsu, which is really interesting, chess really is a super aggressive combat sport in terms of mental work.
curun1r 3y ago
The other fundamentally different thing is the learning tools. As a kid, I had one book on one opening and I had to sit by a board reading it to make the moves to try to dial in the learning. It was a slow and laborious process. I tried checking out another chess book from the library, but had to return it before I made significant headway. There was also one chess puzzle in the newspaper per week, which was fun, but not enough to really make a difference in my skill level. Kids today can explore/memorize many openings and cover many more variations because of the online courses, some of which are even free. They can quiz themselves to ensure they dial in the move orders. And they can access hundreds of thousands of puzzles in rapid succession to improve their middle-game tactics and pattern recognition. And that’s not even going into having access to chess engines stronger than any human player to explore lines and learn why bad moves are bad. All this makes studying the game so much easier, even before you test yourself against an actual opponent.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Chess apps having analysis baked in is a huge win for learning. I go through the analysis of every game I play now and make sure I find the moves I lost, it's improved my game greatly.
- Aromasin 3y ago
  I've started using Chessable, and shot up about 500 elo in the past month. It's effectively chess books distilled into a rote memorization platforms. I picked one opening for white, two for black, and have drilled those variations to the point where I'm now dreaming chess moves. It's insane how easy it is to get very good, very quickly, with modern chess educational tools.
GistNoesis 3y ago
I think matching by level is quite psychologically destructive, and should be avoided. People grind for hours and they see no sense of progress as they keep always being around 50% winrate because the stronger they get, the better the opponent get. And inversely they can play drunk chess and still win 50% and burn time pushing random pieces for a little short-term fun. It probably depends on people but I think the average ratio for people to progress optimally their should be around four wins for one loss. And the loss should be correlated to the way you played. Anything below 80% winrate, means it becomes hard to distinguish the learning signal from the variance of the matching. The brain also need some balance between the carrot and the stick otherwise the ego take a hit. Rating system also generate some strata artefacts meaning there are levels you can't get past without spending as much time as your opponent on tactics, or openings, and you never get to experience chess on a more strategic level, or deeper understanding level. This mean that most of the fun get extracted out of chess once you get addicted/interested enough. I think it's much better to play unrated games anonymously against a random pool of anonymous players (eventually with a min level to exclude complete novices), and offer rematch when the games were interesting. You should play to win but your reward signal shouldn't be the win but rather the interestingness of the game for both opponent. When playing you should try to understand your opponent, his current chess understanding and how it's revealed through his current moves, and construct with the board some situations that will be interesting enough for the both of you to have a good time. Don't play the board. Play the player through the board. A good game should look more like a dance than a fight. You have to infer from a few moves who your opponent is, and how to interact with him in a constructive way. That's what popular streamer do when they play their viewers (usually friendly and constructive). And that's probably what teens expect when they join chess after viewing a few videos. But instead they get thrown into an adverse destructive pit of soulless addicted grinders.
- gubby 3y ago
  Interesting point, but of course it’s not possible to create a platform with an average win rate of 80%.
  - rcxdude 3y ago
ouid 3y ago
I think lichess.org is generally a better place to play. Less pointless monetization. More content available. Better alt modes.

by hannob 3y ago

danmaz74 3y ago

Yes, the rating system is fundamental to be able to enjoy the game, and also to lower the impact of cheating: if my rating is 1500 and I play against other players around 1500, I don't care if they are at that level thanks to cheating or not. I only care about being competitive with them and trying to do my best. -- Shameless plug: I recently released a platform to improve tactically with puzzles and spaced repetitions, https://chess.braimax.com https://chess.braimax.com - feedback very welcome!

10000truths 3y ago
You're assuming a steady-state equilibrium. It takes several games for a player to settle into their Elo, and a cheater will have ruined the experience of their opponents in the meantime. You're also discounting the fact that griefers will deliberately create new accounts to continue playing against novice opponents.
- danmaz74 3y ago
  How is this different from good (non-cheating) players joining a new website and having to get to their realistic rating? This happens, but as a percentage of games you play it has a very low impact; moreover, platforms usually tell you that a player has a not-yet-established rating with a question mark, eg 1620? My suggestion is to just stop thinking about cheaters when playing online rated games. I started doing so years ago, and have increased my enjoyment of the game A LOT, without any visible downside.
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    Yeah seems like a trivial issue to fix - first 10 games are for evaluation, heck they can be had even against computer. Very few people are so pathetic/psychopathic to invest so much time into getting a rank and then cheating on real opponents and tank their account quickly. And for those few, just don't care about them, its just a game after all.

quijoteuniv 3y ago

Imagine when you discover Lichess!

qsort 3y ago
I can't recommend Lichess enough. It's free (freedom & beer), it has no ads, and it's feature-complete. It even has stuff that other websites make you pay for, like post-game computer annotation. It offers a web interface where you can play without even registering an account and free (again, freedom & beer) apps for iOS and Android. The only downside when compared to chess.com is that fewer top-level professionals play there. Which is not an issue unless you're literally a super GM.
- stavros 3y ago
  Lichess is amazing, I play there exclusively. However, I am plagued by a terrible bug: the Android app has half a second of lag when opening any screen for some reason. It doesn't matter what connection I'm on, and the website is always instant, but the Android app always takes half a second to load any screen. It's infuriating when you want to view the analysis, or just navigate around the app.
  - prollings 3y ago
    I've taken to "installing" the webapp version on my phone. It's only a little bit different, but doesn't come with the frustrating issues the android app does.
    - stavros 3y ago
      I've tried, but the analysis UI is different enough to be a bit more frustrating :(
  - stefncb 3y ago
    Weird, it's always worked perfectly for me. Now that I think about it I haven't updated in a long time, and after this I probably won't.

zpeti 3y ago

I had a similar experience in jiu jitsu, everyone is way better or way worse, so it’s very frustrating to play usually. Unfortunately there isn’t an online jiu jitsu platform :) I’ve also found there’s many many parallels between chess and jiu jitsu, which is really interesting, chess really is a super aggressive combat sport in terms of mental work.

curun1r 3y ago

The other fundamentally different thing is the learning tools. As a kid, I had one book on one opening and I had to sit by a board reading it to make the moves to try to dial in the learning. It was a slow and laborious process. I tried checking out another chess book from the library, but had to return it before I made significant headway. There was also one chess puzzle in the newspaper per week, which was fun, but not enough to really make a difference in my skill level. Kids today can explore/memorize many openings and cover many more variations because of the online courses, some of which are even free. They can quiz themselves to ensure they dial in the move orders. And they can access hundreds of thousands of puzzles in rapid succession to improve their middle-game tactics and pattern recognition. And that’s not even going into having access to chess engines stronger than any human player to explore lines and learn why bad moves are bad. All this makes studying the game so much easier, even before you test yourself against an actual opponent.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
Chess apps having analysis baked in is a huge win for learning. I go through the analysis of every game I play now and make sure I find the moves I lost, it's improved my game greatly.
Aromasin 3y ago
I've started using Chessable, and shot up about 500 elo in the past month. It's effectively chess books distilled into a rote memorization platforms. I picked one opening for white, two for black, and have drilled those variations to the point where I'm now dreaming chess moves. It's insane how easy it is to get very good, very quickly, with modern chess educational tools.

GistNoesis 3y ago

I think matching by level is quite psychologically destructive, and should be avoided. People grind for hours and they see no sense of progress as they keep always being around 50% winrate because the stronger they get, the better the opponent get. And inversely they can play drunk chess and still win 50% and burn time pushing random pieces for a little short-term fun. It probably depends on people but I think the average ratio for people to progress optimally their should be around four wins for one loss. And the loss should be correlated to the way you played. Anything below 80% winrate, means it becomes hard to distinguish the learning signal from the variance of the matching. The brain also need some balance between the carrot and the stick otherwise the ego take a hit. Rating system also generate some strata artefacts meaning there are levels you can't get past without spending as much time as your opponent on tactics, or openings, and you never get to experience chess on a more strategic level, or deeper understanding level. This mean that most of the fun get extracted out of chess once you get addicted/interested enough. I think it's much better to play unrated games anonymously against a random pool of anonymous players (eventually with a min level to exclude complete novices), and offer rematch when the games were interesting. You should play to win but your reward signal shouldn't be the win but rather the interestingness of the game for both opponent. When playing you should try to understand your opponent, his current chess understanding and how it's revealed through his current moves, and construct with the board some situations that will be interesting enough for the both of you to have a good time. Don't play the board. Play the player through the board. A good game should look more like a dance than a fight. You have to infer from a few moves who your opponent is, and how to interact with him in a constructive way. That's what popular streamer do when they play their viewers (usually friendly and constructive). And that's probably what teens expect when they join chess after viewing a few videos. But instead they get thrown into an adverse destructive pit of soulless addicted grinders.

gubby 3y ago
Interesting point, but of course it’s not possible to create a platform with an average win rate of 80%.
- rcxdude 3y ago

ouid 3y ago

I think lichess.org is generally a better place to play. Less pointless monetization. More content available. Better alt modes.