gameknot.com

[Praetor Mandrake]

I showed my late uncle my gameknot.com scores. It was something
like 4500 wins and 5500 losses. I thought he'd be impressed
because I had played 10,000 games. He was disappointed in
me. "I'd like to see more wins than losses," he said.

I axed my account and restarted.

Right now I have 23 more losses than wins. The margin is slowly decreasing, was 28 more losses about two weeks ago.

The real problem was that at the time I recreated the account I
was going through turbulence in life. I had 51 games with
timeouts which means I just let them lose after an opponent's
move. Slowly but surely I'm eliminating timeouts (they're at
17% now) and catching up wins to losses. I'm not going to tell
you how I'm getting more wins than losses, because a chess
player has to keep certain secrets. But you can surely guess.

[Blueshirt]

Praetor Mandrake wrote:

> I showed my late uncle my gameknot.com scores. It was something
> like 4500 wins and 5500 losses. I thought he'd be impressed
> because I had played 10,000 games. He was disappointed in
> me. "I'd like to see more wins than losses," he said.
>
> I axed my account and restarted.

Why not just try to win more games? Okay it might have taken a while
to catch up but at least the figures will be accurate. Why lose all of
your game data? 10,000 games is impressive, as is 4,500 wins! (Always
focus on the positives!)

I haven't played that many games of online chess in comparison but [on
Chess.com] I think I have more losses than wins too. I wouldn't see it
as a major problem, unless you were trying to become a GM or something.

> Right now I have 23 more losses than wins. The margin is slowly
> decreasing, was 28 more losses about two weeks ago.
>
> The real problem was that at the time I recreated the account I
> was going through turbulence in life. I had 51 games with
> timeouts which means I just let them lose after an opponent's
> move. Slowly but surely I'm eliminating timeouts (they're at
> 17% now) and catching up wins to losses.

Timeouts are a lousy way to lose a game...

> I'm not going to tell you how I'm getting more wins than losses,
> because a chess player has to keep certain secrets. But you can
> surely guess.

The power of prayer?? ;-)

[Ken Blake]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2022 22:25:36 -0000 (UTC), "Blueshirt"
<blue...@indigo.news> wrote:

>Praetor Mandrake wrote:
>
>> I showed my late uncle my gameknot.com scores. It was something
>> like 4500 wins and 5500 losses. I thought he'd be impressed
>> because I had played 10,000 games. He was disappointed in
>> me. "I'd like to see more wins than losses," he said.
>>
>> I axed my account and restarted.

Did it answer?

>Why not just try to win more games? Okay it might have taken a while
>to catch up but at least the figures will be accurate. Why lose all of
>your game data? 10,000 games is impressive, as is 4,500 wins! (Always
>focus on the positives!)

I'm 84, and I almost never play any games of chess, online or
over-the-board, any more. But I don't think I've played as many as
10,000 games in my whole life.

[William Hyde]

At age 60 Blackburne estimated that he had played at least 50,000 games of
chess. And he still had twenty active years to go.

If you count speed games, I may be at the ten thousand level. I've played only a couple of
hundred rated OTB games, a few dozen postal, and a few hundred offhand games.

As to win/loss ratio, that's a function of your opponents strength. A friend on lichess has
a terrible ratio, as he only ever plays stockfish at level eight. If he played level three, he'd
have a hundred percent score. He's the anti-Eli.

I prefer to play it at a level where it wins the majority of games, and in my case that's
level six, usually.

William Hyde

[Blueshirt]

William Hyde wrote:

> On Friday, June 17, 2022 at 10:14:45 AM UTC-4, Ken Blake wrote:
> > I'm 84, and I almost never play any games of chess, online or
> > over-the-board, any more. But I don't think I've played as many as
> > 10,000 games in my whole life.
>
> At age 60 Blackburne estimated that he had played at least 50,000
> games of chess. And he still had twenty active years to go.
>
> If you count speed games, I may be at the ten thousand level. I've
> played only a couple of hundred rated OTB games, a few dozen postal,
> and a few hundred offhand games.

Online people like to play the quicker formats I think; Bullet, Blitz
or Rapid... If all anyone ever played was 1|0 Bullet you could easily
play 50/60 games a day and rack up thousands of games a year.

> As to win/loss ratio, that's a function of your opponents strength.
> A friend on lichess has a terrible ratio, as he only ever plays
> stockfish at level eight. If he played level three, he'd have a
> hundred percent score. He's the anti-Eli.
>
> I prefer to play it at a level where it wins the majority of games,
> and in my case that's level six, usually.

Why not play people online?

[William Hyde]

I do, on occasion. But I lag badly for some reason, and the computer is less annoyed by this.

William Hyde