I am just wondering how accurate the ratings of personalities in chessmaster really are, I have a dual processor computer, and yesterday beat Rusty, who is rated 2002 on my machine. But I don't think i'm that good. it was on 40 mins each time control, as I don't believe in blitz chess. I doubt I would have a chance against a human player rated 2000. Does anyone know what my likely rating would be in real life?

also that is one thing i hate about online play, 90% of the games of blitz.. whats up with that? speed is not chess. it takes away the whole point of chess.. the "thinking" part.

There's a previous post on the Chessmaster 10th Edition forum that says Chessmaster ratings are accurate within 50 points of the "real world" USCF equivalent.

I am glad to see that someone else likes long chess games... I don't see any point in blitz games, but that's just me...

i like both blitz and regular time chess. i like blitz, because i grew up on it, that's what made chess interesting for me, fast... exciting.. i didn't have a lot of patience.

i later started playing regular time controls and began to love that, maybe it's a reflection of my changing personality, as i got older i became more patient (though i have a long way to go).

i still like to go back to blitz once in a while because i believe it helps. i believe it helped me develop what i call 'chess intuition.' it's a feeling a certain position is good or a certain move/tactic is winning, because it feels right. as you play more and more blitz, it gets more and more accurate, and you're able to play a relatively good game of chess without delving into deep complicated lines.

what i learned from longer time controls is that very quiet positions often have amazing tactical posibilities. also, longer time controls let me get better at the strategical aspects of chess... positional aspects. i found blitz mostly is about tactics, and normal time is strategy oriented.

now i mostly play correspondance chess on www.gameknot.com. i think that's a fantastic website

I believe that if you play many games against different opponents, then the rating is close to the real one. If you play only against a speciffic opponent and you keep winning because you take advantage of that one and the same flaw, then the rating you achieve doesn't say much.

I believe that the best way is if you always check the 'random' and 'hidden' box, and always select 'random colour'. That way the opponent will always be in your range, but you won't know who it is. For example if you know you are playing Kenji, then you can adapt your play so that he will give up his rooks for your knights (because he greatly overvalues knights). If you succeed that he exchanges both his rooks for your knights then it's very easy to beat him. But if you don't know that your opponent is Kenji you will just have to play chess. And this makes it harder to beat him. So playing hidden opponents is really good and compares more to the real life - normally you don't know your opponents style before the start of the game.