Hello, I recently bought Chessmaster XI for my PSP and I've just played a few games against "Derek" (ELO 745) and "Sam" (ELO 816), but they both kicked my... eh, backside... thoroughly! OK, I'm fairly new at playing chess, but when I play correspondence chess at SchemingMind my rating is 1350... It's a somewhat scary thought that my OTB skills might be that bad! Opinions? (And yes, I'm going to join my local chess club on monday!)
/John

I believe the Elo strengths are fairly accurate.

Frankly, if you're new to chess, don't get too obssessed with ratings. If you've seen some of the posts about Chessmaster with the Xbox, you no doubt noticed that some people place too high a value in a number...

How is your win/loss/draw record on that correspondence site?

You probably started at 1500 when you signed in and slowly decreased to 1350. In Chessmaster you can increase/decrease your rating very fast at the beginning.

If you are having big troubles with 800 rated opponents, then I'm afraid your chess skills aren't particulary good - meaning that Chessmaster tutorials are perfectly suited for you. I hope PSP version has tutorials that are at least comparable to the ones in PC version which are great.

quote:

Originally posted by ebutaljib:
How is your win/loss/draw record on that correspondence site?
(snip)
I hope PSP version has tutorials that are at least comparable to the ones in PC version which are great.

As white: 3/4/0, black: 1/3/1, they are using the Glicko system and my rating there is 1353 (135). My rating in the Chessmaster X version was somewhere around 1200. The tutorials aren't very good at all, but I own the PC version fortunately and I'm working with those...

@KHollister:
Yeah, you're right about the ratings war of course, but it is a neat way to keep some kind of track of one's progress...

BTW, I had an hour to kill earlier this afternoon and pitted the PSP "Derek" personality (745) against the PC "Tracy" (if I remember correctly) personality (1308) and it was a clear draw. OK, it was one single game, but anyway...

Thank you for your answers! I'll keep on studying the game....

/John