This is the reason why I couldn't ever get into chess, despite my dad and brother enjoying it. My intuition was crap (having not developed it) and I lacked the ability or desire to fully visualize multiple steps of the game.
All that remained was rote memorization, which makes for a boring game indeed.
Despite all of that, I suspect chess will long outlive my preferred entertainment of Unreal Tournament.
I enjoy using nearly pure intuition when playing so I just use that strategy and see the same ~50/50 win percentage as most players because my ELO is based on how I play past games and there’s millions of online players across a huge range of skill levels.
There’s nothing wrong with staying at 1000 or even 300 if that’s what it takes to enjoy the game. It’s only if you want to beat specific people or raise your ELO that forces you to try and optimize play.
I hate ladder systems. Winning is fun and losing is not. Why would I purposely choose to play a game/system where your win rate does not meaningfully improve as you skill up?
That sounds frustrating and tedious. If I get better I want to win more often.
But winning is only fun because you do not always win and almost proportionally so...
If you get better you get to play better games against better opponents.
The win or loss is ancillary to the experience for me.
>The win or loss is ancillary to the experience for me.
Maybe because I primarily play sports and not chess but this attitude is completely foreign and mystifying to me.
Don't you feel bad when you lose? Why would you purposely engage in an ELO system that results in you feeling bad after 50% of games, and never gives you a sense of progress?
Isn't that profoundly discouraging?
Do you think Tiger Woods or Leo Messi wish they won fewer matches? Like I just can't get myself into a headspace where you're out for competition but are satisfied with a 50% win rate.
The ELO system does give you a sense of process. Continuing to beat up weak players does not give you progress. It makes you the one eyed king of the blind.
Do you think professional athletes like Woods and Messi are stupid because they could be playing in Farm League and winning every time against scrubs?
By definition it does not, unless your definition of progress is "number go up".
>Do you think professional athletes are stupid because they could be playing in Little League and winning every time against kids?
So let me get this straight: are you seriously suggesting that you don't understand the difference between e.g. the format of the NHL or the FIFA world cup, and playing against literal children to pad one's win rate?
Because I think you're probably not arguing in good faith with that last comment. Time for me to duck out of this conversation.
It feels bad to loose but you also need the wins to feel good. Beating a low ELO player is about as fun as beating small kids at basketball or something. For me it’s not the win/loss that drives me but making fewer mistakes. If I loose a game where my opponent punished a minor mistake, fair enough, that took skill and I’ll learn from it and I don’t feel bad. But if I loose because I made a blunder (obvious tactical error) that sucks and I hate that.
Because that's not a Nash equilibrium: for every extra bit of fun you have, someone else has notfun, and thus has an incentive to switch their strategy (play on another site)
You would probably prefer the game Shooting Fish in a Barrel over the game Chess.
Winning half the time is better because each of those wins means far far more than winning against bad players.
Playing down is only fun for insecure, unambitious people. If winning is the fun part, just cheat, don't seek out bad players to play against. Playing against bad players makes you bad at chess.
I haven't read this thread in that way: if you want to improve your skills that is great, it is your choice but you should know, realistically speaking, that at certain level you cannot improve anymore in your lifetime, except if you are part of the elite.
All that remained was rote memorization, which makes for a boring game indeed.
Despite all of that, I suspect chess will long outlive my preferred entertainment of Unreal Tournament.