Triathlon, Chess and Julius Caesar
Submitted by
on Sun, 06/08/2008 at 5:44pm.
During my triathlon days a guy was trying to sell me a bicycle computer that showed speed, distance travelled and cadence. About the only thing it didn't do was play Waltzing Matilda. When I declined he said, “Don't you want to know how far you still have to ride?” It was the wrong thing to say. Show me how far I've been, by all means, but don't tell me how many weary miles lie ahead.
And when I looked at my On-Line Chess page this morning I was shocked to see that I've lost 100 games.
Did I really want to know that? It's worse than the text box that announces, “You have no friends on line,” but, of course, that is quite different to saying, “You have no on-line friends.” That would be a sad day indeed.
The most vexing, perplexing statistic shown is our rating. We can take the high ground and say that it doesn't really matter how high or low our rating is but, in chess terms, it really does say something about who we are.
My ACF rating has been fairly stable for the past four years, swinging back and forth between 1550 and 1650 but my chess.com rating has been living on a diet of Mexican jumping beans.
From a low of 1329 after my first few weeks, it zoomed to an embarrassing 1955 at the end of February. Why embarrassing? Because I'm just not that good. Then it stabilised at around 1800 +/- before plummeting to 1700 +/- where it sits and smirks at me this morning.
Of course, ratings—like pain—have a very useful function. They let you know when something is going wrong and, like Julius Caesar before me, I've been given a very clear instruction: digitus extractus.