Seperate beserk ratings - idea from Atrophied case

#40 I personally see more ratings for "handicap" odds games to be really positive for the site - possibly the first chess site to take handicap odd chess games seriously to rate them and you could check the rating lists for bullet berserk and that would be competitive in itself - things like max rating achieved on bullet beserk etc as well.

As mentioned, I also see as one of my scenarios, more "sporting" berserks may be used by those leading tournaments, making it more fun for the chasers.

Also addendum scenario #4 : No need for players to create seperate beserk only accounts

For implementation, I would only start just by taking bullet chess for such a rating split. Bullet chess also has usually such a large quantity of games, that it would make the sample distributions based on a larger volume of games, and well out of the provisional berserk-rating period fairly quickly. Currently not all variants have all timer ratings in any case. The ratings and their justification should follow the key community population activity areas and other key justifications (such as where rating deflation is currently occurring such as in bullet games). No point having berserk ratings for all time limits. Possibly where one can expect to see massive differences (cause of rating deflation) such as bullet would be the "killer applications" of such a rating discernment between beserk and non berserk.

I would prioritise for implementation : Bullet chess, and maybe Super-blitz chess and Blitz chess only and see how that goes. The "killer application" for me would be bullet chess.

When it comes down to it - how does want to define say Paul Morphy?! With one chess rating, or with two or more:

Paul Morphy 2750 (not handicap games)
Paul Morphy 2600 (knight handicap games)
Paul Morphy 2400 (Rook and knight odds games)

If one is more discerning about Paul Morphy and that is seen as a good an interesting thing, then basically this is also an interesting concept to apply to the site, to be a bit more discerning about key activity areas. For Paul Morphy it was often mostly pawn odds, Knight odds, or Rook odds.

If you merged all Paul Morphy's games together he would be negatively deflated.

There is a price to being more discerning but this level of discernment should only be applied to high cost/benefit areas where it is sensibly justified. Possibly the main use of such discernment and separation would be as a anti-rating-deflation resource as mentioned for example in bullet chess especially. Where there is currently no significant deflation, then there is no need. As a concrete example, GM Erik Hansen could keep his 2800+ bullet rating and still do berserks as an example and not come down to 2300 which I think he might have on occasion from continuous berserking. There would be no need for the "berserk only" accounts people seem to create which is mainly for bullet chess as far as I am aware.

Cheers, K

This is why I'm always against adding new variants to chess sites. I guess it's ok to have them, but they need to be kept completely separate from chess. Here, we have a problem of not wanting to do something that would be beneficial to the actual game of chess on a chess website because of how many non-chess games are on the chess website. Add more rating categories for chess because it makes perfect sense to do so and would be the right thing to do by all rational thought processes? No can do, we have to have a Racing Kings and Horde (etc.) rating clogging everything up, along with people thinking it should have its own divisions of ratings like actual chess does. To me, this whole issue is silly and brought on by trying to do way too much. Lichess should be a chess website, and these sideshow freak games need to not ever get in the way of that.

Same with arena tournaments. Arena tournaments are very antithetical to chess itself, especially when you combine it with this silly berserking idea. It actually changes the way you play the game itself - winning quickly is significantly better than just winning - which is unforgivable in my eyes. However, since the prey on the ADHD generation's need to OMG PLAY ANOTHER GAME NOW NOW NOW we have this terrible idea taking precedence over legitimate chess things, like swiss/round-robin tournaments, actual classical games (lol a an 8 minute game not being blitz), and legitimately rated auto-pairing pools.

I love lichess, but these decisions are very disappointing. As time goes on and these decisions are being made more and more, I'm thinking that a different website that is focused only on actual chess and not all this distracting stuff would be better for me.

@PhillipTheTank no one is forcing you to stay here on lichess . Variants are related to chess and chess players understand them better, so a normal online gaming website having Atomic Chess is ridiculous. ( just an example ) Even more variants should be added IMO. ( with different pieces etc ) .
Where Do I agree you:
We should have Swiss and Round Robin tournaments. Also team matches. But Those tournaments take a lot of time and many people can't join them because of different times in different countries ( I don't know how to explain that ).

Also, bughousetest is not much popular and bughouse can be moved to this site and this would make lichess popular ( I played against a GM - Spartak Vysochin in bug house on chess.com ) .

Many more things, but I'm on mobile and lazy to re-correct the auto correction.

I'm certainly not under the impression that anyone is forcing me to stay here, which is why I mentioned I'm considering switching sites.

@Kingscrusher-YouTube yeah. Restricting the rating separation (normal/berserk) to bullet, would make the whole undertaking much more doable. Even more since there are no rating-capped tournaments in the bullet time limit, so no hard questions will need to be answered immediately. Surely implementing this idea would bring some fresh air in the site!

Implementing this idea may have some unexpected consequences though. One of them could be that the berserk popularity will be rapidly increased. More bullet-players will be willing to berserk, and more often than before. This means that double berserking may become common. This is interesting, because there is no analogous to double berserking with the 19th century habits of playing chess with odds. Under no circumstance you would expect Morphy and Anderssen play chess, both of them giving knight odds simultaneously. If most players prefer to berserk their bullet games, then the rating gap between berserk and no-berserk would probably shrink. But then again this means that the berserk ratings would be artificially inflated, which would give players incentives to not-berserk, to steal points from these juicy overrated berserkers. Interesting!

@PhillipTheTank you raise some valid points, but by recycling your account frequently (as you have said) you deprive your arguments from some added weight. Zero chess activity and non-existent ratings on all categories, drag your "influence rating" down my friend. :-)

I am unconcerned with your view of my "influence rating."

For the record, and many people don't understand this, but your reply is a textbook definition of an "ad hominem" fallacy (literally attacking the argument-presenter instead of the argument).

Further, it is inaccurate. There is not zero chess activity on my account.

@PhillipTheTank I agree that my reply was an ad hominem. But this is how the world works. People observe who says what, and take into account the invisible "influence rating" that accompanies each argument. For example Kingscrusher's idea about separate berserk ratings has a much better chance of being selected for implementation, just because was proposed by Kingscrusher. The exact same idea was proposed last year by @Dragonair, and got almost no support. How shocking is that? :-)

#47 what do you base this on? There is no indication at all that this idea is even being considered.

@lovlas I am basing it on #35.
Edit: you mean where I base that the proposed idea has a better chance of being selected for implementation, compared to last year? Pure instinct.

@lovlas

I think what Skeftomilos is saying, is that all Lichess users are equal. Some Lichess users are more equal than others.