What is considered a beginner rating?

Welcome back. I didn’t know this was your thread now. I’ve been commenting in it for several years. When it was created, the average rate on this site was about 1100. Now, it is below 700.

Meanwhile, there have been dozens of threads about how to improve and hundreds of comments about sportsmanship. It has been made clear through comments made that a lot of people want to play chess and do not care about getting better. That’s why they remain beginners. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you enjoy playing chess with friends and none of you strive to be strong, its still a good game. You’re still part of our global chess culture.

When I was young an there were still a couple of decades left in the twentieth century, I played a lot of games with family and friends. I also found some enjoyment reading a few chess books. At some point, I started becoming a stronger player than my friends. That motivated me to seek stronger competition. I lost interest in the other games.

I never had a rating in those days. When I finally had a chess rating in my mid-30s it was C Class (in the 1400s). Internet chess still did not exist, although a few computer folks knew how to connect distant computers to play.

Despite occasional ambitions, I never became any better than a strong club player.

The past 25 years, I’ve taught at least 1000 children how to move the pieces. I’ve coached hundreds of them in school clubs and one-on-one. Some have become state champions. A few are stronger than me now. Most just want to play chess with their friends. There’s nothing wrong with that. They will always be beginners because that’s what they want.

Chess is not the only thing in life. Many of those young children have become adults who shine in fields where they pursue excellence. Some are returning to chess with their own children.

what will happen if i am not able to write my last few moves of the game in a chess tournament due to time

I say around 250

You fill in your scoresheet after you finish.

I was not taking ownership of the thread. Your comment came immediately after mine, and seemed to be at least partially in response to it. You started your comment with “Simply put,” immediately after my two (perhaps longwinded) comments, seeming to casually dismiss and brush them aside as misspent effort on my part. Did I not correctly interpret that as the (perhaps subconscious) intention behind your use of the phrase “simply put”? That’s why I felt justified in responding, because your comment seemed to be in direct response to mine. I didn't just want to argue with anyone on the thread I might disagree with, or anything like that. If I thought your “Simply put” was not even partially intended to be in contrast to my immediately prior more complicated comments, I would admit my response was unnecessary, but I honestly still see that as highly unlikely.

I sincerely appreciate your longtime commitment to the game and to beginners, but if your remark about second graders was not an expression of a preference that average chess ratings were not going down (or maybe an "in my day things were harder" type of a thing) then what was the point of even saying something like that at all? What feeling or idea were you really trying to communicate with that remark, if not one of some kind of disapproval? But even if it was somehow benign, the unfortunate (perhaps unintended) side effect is that average beginners can only see that as you comparing them unfavorably to second graders. Including myself, the average beginner your comment very much seemed to be in reply to. I would love to express respect for your obviously great contributions to the game, but I was not able to feel your comment was quite respectful to myself and other beginners.

I don't happen to be one of those who don't care about improving by the way, and I’ve already improved a lot in just the last 2 weeks since seriously picking up the game in order to play my 10-year-old niece and nephew. We were honestly fairly evenly matched at first, and my nephew even beat me once in a way neither of us saw coming (at the beginning of the game I strongly encouraged him to take back a move that lost him his queen, so I tell myself it doesn’t “fully” count) and my niece very nearly beat me soundly but I lucked out with a stalemate before I even knew how to pursue them intentionally, and before she knew how to avoid them. But after just a day or two of very intense studying I beat my niece easily, and she's the better of the two. In my free time I’ve continued soaking up all the free lessons available from many sources, and playing a few other friends and family members, and opening accounts on a few different websites and apps where I can play both humans and bots in many different ways. Of course I would love it if my nieces and nephews continued studying to match my improvement, and thanks to my brother that may happen. He promised each of them $100 if they could beat him, and they both seem pretty motivated for now, so we'll see.

My brother has been playing for longer, and is still someone you would also call a beginner, but is much better than them or myself. That is why I say "simply, beginner = less than 1200/1300/whatever" is too simple, equating the skill of all 4 of us when there are at least 3 distinct levels between us. Maybe chess is a game with many distinct skill levels, maybe it's not that simple, and maybe that's ok, or even part of what's great about it.

I’m also glad if we agree that there's nothing wrong with many others wanting to remain a beginner indefinitely and play casually just for fun. It seems beneficial for the game if even only casual interest continues increasing so greatly, even if it may also bring with it some annoyances or inconveniences for the old school serious players as well.

First off, OP was 1000 not 1850.
Second, stop necroing posts that are 7 years old lol

@PrincetonReverb

New comments give me a notification. I glanced at those that had been posted in the past several days or weeks and added my simple statement.

Often these threads veer in many directions. Often, I make a statement aimed at bringing things back to the original question even when the OP has departed from the site.

It is reasonable for you to see my reply as aimed at your statement. Maybe it was. 

You are making a good point about gradations among beginners.

I like the story you shared. When families play chess in such a way, everyone benefits. Sometimes ambitions to play well develop from such settings.

Forum archaeology is a respectable pursuit, especially when threads from seven years ago, by and large, are far more interesting than most being created now.

If you go read the first post in this thread, you'll see OP's post was primarily about asking if 1874 was a good score. Regardless of their current score, it seems that was their score at the time they asked. Or maybe they were just asking about the score of someone else they encountered.

Either way, if you're annoyed by people posting a lot on an old thread, maybe that just means you should not follow it. Because clearly you are not as interested in the thread as those currently engaging with it. Why post in a thread just to say don't post in this thread? You're just wasting your own time, and that of others.

Everyone has varying degrees of interest in different aspects of chess, but my comments were chess-related and therefore valid, even if too much for some. If you're uninterested, you're free to ignore it, or even express your disinterest, perhaps start a dialog about it. But you can't expect everyone to discontinue valid participation in a discussion whenever they don't conform to your personal wishes or interests.

I can see that you thought it would be satisfying to just get in a little zinger there real quick, but a better use of your time would be bringing the conversation back to where you think it should be, if you think it's strayed. If you make no effort toward this, there's no way the conversation can move in the direction you would prefer. Unless you would prefer it to be bogged down in irrelevant arguments and pointless disagreements, in which case you'd be doing just fine.

Thank you, I appreciate that. And I understand, I get those notifications too. These were my first comments in the forums, and yours was the first reply (perhaps only partially directly) to anything I'd commented, and I just felt it was more discouraging than helpful. But I think I understand where you were coming from as well. I didn't feel it was necessary to guide the commentary back toward the original topic of the post, because it was asking what rating is considered beginner. I was trying to point out that it's not that simple, and offer a more nuanced or multifaceted way to think about it. I suppose you may have felt I went a bit too far with it, and maybe I did. I sometimes do go a bit too far when I'm very focused on something interesting, but it often produces results I feel/hope are worth sharing anyway. In the future I could probably stand to take less enthusiastic reactions less personally.

As it happens, I found this thread because I was googling a similar question to the OP's title here. It may be boring to those who no longer need to consider these kinds of questions, but after reading a good number of the responses here I felt I had arrived at an under-represented viewpoint that some may appreciate, or benefit somewhat from considering, if they hadn't before. Especially those beginners who might find this thread by googling, as I did.

For me, the only classification that makes sense is the one that comes from participation in official OTB tournaments. For example, in Italy:

• 3° National Category,
• 2° National Category,
• 1° National Category,
• Candidate Master
• National Master

and then, to follow, the international titles.

Any “descriptive” classification based on some online rating like these on chesscom or lichess (which have no official value ) is purely conventional. Everyone can give whatever meaning they want to the terms "beginner", "intermediate" etc. As I often repeat, for example, I consider myself a beginner, and my conventional entry threshold for "intermediate" is 1500 ; below it, all beginners ( or, if you don't like the term, “low-level players”)

As there is no "official" definition, the term "beginner" is purely subjective

If you think that you are a beginner, then who can say that you are not

Does it follow that if you think you are not a beginner, then surely you are not?

Only you can answer that

749

My elo is 516 am I a begginer

800

100-1000 is a beginner imo

My opinion: 0-1000 absolute beginner; 1000-1500 advanced beginner; 1500-2000 average chess player; 2000-2300 my average random opponent; 2300-3000 absolute master; 3000+ Stockfish level