Playing Team Matches

The "provisional rating" used by the USCF (and CFC and others) is helpful for Swiss tournaments. For elimination tournaments it's much less helpful, but the 1200 starting point seems a lot worse (I'm sure a few of my early opponents didn't enjoy their games with me when I first came to chess.com, but there was no way around it for me).

What if, before being permitted to enter small tournaments, restricted-rating tournaments, or team matches, new players were obligated to enter an open tournament of 100 players or more and obtain an initial performance rating from this?

 Good idea - it needs some refinement, but basically a good idea. The challenge may include "This is a M5RGP match" sentence (Minimum 5 rated games played) for the challenged group's admins' benefit.

Prehaps we should make a minumum of 5 games before team matches.

I do agree with an option of minimum amount of rated games before registration to a team match is accepted. This would sort out many problems and will be a big time saver for TD's.

I think Donna does a great job, bringing this issue up, cause the only real thing we can do is bringing the need under their attention, when they feel the need gets high, they will search for a solution.

I am not a programmer but the site uses already these parameters for the tournaments, so should be able to create that. But in logical programming it could be very difficult. Personally I think that the staff and programmers want it also. But also other priorities for this site could hold them back.

(Remembering the time that all wanted a vote chess page, and it was not possible. After a few got together and a programmer had the idea and time for the solution, within a few days and with the help of players and other programmers in that thread  it was settled)

perhaps after playing a 1200 grade, re-calculations could be put on hold until they had completed 5 games - and acheived a more representative level.

After 5 games on chess.com, I was rated about 1400. The 1200 baseline inserts a bias that can take a lot longer than 5 games to smooth out. I've finished 18 games now, and anyone looking at my stats should logically assume "still unrated".

It also works both ways. I had a match recently where I clearly outplayed a +2000 player & could reasonably say that I had a win & a draw in the bag. Unfortunately he began to default all of his (many) games. By the time it was my turn for the time out victories, his grade had dropped to below 1500 - the resulting rating change not at all representative of my performance!

A selection of balancing mechanisms for team matches was proposed in this other discussion; (see first-come-first-served-team-chess for background).

The issue I have is I can play tonnes of high rated players in UNRATED NON TEAM GAMES when you join a team match do you want to play an opponent about the same as you or someone who is going to kick your ass?

It isn't fair to work really hard on your rating just to have some newbie come along and take loads of rating points when you are expecting to play someone similar ability to yourself.

Like I said I am all for learning but we should be doing that in unrated non team matches. You enter team matches to try and win your team points but its an unfair win for the opposing team if they stack tonnes of players who are higher than their rating is

agreed, forget the rating and go for it, unless you are playing in OTB or Corres tournaments, where rating points actually count, online here, play to learn, whether they are higher rated or not. Coming up against someone whom is better is a good wake up call.

I lost to a dutchman today, not a pleasing aspect for me, but I can learn to suck eggs just like everybody else.

I understand what you are saying but not everyone feels the same way as you

I agree with Donna here. I am playing a guy in one of TML games, he is member for 3 days, won 3 games, rating same as me 1830, and he is already playing 10 team match games for his team. I looked at some of his games, and he is beating 2000 player without even sweating. I'm not afraid of losing game, or rating, but that just kills all fair play here. Either stop players joining team match games if they don't have at least 20 games played and/or if their account is less than 3 months old. Or, just shuffle all registered players of both teams and let them play random opponent.

Problem is that some teams HAVE these accounts sitting idle for months "till they are needed"

Imagine there's no countries 
It isn't hard to do 
Nothing to kill or die for 
And no religion too 
Imagine all the people 
Living life in peace.

Kill the ratings, kill the tournaments, kill everything. Did I miss something or do superadmins of teams that win TML get 10.000$? Does cheating your way to 2400 rating makes you better player or person? Is the need to feel loved and accepted by 2.000.000 people on this site that you don't even know so important even if you fail in life?

No that means they play long time live chess, and someone says, i could use you in our team match, then when they join they join correnspondance they have a rating of 1200, while in live chess they are already much, much higher.

exactly the point of this thread