when i was browsing around smoeone's profile, i found the no. 3 chinese chess player , Harassed, who wrote a very interesting description:
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Ratings are meaningsless by logic, but somehow they are important for our ego, that is strange paradox. Rating manipulation on this site is so easy and some even abuse that with multiple accounts.

This is only game site, real life tournaments matter more, but they are still just stupid games.

Pity it is easy for us to *know* and to *understand*, but we often cannot act regarding to this even ourselves. But may be one day...

Everything is about psychology. People are competitive. When we see one can, then we try to show them we can,too. Then kind of vortex appears.

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may be their ego are too heavy. ha
they are overrated!-435152 Oct 16,2006

435152:
I have to agree with 435152, that my place isn't at the top of the ratings of chinese chess. I'm quite an overrated "beginner". But I'm nearly overrated in all kinds of games I'm playing here like written in my profile long time ago.

And I have to agree with Harassed's statement. Ratings ARE meaningless.

It should be impossilbe that someone like me is in the top 20 of the chess rating. Look at my games. Full of mistakes.
My rating is near 2300 but I'm playing like 1900 or so.

The only reason why I'm playing rated games are, that there are hardly unrated games here AND that other players have a circa appraisement of the playing strength.

If someone is a 2200 in chinese chess and a other a 1900 it is never sure that the 2200 player is really stronger than the 1900.
BUT most times the 2200 is stronger than a 800 player who lost every game before finishing the 20th move.


I hope that this was my first and last statement to my rating here on brainking.

(And I'm sorry about my bad knowledge of the English language.)

FromHell:
Of course, with few games as we have and with beginners also, we can have good rating. But not for long.

435152:
You have to understand, this site had mostly european and american players and Chinese chess isn't well known here I think or at least not high-level except very few players.
I simply don't understand the game. I can move the pieces, but I am not sure if I would be able to deliver a mate in some kind of endings without problems and I am able to lose pieces very fast sometimes.
When I played with more advanced players (ChicagoBulls) I was in losing position in few moves. Both my games with ChicagoBulls were deadly lost very fast - at least my feeling said that.

I think, for non-chinese players Japanese chess is much more attractive, because it has more common ideas with classic chess and attacks there look impressive. I understand in China and Asia generally also this strange game is very popular, I could imagine perhaps the population playing this game can be almost close to western chess, but for us it's simply too exotic.

Wondering about population, which plays Japanese chess.