fide online arena not worth it

I don't think it is worth paying for a membership where you would recieve official fide blitz, bullet, and rapid ratings. I would rather pay for a real OTB membership and recieve standard ratings. Put your money to good use.

This whole fide arena thing is becoming a mess. You have players earning official online blitz,rapid,and, bullet ratings who can't even play chess. FIDE should market it towards GM and IM, instead of insisting that others waste their money on a membership.

Please elaborate. We are in an era where getting around to tournaments is a P.I.A. Plus 4 hour games are a P.I.A.

I can see it as an attempt toward 21st century (finally) bringing together competitive chess players without all the (excuse me for being redundant) P.I.A.

Of course, we have chess.com (and other sites) to be thankful that the p-word is not a real factor anymore. So, what are the + and - of this thing?

re: http://arena.fide.com/

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/will-fide-online-chess-arena-kill-chesscom

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/fide-online-arena3

I have no clue what you are talking about. I was saying that paying for a membership on fide online arena to recieve official FIDE blitz, bullet, and rapid ratings is a waste of time and money for players with a standard OTB rating of below 2000. You can get blitz, bullet, and rapid ratings on chess.com for free.

Why would you think I'm unaware that one can get ratings here? But are they universally respected ratings?

More so, why would you not know what I'm talking about? But, I'll try again.

Perhaps someone can give a current status of how the FIDE Arena program is working. Here, alledgedly there are about 10,000,000 subscribers. Any idea of how many are on the FIDE site?

If there aren't too many, that would not bode well. It might make it difficult to obtain gameplay. The rating pool could be too low to be meaningful.

My thoughts are that travelling by car, train and plane to chess tournament is sooo 19th and 20th century. Don't get me wrong. I prefer to play OTB.

And those who don't mind all the travel, time and expense are welcome to keep doing what they've been doing. Others might like the pragmatism of playing online and getting a meaningful rating, which FIDE can offer.  

I'm not saying that chess.com ratings are bogus or worthless. They do have value. But, come on now, it doesn't quite have the same prestige, pristine, unadulterated equivalency to a FIDE imprimatur.

I'm not a big fan of FIDE or USCF. They have been badly managed for many decades. Perhaps they and other such chess organizations can truly "get their act together" in the 21st century. Or perhaps not.

FIDE online arena is a waste of money. I signed up several months ago. I could not get any FIDE rated matches then, let alone at the time control I wanted and with a similar level opponent. I tried again a couple of weeks ago and had the same experience. Much better to play at chess.com and/or OTB.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not really surprised. I had just hoped that maybe... Well, enough said.

I second what repac3161 said. I too had the same experience. It's basically impossible to get a fide-rated game. One day I got so frustated that I challenged ALL the fide-rated players (cause you can only get a rating if you play against them) and not even one accepted a challenge! So far it's been 3 months since I subscribed and haven't managed to play any official games.

It's basically fide-rated players playing against fide-rated players. So if you are not one of them already they don't wanna play you.

The only good thing about it is the interface IMHO.

The horribleness of FIDE arena aside, this comment is ridiculously dumb. 

This FIDE thing could have had merit. It is sad to hear that they are as inept as ever.

earlier fide online arena said that it would soon merge the online and otb ratings to a single rating ,means that that single rating will vary by playing online/offline .if you are really good in chess,no time to play,otb,you can improve your ratings here..but thats the fact..online ratings ,remain online.read this post sent to me by,fide incharge.

Best regards,

you can get fide ratings by playing in their competitions

Well thats sad because I was looking for a place where I can play long games and they can actually mean something, so I dont have to wait 25min for my oponnent to move in a complete lost position for an actually invisible chess rating (I dont want to put my real name here, is too long)

Im losing here because Im bored all the time. Maybe ICC players are more reasonable?

   I am amazed that at your level you can be bored. There are so very many ways to play chess on this site. And you can play tactical puzzles as fast or slow as you like...for years and years...and never get bored.

   But, perhaps you are quite young. I have grandkids who get bored easily. If you are in a similar age category, then please forget what I just said.

You're are right Im kinda young yet (21) but Im playing to improve so I dont like to waste time.

Yes I have an account on chesstempo, maybe that site should be my focus. Or opening study.

There is a trick to getting an established FIDE rating since they start you at 1200 (even though they originally said they would start everyone at 1800) and with one black star (meaning that you have not played enough games to establish that you are not a cheater - in which case you will earn up to 5 gold stars). The reason you need this trick is that most people with established FIDE ratings will not accept challenges from a person without an established FIDE rating and with one black star. The trick is to monitor the scheduled tournaments and the 'sit and go' round robins for people with blue ratings. When you play in those then they can't avoid you because the system will pair them with you. Only four games like that with players with blue ratings (at least one of those games must be a win or a draw) and you will have an official FIDE rating. Your rating will appear on your FIDE profile on their website and look something like this: https://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=150000048

As far as comparing this to OTB play, well I don't think it is as enjoyable as interacting with live people so I'm not gonna give that up. However it is a bargain for only 25 euros for unlimited play for a whole year (the current special through May 31, 2015) and the software is second to none.

I have been a FIDE Online Arena member since May 2014 when at its busiest there were only a few hundred people online at one time. Nowadays I regularly see over 1300 members online at one time and numbers like that are usually seen when it is evening in Europe. All of those people are probably there to play since live chess is usually the only thing going. If there are close to 1000 players online then I can usually get a game at my favorite (rapid) time control (45 + 10) without waiting too long.

Fortunately FIDE decided not to merge the blitz and rapid online ratings with the otb ratings (like they had originally announced) but instead decided to allow otb play to influence the online ratings (but not the other way around). They have also rolled out titles "for the lower rating band" earned exclusively through online play. As far as their anti-cheating technology, I think it is working well since many players that I have researched have their online ratings match pretty well their otb ratings.

A good thing too, they were a hair's breadth away from irrepairably ruining the integrity of the entire of OTB chess ratings forever. It's still probably not completely off the cards. 

No offense but with a standard rating below 1300 you should have plenty on your plate right now without getting bored. Your also far from having to worry about openings other than well known traps. You need to learn how to make plans, understand positional concepts, and tons of tactics.

Who cares about raitings, my question is is fide a good place to play in online tournys for actual money? If I have to spend real money on a membership I want to be able to win real money from the tourtaments.

your 1400 on chess.com dude unless you plan on going to a local park and hussleing some idiots you wont make money in chess, or tournaments