Dear chess friend,
we kindly invite you to the Elometer if you are interested in a quick measurement of your chess skills!It took me a couple of hours to get through the test, but that was with stops due to supervising a 7 year-old. I would recommend doing it on a desktop computer instead of a tablet (as I did) or a phone, as that will minimize finger slips.
To obtain a psychometrically founded estimate of your playing strength based on a comparison sample of previous participants, all you have to do is to solve the following 76 chess problems.
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In all of the following positions, you are playing White, and White is to move. Note, however, that the best move is not necessarily a brilliant one. Some of the following positions are rather simple, but some are very tough. Just try to choose the move you would play in a real game, and refrain from only trying to find a combination; this will yield the most precise estimate of your Elo rating.
The Elometer is part of a research project conducted by Birk Diedenhofen and Jochen Musch from the University of Duesseldorf, Institute of Experimental Psychology, Germany.
How'd I do? They estimated my rating at 2200 with a 95% confidence interval of about 2065 to 2330. Oops! Well, it isn't 100% confidence, is it? The format of the test also kept me from my usual errors of transposing moves and dropping random pieces, so I know where the 400 point difference is, alas.
Also of interest in a 48 position endgame test. All you have to do is state if White, with the move, can force a win in the given positions. I got 39 of 48 correct. Give them a try, and let me know how you did in the comments. The endgame tests include lots of basic stuff as well as more advanced material, such as the famous Cohn-Rubinstein ending from the St. Petersburg tournament of 1909, and Euwe's famous 1940 study of the pawn skeleton from the Ruy Lopez Exchange Variation. (Yes, I recognized both of those without having to look them up, although I did need to double check dates.)
I found the endgame studies interesting enough to enter them into a ChessBase database for further testing in the future. Aiming for no less than 48 out of 48.
