My ELO is smaller than your ELO

Pouring through the book on Sicilian openings has done some wonders... I think. Now all I need is some more books to help me on my way.

My brother-in-law (henceforth known as BIL) plays chess at the local leagues club. I'm thinking of signing up and joining him as well....

Encouragingly enough, my BIL (whom by the way I've never beaten him EVER in chess) thinks I'm somewhere in the 1400 ELO rating. As I've no idea what that is, I did a quick Google search which explained that ELO is some kind of rating of a person's chess skill.

The purpose of all these ratings is to get them as high as you can. The higher you are, the more kick-ass is your chess skill. Kind a bit like comparing who's smarter.

A bit like school grades I guess, so the world champion is sort of like the ultra uber smart-alec in class, you know, there's always one kid who knows everything whenever a teacher asks a question. Whereas lesser mortals (aka. me) can only sit in school and day-dream - part of the reason why my school grades suck... :)

Anyway, the world chess organisation FIDE only gives out ELO ratings to those who demonstrate super uber skills. I can see my name not appearing anytime soon, oh say, within the next 10 years or so....