Some Thoughts on ELO Hell

Chess.com uses some very cleverly built systems of equations that help users find opponents of similar skill and much of it revolves around the interesting workings of the ELO system and in particular, Glicko RD.

For the uninitiated, the ELO rating system is a method by which the relative skill of a player is calculated such that you can be matched with similarly skilled opponents. It was created by  a Hungarian-American physics professor named Arpad Elo. This system has been used in chess, video games, and professional sports.

My interest in this topic began with my little brother. I began voraciously studying and playing chess in 2017 and he began roughly six months after me. However, even though we started around the same time, I put in much more work to learn and in our first ten matches I was winning all of them. In time his blitz rating seemed to stabilize at around 1150. I was at the time pushing 1300. Then one day he made a burner account, because he needed to use a different phone for work. To my surprise, he shot up to 1408 even though he had never been past 1200 on his main account. I found this odd, but in time came to understand.

I looked into this and immediately noted three things; he only played about a dozen games, the people he matched with all seemed to have new accounts as well, and he was gaining an insane amount of points for each win.

So in comes Glicko RD. RD stands for rating deviation and "Glicko" is named after Ron Glickman, the man who devised the system. Think of it as a further development and improvement upon Arpad Elo's invention. Glicko RD is essentially a confidence interval in which the system thinks your "true" rating lies. The higher the number, the less accurate your rating may be. Obviously new accounts start with the highest possible value. Glicko RD will decline as you play more games and the system becomes more confident what your "real" rating is. Frequency of games is also taken into account. If you play many games very often Glicko RD will decrease and if you leave your account dormant for some time, it will gradually increase. This makes sense, right? After all if you leave your account for two years it can be said that during that time either your skills declined or maybe you got much better on a different platform. During that time of absence the system in time becomes less confident it knows what your real rating is. Another thing it factors in is how stable your rating is. If you go on a streak and suddenly increase or decrease in rating over a short period of time, the system once again is losing confidence it knows what your real rating is.

Now this system aims to do a number of things, one of which, is to get you to your "true" rating as quickly as possible. This is why points are given and taken at a much greater rate with a new account. Say, for example, a 2000 level player creates a brand a new account and starts at 1200. Well, if he only received 10 points per match, he's going to have to beat down other players some 80 times before he gets to people on his level. This is not very constructive for anyone involved and on a system-wide basis is going to create a poor experience for users.

Because of this system, though, it's very common for new accounts to shoot to a high rating early on but as enough games are played, the "real" rating eventually emerges.

Further exacerbating this condition is the intelligent matchmaking. The system isn't merely going to search out another 1200 rated player if you are 1200. It will search people that not only have a similar rating, but also similar Glicko RD and number of games played. This means that for people who early on shot to 1300-1400, they often did so by generally playing against other people who themselves were not "real" 1300-1400 players while simultaneously receiving a greater number of points for these wins.

I think it goes without saying that two accounts can be 1200, but are very different if one is a brand new account while the other one is the result of a person steadily climbing there over months. The system knows the difference, and has a tendency to not match people like that. This is obviously a problem for people who like carpetbagging. If you have reached 1300 but have intentionally dropped to 600, the system will seek out people like you and you could actually face a similar level of competition that you had at your real level. This basically protects the lower rated players and in general insures that you are being matched with an opponent of similar skill.....even if you are actively trying to avoid that.

So for anyone wondering what their "real" rating is, just ask yourself two questions; can it be sustained and can it be repeated? If not, then the chances are good that your "max" rating is no representation of any skill you ever had, but more likely just a by-product of the ELO system figuring out what your real rating is. For example, my maximum is around 1400-1500, however, I slowly climbed to that point, and I've also sustained and repeated that across different platforms and formats.

In general I find the ELO system to be both brilliant and elegant from a mathematical perspective. It's impressive to me that there is this system of equations that when implemented, is able to very intelligently pick opponents for you and also help you gauge your general skill level.

However, it's no perfect system, and there is a very real thing that the video gaming community lovingly refers to as "ELO hell." This means a variety of things, but for me, it is when I drop in rating and find that the lower rated guys I'm facing are now just as hard as before, only now I lose more points to them and gain less points for winning.

At first this is really discouraging as you start to wonder if you've maybe lost your touch . In my most recent foray into the ELO underworld, I had dropped to the 1200's and would find myself against an 1150. Well, I don't play the same against these guys. I try more traps, tricks, and aggressive attacks and focus less on prophylaxis and long term planning. Then you find inexplicably that this low level guy knows everything you are doing and schools you. If you find yourself here, take a look at their account. In the last week, I looked at five back to back games against 1150-1200 guys and each one of them had a max rating of 1500-1600. My max rating is 1456. This means the chances are good that these guys were actually better than me even though their rating was lower. However, with a lower rating that means I stand to lose more points in losing than I would gain for winning and that is quite an uphill battle to overcome. For carpetbaggers, they are getting what they deserve but for the rest of us, it can be a demoralizing situation.

Here are my tips for people stuck in ELO hell:

1.) First and foremost a greater understanding of the system itself, can help you feel less discouraged. OK, so this guy who is 200 points lower than your best just schooled you. Take a look at his profile, maybe he was actually on or above your level. For me, I was much less discouraged when I realized the 1100-1200 level guys I was now playing were in fact significantly better than the ones I had faced when I first went through that tier.

2.) Take it as an opportunity to be humbled and to work harder at improvement. In my experience, I've only ever fallen into ELO hell at times when I was overconfident, lax with paying attention, not committed to staying in games, and in general just spamming too many speed games. Slow down, think more clearly, and work at improving. Additionally, those times I fell in rating were also often the times I spent less time doing lessons and watching instructional Youtube videos. Double down on the studying angle of things, and decrease the number of games played, especially speed games.

3.) When in ELO hell, do NOT UNDERESTIMATE YOUR OPPONENTS. This is huge. When I was pushing max rating I would only play two or three matches in a day and I would focus all my attention and energy. If you are playing dozens of matches your mind tires out. For a while, I was under the faulty assumption that this would be fine against lower rated guys, but as I realized, these "1100" rated guys actually hit peak ratings much higher than I had and could truly be a handful. If you double down on focus and study, you will probably have luck climbing out of the hole and you will probably be an even stronger player by the time you've regained your max rating, ready to push even further. In general this tip could just be read as taking your ELO Hell games as seriously as your games when you are up for a new max rating. When you sit down for, say 10 minute blitz, commit to the entire game, using your time and efforts as best as you can. I found also that in ELO Hell I had a greater tendency to bail early from games where I had fallen behind, forgetting that many matches before I've made comeback wins or at the least won on time when I was down in material but was able to fend the opponent off long enough

4.) Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is don't ever let the rating get into your head too much. It can cause you to not enjoy the game when you drop and when you are high it can give a false sense of security where you might fall behind on study or diligence in general. I can't speak for people who compete in chess for a living, but for me, chess is first and foremost....and always...about fun. For me, this has always been the primary driver for me playing and it should stay that way.