I hope my cognitive abilities are not in sharp decline 
I kept a break for over a year and half - before it I was constantly hovering at around 1300-1330 and now am having real difficulties in getting above 1150. People with just 1100 rating seem to be quick and knowing basic strategy and tactics quite automatically. Should I see a doctor?
Did chess.com get harder suddenly?
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Jul 17, 2022
0
#63
Same here, the difference I was 1300-1350 only two months ago and now I barely get above 1100. All of sudden all 1000 players became chess masters. This site is a fraud.
Jan 8, 2023
0
#64
Couple years back all players were starting at 1200 rating - I think in all categories. So the peak in global rating was maybe just a little lower than that (for bullet). Now everybody can choose their starting rating and the peak in global rating is now around 500 (for bullet). So I believe that is what caused this change - that people are playing better at lower ratings. Back then you could find a lot of newbies around 1200 level, but now you will find quite skilled players there. Newbies are most likely around 400 level now. It is frustrating if you play on this site for a longer time, because it is likely you have seen your rating drop, but it makes sense...
Player strength here dropped by 100 points. What used to be 2200 is now 2100. That's why everybody was gifted 100 points in Bullet.
gin-chan6969 wrote:
I feel like people at the same rating have been playing better lately and I have been losing a lot of rating points the last few weeks. Am I just playing worse? It could be because I quit caffeine but it's still a pretty big difference.
I feel the same way. I actually have to agree with you. My guess people were going down in rating that just started, wasn’t playing that well, but then they improve as they go back up the rating latter so now the games are harder to win at the same rating. I can’t imagine that’s not the case because I know I’m not getting worse. People are probably playing more and studying. I’m buying a subscription so I can make bigger improvements and get a better idea how to make less mistakes and analyze my game more.
I think chess.com isnt getting harder theres just more people to battle and i guess people who are really good at chess
HUGE increase in number of players - almost 16.5 million in the rapid pool now - a lot of muppets but some stronger players too.
Likely your ranking has gone down but your percentile is up, and you're finding it harder to maintain your rating. At least that was my experience last time I played, when there was more capacity in the site.
jetbrau wrote:
As with most game design these days, the match engine / opponent pairing algorithim has 1 priority / success criteria, and that's to keep up engagement rates. A company like chess.com can only really improve their product via the pairing algorithim, and things like UI improvement (which doesn't have much room to improve) + game analytics and lessons etc, so they will be pumping alot of resources into the pairing algorithim as it's one variable they have with which they can directly control our engagement rate.
Engagement rate increases with psychological heuristics like contrast effect, where hot streaks are much more dopamine fulfilling after a cold streak. Streaks are most likely in the pairing algorithim by design, and as others have pointed out "variance" is natural but I (as an AI & behvaioural psychology specialist in app design) would imagine the chess.com guys would be leveraging variance as best they can to improve engagement rates. They will have a lot of data on your addictedness level, as well as the global levels, and have figured out a "threshold" for how much losing you can tolerate before you never come back. If you have a low threshold, i.e. you have left the game for a while already, I imagine the pairing algorithim will more likely match you with someone that has a weighted average to lose against you. Rating is only the visible number the players can see that express the skill of the opponent, but things like existing streaks, real-time accuracy levels, how long the opponent has been playing in the last few hours (speculated concentration levels) etc would be taken into account, and the ratings could be "adjusted" behind the scenes to reflect the present strength of the opponent based on all data points they have accumulated. It's no accident that you will get paired with 85% accuracy + at 900 ELO for 10 matches in a row following a rise in the rankings. Without those cold streaks, the hot streaks wouldn't be as engaging and we'd get bored of the chess.com product faster.
If the pairing engine was completely random and only based on the rating we see, there would probably be much less variance and streaks - and we'd also not still be playing despite the fact 900s have been playing like 1200's for the last 10 games. We are chasing that dopamine buzz of finally ending the cold streak, and we've been conditioned to realize that it does end and it feels great when it does.
Also don't forget, everyone is playing more frequently because of the ease of access and things like Queen's Gambit show, so the global average skill level might be improving. "
Exactly right. I also track statistcal data and trends in my work (Business Developer) and can easily recognize a low probabilty anomaly like what happens here from time to time. This is not the normal variance, but something induced through mathematical pressure. I have no problem with them doing what the do to promote business, but not disclosing it with an honest open trusting sharing caring approach is bad operations.
Aug 21, 2023
0
#71
I agree that players around 1200-1500 rating have been getting stronger lately. My theory is that this is because of the huge number of new players. Since 2020 number of players have more than tripled on chess.com. Many of these players are improving in skill, so now we have a huge number of players who are underrated (compared to 2020 ratings), and a lot of the time they are playing against each other. So it will take them longer than normal to increase in rating.
Caffeine kill your feeling for real chess making you ilusive in your belief. If you want to really improve a shot of scotch before match training is a medicine to improve fast
You are just a beginner. It goes up and down.
NeonSkyNS wrote:
Or it's all the 2000's alts...
Ding ding ding. One person got close with "now players can choose their starting rank" but somehow didn't connect the dots that the site is obviously full of alt accounts and cheaters. Still fun to just play chess but sometime feel like I may as well just cut out the middleman and play against the computer they are using.
Glad I'm not the only one who has experienced this.
I've dropped from mid 1300s to 1100 in about 2 weeks - get thrashed by players in 1000s - got to be cheating.....
Apr 7, 2024
0
#80
gin-chan6969 wrote:
It's a very accurate measurement of strength. The only way it can go down without me playing worse is that everyone else got better, or lots of people left chess.com (because it sucks) and there was a rating deflation.
Where are they going or playing? What are the better alternatives?
Look at percentile instead of rating. The mean rating has dropped from 1100 to below 800 in about 3 years. I am now about 93rd percentile but with a rating of only 1360. Years ago my rating was about 1450 but my percentile was below 90th. I think this is due to new players coming in at lower starting ratings. The system used to start at everyone at 1200, which was considered average back then. The distribution has been skewed to the left,
But looking at percentiles can be misleading.
For instance, if we count literally everyone in the world (including children, homeless people or people on benefits, people in third world countries, etc) then I'd probably be in, or at least close to, the top 5% when it comes to wealth. But having a few thousand pounds sterling is nowhere near rich.