Has anyone noticed how volatile ratings are?

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wavejumper3

I've been playing a lot more recently, and have noticed that the chess.com ELO tends to be less accurate the lower down the rating ladder you are, peaking around 500. I've also noticed my score jumps around a lot.

I think this is because everyone's score swings like that, and a good player who recently lost many games would easily crush me, and the rankings wouldn't reflect that whatsoever. Has anyone else noticed this as well? If anyone has advice on how to avoid this, that would be helpful as well (I've heard different times attract different people).

wavejumper3

Sorry, what I wrote was a bit wordy. To sum up, player's ratings jump around a lot while playing, especially at lower ELO scores. This leads to a lot of issues where ratings aren't indicative of actual skill. My questions are:
Has anyone else noticed this in practice?

Does anyone have advice on how to avoid this?

Hope that clears up any confusion! I'm putting this here, as it feels more specific to chess.com than chess in general.

magipi
wavejumper3 wrote:

Sorry, what I wrote was a bit wordy. To sum up, player's ratings jump around a lot while playing, especially at lower ELO scores. This leads to a lot of issues where ratings aren't indicative of actual skill. My questions are:
Has anyone else noticed this in practice?

Does anyone have advice on how to avoid this?

Hope that clears up any confusion! I'm putting this here, as it feels more specific to chess.com than chess in general.

You misunderstand what rating is. It is just your past performance converted to a number. It isn't supposed to be stagnant. It is supposed to go up and down as win streaks and loss streaks come and go (and they will).

And please, don't write "ELO". Elo is not an acronym (unless we are talking about the British rock band). It is the name of the guy who invented it.

ice_cream_cake

Yeah agreed that rating just varies naturally. I don't know about more or less variance at different ratings. It appears to me that rapid varies a bit less than blitz and bullet, not sure if my impression is correct. Like iirc my last (and fairly long) rapid run was varying something like 1650-1700 (and mostly 1660-1690), but if I gain or lose 70 pts in blitz or bullet in a day I don't really bat an eye

jimlargon
As the number of games you played increases, the lesser volatile it will be.