Help! Went from 1500 to maybe 600 Elo! Not kidding!!!!

1. It is odd that you have so drastically been playing worse out of the blue. But there could be some plausible explanations. 

Playing against a computer is not an accurate measure of skill in chess playing. Up till 1300 or 1400 ratings, the computer will commonly blunder pieces like knights or bishops, not as many queens. When you play against higher rated computer bots, 2000 rated, for example, they do not hang pieces but are already too strong to beat if you are at a lower level. So if you are 1500, finding a good computer bot to beat is difficult. Now on to the 1500 computer wins to 800 rated computer losses. Chess.com may have changed the bots one way or another which could explain the change but that is unlikely. You may have overestimated your abilities, plus different websites have different methods of playing. Other chess websites may use different engines for lower rating computers. Also, ratings can oddly change between websites, even against other people. My blitz rating is 1500 on one website and 1000 -1100 on the other. 

Just wanted to pop in and say, I actually don't really care that my playing level is "officially" 1500, because this was just playing against all those computer programs. You can consider it level 1500 in the computer chess game. I was just surprised suddenly I couldn't even beat level 800. There is no competitive intention here and I did not intend to portray myself as competing with anyone here or anything so there's no need to "accuse" me of not having a valid Elo rating. (I didn't write that with animosity, just wanted to write to clarify there are two or three concepts being mixed up in this discussion.)

Regarding Divinity, yes I got that, I think there were two, and I got both, but after a while I lost interest (I think one of the annoying things was the audio background was too repetitive, they have the same townsfolk saying the same things over and over ad nauseum as I recall) and Wasteland 2 I have not yet tried. Will take a look thanks.

Thanks, great insight and advice.

Why not try playing some games here against live opponents.  You'll get your answer as to where you stack up real fast.  

Late to this party but in my experience the bots are wildly inconsistent. The way they seem to work is that they make a 'bad' move when they roll one - worse bots roll bad moves more often, and in more crucial situations. So with a 1500 bot for example, if you happen to get a good roll at a good time, they hang a piece. Often they don't and they just make the best move instead.

Given that I think it's perfectly possible to beat 1500 level bots occasionally and yet still lose to 600 level bots occasionally. But the majority of the commenters here are right in that this has little to nothing to do with regular chess Elo. A 1000-rated player will basically never beat a 1500, and will basically never lose to a 600. With bots it's much more swingy.

@centaurme the best way to determine rating is to play against humans, not computers.

I can testify because I'm only 1080 elo here and can beat as high as the 1800 bot not consistently, more like about 2/10 games of the time, and maybe draw the 2000 bot. 1500-1600 though I can beat fairly 50/50 or better.

Everyone drops at some point. I find it happens when you're trying to learn loads of things at once: it's difficult for your brain to process everything you're trying to remember. take a break from playing games for a while and focus on parts where you're lacking.

Ask your parents :) :wr

It's happening to me too I've gone from 1500 to 1200 it's a lot of elo usually it happens when you try to implement new skills into your arsenal.

Dear Centaurme,

I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analyzing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem is that it can't explain to you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why it is so good or bad.

You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals.

In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.

I hope this is helpful for you. Good luck with your games!

Don't play when you're tired! Don't play on an empty stomach! Don't play while you're under stress or anxiety. I think this plays a role in many people's decline in ratings. Knowing when not to play chess!

- focus less on your elo and more on developing skill at the game

- Computer elo is an attempt to estimate the actual FIDE elo. When you say you have 1500 elo this is based on assumptions about the accuracy of the computer estimate, but generally computers are pretty bad at making these estimates, from what I've seen it's not uncommon for them to be off by 500 elo or more in some cases.

Just a software update could be the reason for the change for all anyone knows.

But there's really no telling what your issue is, I'm not you so I really have no idea.

For the purpose of accurately estimating your elo you would never go by the computers estimate, you would just play a couple games online and figure out what your actual elo is.

For your claim... you just don't know what your elo ever actually was so it's kind of a baseless claim.

- For general improvement it's not good to only play vs. the computer, it's much better to play online chess against other people. computers are good practice if you want to work on a specific position which you can setup and play multiple times... otherwise it's better to play humans

hmmmm