Something odd about previous opponents

I was going through some of my older games and noticed as I was reviewing some of them that several of my opponents have achieved 1700, 1800 + rating. Now normally I wouldn't think anything of it.. except I noticed I had beaten these opponents. I'm feeling flabbergasted as I am only 1345 at the moment and do not believe for a second I have the skill to beat anyone who's natural skill level is that high. And what's weird is they made that climb in a matter of weeks/months. So I guess my question is, is it common for higher rated players to sometimes drop a game to a lower rated player with that much of a rating difference? Maybe they were tired/distracted? Something. Make it make sense. 🤣🤣

Good vibes to the community. 🙏

https://www.walkofmind.com/programming/chess/elo.htm

If we take your 1345 rating and put you up against a 1700, that's a 355 difference giving you about an 11% chance of winning.

Against an 1800 you have somewhere between 5% and 6% chance of winning.

So not very common but it happens sometimes.

Everybody progress at their own rate because chess improvement is not linear but if you stay dedicated and put it the hard work, one day you just wake up and you’re a better player.

For me, I had weaknesses and poor habits to strip so my pool of players at the time were 1500-1800 after a year but they also played over 3000+ rapid games I was 1300 after 300 games in a time span of a year.

I still take my time and prefer to be underrated as I focus more on tactics training and OTB habits but my last tournament win was against a 1700 player and I was 1400 at the time. In that same tournament, I had a missed win against a 1900 player.

Keep at it and don’t compare yourself to others.

its also possible to get an inflated rating.  1800s make mistakes; I have beaten folks all the way into the low 1900s here and there over my career even though I have never sustained a high rating anywhere near that.  And I have had my rating shoot up after beating someone like that, far higher than my skill level, and I immediately get the points taken back off once I get paired up past my ability.   You see both sides -- I have also seen ratings far below the skill level, and it has happened to me.  I lost power for about a month a couple of years ago (that was horrible!) and lost like 20 games on timeouts, just now starting to get back to where it feels correct again.   You never know what your opponent has done that could inflate or deflate their rating, but yes, once in a while, you will encounter and beat a highly rated player either because they screwed up in your game or their rating got inflated from a couple of lucky wins recently or whatever else.  

It could be a number of things. Some possibilities are:

- They simply improved and now are 1800+ level because they actually learned a ton and increased their rating a lot over this amount of time

- They slipped up when playing against you - either for natural variance or distraction or whatever else

- Perhaps they were playing multiple games at once as part of a simul or just by playing multiple chess.com games at once. It is possible to alter your settings to allow multiple ongoing games, but this requires a higher membership to turn on this option (I know diamond can do this, but not sure about the other premium membership levels)

At the end of the day, I guess it doesn't matter too much. People make mistakes and can't play perfectly all the time. Somehow they lost to you and now they are much higher rated, but this in itself doesn't mean anything. 

I also just checked @BigFoxy90 are you perhaps mistaken about the rating? According to your All-time profile statistics. You've never played anyone close to 1800 rating. In fact, of your 724 games on here, your highest win was a 1326 rated player

@Vocaloid93 what I'm saying is that they were not that highly rated when we played each other. Now they are 17 and 1800. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I just find it crazy that they have progressed that far that quickly.

Your improvement over the past year is very good. Also very consistent. I can't imagine many people do any better than that. If you are saying you played people a year ago that you beat and they are now 400 or 500 points higher than you are, I would be very suspicious.

Not to say it's impossible but that's Hikaru level of improvement.

@1g1yy

It's actually more suspect than that. I played both of these opponents in the last few months. I just thought it was a very unusual uptick in rating for both of them especially considering I won against them. And I have so much to learn yet, that a victory against opponents who would be that highly rated would be next to impossible for me. 

That probably only counts rated games: my stats say my best win was against a person rated 1728, when in fact my best win was against a person rated 2482 (in an unrated game. Don't you hate when that happens?)

OK. SO just to clarify, the opponents were not that highly rated when I played them. One opponent I played and defeated on July 21 of this year had a rating of 1172 and now has a rating of 1859. The other opponent I played on October 5th!! He was rated 1276 and is now rated 1756. I would say if these guys were this good to begin with, I never should have beaten them. That is also an extremely rapid climb into the upper levels in spite of the fact I was able to beat them. I don't believe for a second that I possess the skill to defeat someone who is rated that high. 

That's been my whole reason for this post. To see what others perceive with that information. 

I wouldn't worry about my opponents' rating.  In the short-term, I wouldn't even worry about my own rating.  That's results-oriented thinking.  Instead, I'd concentrate on the process [what are my areas of improvement?] and let the results chips fall where they may.

In unrated, lots more things can happen as players tend to take those games more casually. I know I can play hundreds of points weaker just from playing late night chess and awake longer than I should xD