What counts as beginner?

Currently I'm 1250 rapid 1270 blitz and 1600 bullet, 
regardless of percentiles I still feel like I have a lot to learn and honestly I feel like as my Elo goes up there is more things that I need to learn/ I am ignorant about, so what really counts as beginner?  

Jeffrey, I think there's two ways of looking at being a beginner. The amount of time you've spent playing chess versus your skill level. I'd say if you're just looking at time it's a bad measurement. I learned 'chess' from my dad as a 5th grader. I didn't play it regularly until around oct 2021. So I've known how to play bad chess for decades. 

As for skill it also depends on from whose perspective? A true beginner is somebody who just knows how the pieces move. A super GM might look at anybody under 2000 as a beginner. As a 1200+ in rapid you're getting to the point where you can beat the vast majority of people in a casual OTB game who just have a working knowlege of how the pieces move. From my perspective I'd say you're an intermediate player. As for bullet and blitz ratings, those take time controls and make them as big or even a larger factor than the quality of your moves so I wouldn't rate your 'chess' skill on those, but I'd say the fact that you are so good at clock management and making moves that aren't losing while down on time helps to push you firmly into that intermediate category. 

Bro word of advice, stop playing bullet. I used to be 1000 blitz and 1500 bullet and I couldn’t really get better but then I quit bullet chess and IT WAS THE BEST DECISION OF MY LIFE. Bro please quit bullet and start improving on your rapid/blitz please

being a beginner doesn't really matter. it is more about if you are happy where you are, or if you want to get better. If you are happy where you are just do what is fun and enjoy the game, if you want to get better it is going to require some work. now to answer your question.

imo i think U1000 is beginner, 1000-1600 is intermediate, 1600-2200 is advanced 2200+ is expert/master. this kind of scale is a bit irrelevant but it is what i feel.

I definitely agree with you there, bullet is not good for you. Play rapid or at least blitz. You will not regret that decision. Also, I might say U1200 is beginner, if I had to choose a rating.

A beginner is always anything my rating and under. 

It's just facts

A beginner (per se) is someone who is new to the game and has barely learnt the rules of chess,

Just watch Chess Geek on Youtube and you will get better at chess assuming you are analyzing your games afterwards. This is why I use Lichess. I get free analysis and I have access to an better opening explorer than chess.com for free which is great for opening prep and finding the right continuations

I think there are 2 things to keep separately here. On the one hand how long you've played (whether you're a beginning player) and playing strength. When we talk about chess, there are different categories people typically use for different rating classes. One of these classes sometimes gets called 'experts', for people rating 1800-2000 or so. Another class is called 'beginners'. That is not to say these players are all just starting out, it's just that their rating puts them in a rating class that is called 'beginner'. Not to argue about whether this is the right name for it, but there are advantages of grouping players together based on rating. For giving out advice for example. Basically for players from 0-1300 or 1400 the advice would be very, very similar: tactics, tactics, tactics. The biggest difference between a 600 and a 1500 player is how often they lose pieces and how often they spot tactics. After that other stuff, like how well you play the middlegame, becomes increasingly more important. So it's useful to group players together like that. That's not to say that most players in the rating class 'beginner' would not absolutely crush the daylight out of players that have just learned the rules. 

One thing to notice is that in OTB chess, adult players don't often have ratings lower than 900, while on chess.com that happens a lot. These rating classes are mostly based on OTB ratings. That means that online there would be a lot more players falling into this group than you would normally find in chess clubs. That being said, considering that the advice is really more or less the same for a 600 and a 1300 player, I don't think beginner class needs to be qualified differently for online players. Where exactly beginner class ends can be debated. For me it lies around 1300-1400. 

The starting self-evaluation can muddy the waters a bit.

A player that beats everybody in the family and in the neighborhood (rarely or never losing) may self-rate at the top level (2000) when really being only 500 strength.

A player that has been playing for a long time but is a step down from masters, and sees masters as a step down from real professionals, may self-rate as intermediate (1200 in Chess.com) when really having a 1900+ rating (if the word intermediate also had an ELO-equivalent rating attached to it when self-rating then such errors may go down).

Some people look at much-lower-rated 1400s as beginners while other players look at much-higher-rated 1400s as almost professionals.  Chess.com seems to look at 1200s as intermediate and varies from there, so on this site you can use the Chess.com definitions if you want to.

Beginner is a measure of time spent playing, not skill. If you've played your entire life but are still terrible, you're not a beginner, you're just bad (like me). There are plenty of old guys in the park who play for fun and have been doing it for 50 years, but barely crack a 4 digit rating. It's like playing the piano. Some people play for years and are terrible but other can just make beautiful music in just a few months, even though the person who is terrible probably knows a lot more about musical theory, chord progressions, scales, harmonies, tonal systems, and the like.

If you've been playing the game somewhat seriously for a year or so, even if you're bad, you're not a beginner. Likewise, if you've only been playing for three months but are already 1800, you're still a beginner, you're just a very talented beginner who doesn't know the names of openings, doesn't know who Bobby Fischer was, and sometimes doesn't completely understand the castling rule. There's a lot more than just rating that defines what a beginner is.

Beginner: "a person just starting to learn a skill or take part in an activity." - Google

i get what the OP is saying, but you cant really call you self a beginner if you have invested a decent amount of time into anything 

Hi! My name is Lauren Goodkind and I’m a respected  chess coach.

  Everybody has their own perspective on what a 'beginner' is.  For example, a grandmaster might consider a 1800 , or maybe a 2000 a beginner. For an average chess player, then 1800 would be advanced . 

To me, if you are below 1000, then you are a beginner.  

beginners regularly miss simple threats.

I think in the internet era, a beginner is someone who dosen't yet play 15+10, 30+0, 30+20 for at least a year or two... sounds weird but to me it makes sense...

Like it's funny to not address "time played" or "elo" as the most defining factor but I really don't believe it is.

Many people starting in the past 3-4 years have only played online, and many play 5+0, 3+0...

At some point you realize that many of the experts and masters you see playing 3+0 have actually played Classical 60+90 or whatever for most of their lives, got to a certain high level and then started playing more Blitz and Bullet... So people think "oh, these guys have mad speed skills, what I need to survive in the 3+0 pool is to be great at bullet... Then no one will be able to flag me" I made this mistake, too.

I played mostly 3+0 and 1+0 for about 2 years, this time means close to nothing. Then last year I started focusing on slow games, analyzing, studying a bit etc, and went up from 1200 to 1550 rapid... 

So how long have I been playing chess?... 3 years or 1?... I believe I've been actually playing chess for 1, and I did some online speed chess BS for a bit before that, you get me?...

I don't know exactly how to put an exact definition on this point I'm trying to make but I think it's understandable?... Like the time you are just fiddling with online speed chess dosen't really count as anything... 

If someone is playing 30 min games, OTB, for a year and reaches 1200 - he's not a beginner.

If someone just plays online blitz and bullet and reaches even a higher rating of 1275 through playing very rarely some 10+0 games which are basically slow blitz... he is a beginner.

But that should not discourage this beginner who is clearly talented, because in a year of 30 min games, analysis and studying chess they could easily be 1500-1600 or more and then definitely not a beginner...

IDK if i'm making sense but hell I wrote all this so i'll post it anyway