500's playing better than they should

i used to be around 700 rated and even hit 800 in bullet/ blitz. but now it feels like everyone just suddenly plays like 1000's while being low rated and finding mates in situations where they would have blundered all their pieces ( and I still do) so wth is going on?

i recently got mated with a rook, bishop, king and knight in a blitz game by a 600. this has never happened before. and then it kept happening. 500's and 600's suddenly knew how to mate stuff even i don't know how to do. finding tactics that they really shouldn't find.

Rating tracks results, not strength of play. If people lose lots of games due to time they can easily be underrated compared to strength of moves played. Also 1400s rapid can be 600s bullet. It happens, I am 1200 rapid and 700s bullet. People see what they see, sometimes it is the strongest move. In bullet it takes a lot of positional knowledge and quick calculation to get consistent results and climb the ladder. Even when flagging you still have to set hard problems for the other person.

One of the big issues with online chess is multiple accounts. "Speedruns" and hidden prep accounts are at all levels.

1400s rapid 30 can be 600s rapid 10. I am living proof.

agreed some people dont do it for a while and then do it again and are very underrated so they end up taking rating from there opponents which makes there opponents underrated

Even in daily chess games, It happens. Forexample I win against 1150-1250 daily rated players, but I lost to a 850 daily player and it made my rating hurt a lot suddenly. Some players have joined chess.com and are weak, so their rating decreases a lot and after a long time, they become a good player, but due to they are underrated very much and it takes a long time to back, they get stuck at under 1000 ratings and due to it happens to a lot of players, this problem is common and forexample in blitz, it makes 700-1000 players very better than their real rating. I'm a 800 rated blitz player, but just when I am sad and play very awful I get under 1000 rating in review and I mostly achieve 1250-1450 rating in my blitz game reviews

Magnus is 400 daily because he never plays daily

I was beaten by a 800 player. I provoked him once using a move from engine that was a difficult threat to guess but he defended with accuracy then I lost the game 10 moves later!!

I hope you played the engine move from memory. It's against fair play to consult an engine during the game.

Chess is a continuous learning process. Embrace the challenge of facing stronger opponents, and view it as an opportunity to get better at the game.