are ratings being rigged at chess.com to farm engagement.

I have seen people with peak ratings of over 2100 fall 300 or 400 elo points lower and more so at bullet rating . It makes a mockery of rating system when some one is 1600 rating as that is their peak rating in all levels vs someone with peak ratings of over 2100 but also 1600. Is it that people are intentionally lowered rating by putting people through pools knowing that people will out of spite want to get back to their peak rating and hence will play more?.

A 1600 rating elo represents a chess understanding of a certain level.

A 1700 rating elo represents  a more improved understanding of a certain level, and so on with 1800,1900,2000,  etc. when one is faced with opponents of peak rating over 2100 while competing with someone who at surface level has live rating of 1600s, it is a fraud.It is intentionally making it harder for someone to get back to higher rating. Either ratings represent a certain skill level and knowledge level or it is being used for engagement farming.

Ratings aren't being rigged by the site. Tilt can happen and sometimes some members might sandbag. In the latter case, is you suspect someone if that, you should report them.

Also, ratings are not absolute measures of chess knowledge. One 1700 might be great at openings, decent at tactics, poor in endgames and have poor time management. Another may not know a few opening moves but is excellent at tactics and have good time management and is good at endgames.

300,400,500 points tilt?. The whole idea of elo rating takes care of average knowledge as a whole.

I have seen many, many, many opponents and myself fell over 300,400 points and more. That is strange and this keeps happening. Tilt happens because of the rigged nature of pools of competition. where one is feed opponents of similar rating, but whose peak rating is quite high. Making it harder to reclaim and get back to peak rating. I have seen with myself, where the ideas that would work for 1600,1700,1800 dont work often because the other side often while of similar rating has a peak rating much higher. over 1850 and above. And they are not sandbagging. So, what is actually happening is that, people are being fed opponents of higher peak rating but low live rating. This leads to low rating of participants, because knowledge level is similar. where as in a fair system, it should be easier to get back to ones peak rating or close to it if one faced only opponents whose live rating and peak rating are similar and making that a fair assessment. A simple measure to say would be that on average when one faces an opponent of live rating similar to peak rating , one would have better odds vs when one is facing opponent of live rating but very high peak rating. If this measure is true and ofcourse it is true, then it would mean that the system is rigged. Otherwise one would be fed opponents of lower rating until ones rating climbs up and then faces similar rated opponents. Instead one is facing opponents whose live rating is low but peak rating is high. making the system of rating nonsensical.

The overall integrity of the rating system is maintained through rigorous anti-cheating measures and regular updates to the rating algorithm.

It's easy to tilt, especially in bullet. You can put in a lot of games in a certain short amount of time and if you're playing poorly or are having connection issues, dropping hundreds of points is very possible.

why shouldnt i be salty about ratings, i put in lot of hours. Second, is,people are saying this can happen, ofcourse it can happen. I am saying why it is happening, the design choice. lichess for example uses different mechanism , you move only after you receive the opponents move. There is a design choice.

Even at beginner level, fluctuation by hundreds of points is pretty common and doesn't mean anything evil is going on. I'm totally rubbish at chess, generally hanging around the 600-700 mark. I often tilt, I lose one, get fed up, and play clumsily and fast, losing a whole load more. I suffer from bad internet connection. Also I've discovered that because I have a personal tendency to offer a draw if someone blunders (almost always accepted!), and I usually resign if the opponent disconnects (because I feel sorry for them logging back on later to find that they've lost by default - it's happened enough to me!), I tend not to climb unless I'm feeling ruthless, in a mood to exploit weakness. The difference between 550 players and 900 players isn't that one plays better chess when they're playing well (I've checked! The "Review" function agrees!), it's that 550 players regularly have brain-farts and hang a queen, while 900 players generally don't, so from my perspective, whether I'm 550 or 900 depends on whether I'm offering draws to queen-hangers! But I enjoy playing the bots, and that's the weird thing, I can play bots with 1350 rating and win, but I regularly lose against 600 rating humans - go figure! Different sorts of chess are different. If you don't like the ratings, I'd suggest playing unrated games, or playing logged-off. They're just a number.

Considering how many assumptions you're making, compared to the alternative argument that "people get bad days and get frustrated", I'm inclined to believe the latter.

Watch some of chess.com CEO Erik Allebest recent interviews in YouTube - he mentions in at least 2 of them that a brand new member at chess.com is 40% more likely to stay if they win their first game and speaks in a way where it’s clear that chess.com doesn’t fake a win just to get them to stay - they rather try to encourage that person to play against a bot. Not a bot pretending to be a person. He understands the temptation but he has no doubts about not doing the ethically questionable thing, so he’s not going manipulate someone’s rating to try and lift their engagement either

I agree, system is rigged.

That sentence makes no sense whatsoever.

Ratings on chess.com earn you nothing at all except maybe ego.

Your rating on chess.com is worse than your actual rating ? You'll gain more in future.

Your rating on chess.com is better than your actual rating ? You'll lose in future.

There is simply nothing to be worried about here. Sometimes people have bad days, or bad luck, or whatever. It will turn around again.

In the long term of course everyones ELO will fall to zero. Cant play anymore once you've expired.

Compared to LIChess... the competition is much harder here at Chess.com

I play at 1600+ elo over there. But here it's 1400 (barely )

Here people know how to play.

Ratings tilt? No.....!!!!

How about Power Hour as the reason !!!!!

You get on Chess.com on the weekend between 8am and 6pm (regardless of time zone ) and your playing with a bunch of hungry, focused players looking to move up the rating list. The lower rated you are, the bigger pool of combatants. You will run into several players ready to move up the list... playing a level above their current rating.

to avoid this ... slow down. take each game seriously with focus. Nothing says it's a race. Having a bad day... stop! Go study some aspect of the technique... middle game or endgame... even openings.

Please don't remind me about the "regular updates to the rating system".

Before:

After:

I'm only 1800 I bullet meanwhile all the other 2000s(in blitz) are 2100(in bullet) it's the fact that I don't play bullet not due to the system rigged some people suck at some time controls and are insane at others and yes there are sandbaggers

Some people also have tilt and it hurts them(I usually increase elo due to tilt because of a mindset I have but most don't)

I would also like to add that unfortunately, time spent on something does not equate to being good at something

What would be suspicious would be if large rating swings didn't occasional occur.

none of you guys find the design suspicious. I am making a recommendation for a better algorithm, to take peak rating into account along with live rating to get a better more hierarchical pool of opponents, that would be a fairer system in terms of improving over time.

One is better at winning odds vs someone at say 1700 vs someone with 1700 live rating but higher peak rating say(2284).

A more gradual path to improvement for all would be to have opponents whose live and peak rating are relatively small.

There is a clear way to prove me wrong, do you believe that a person with a live rating 1700, is equal in skill to another with same live rating of 1700 but also have a higher peak rating of 2284 rating or not. If this were true, we could look through most peoples previous games and we will find that the win loss ration does not statistically depend on a persons previous peak high rating, but if what i am saying is true, then the win loss ration is statistically clear in case of some one with a higher previous peak. For example, you will have higher statistical chance of beating with a person whose live rating 1700 and peak rating 1750 vs someone with live rating 1700 vs peak rating 2284. That difference in win loss ration between these two different pools of opponents with similar live rating demonstrates the difference in their skill level, which is what elo has to reflect.

I only play standard rapid / blitz chess on here now using a guest account for that very reason, i.e. getting caught out and playing far too much trying to regain points to the "level" I thought I should be at.

So I only play 960 now but exactly the same thing happens - I recently went through a phase of "losing" something like 15 straight games. It was ridiculous. And this wasn't playing continuously. And it's happened a few times, even in this 960 only games phase - three or four occasions were I lose 10+ games in a row.

My feel is that I'm probably being paired with bots. As the OP said, it's probably to ensure continued engagement, but I just roll with it now and find myself laughing at it happening when the "correction" phase begins.