A couple of days ago I was rated at 1400. Today I hit rock bottom at 1100, but I still feel that the players are really good at that level. Probably around same level as the 1300s. My rating fell dramatically as I played when I was sleep deprived, but still it is not going up. I then played a couple of games on [another site -- VP], where my rating is 1700. Did not lose a single game... So what's going on here? Anybody else experiencing this?

Well I figured, since more people are staying at home, there's a good chance that people are also playing more chess. After all, it is a great way to entertain ourselves when stuck at home. A sudden increase in chess players might shift the rating distribution. However, this is just wild speculation, but I was wondering if anyone else had experienced this now.

Why was the other site blocked?

Not like he was promoting the website or something 

Better players here, poorer there? Maybe they are more sleep deprived players there than here?

If you think theres a connection to Corona then try playing witout your mask on . . .t

Beating lower rated people is much harder than beating higher rated ones, because lower rated players cheat more often. 

Higher rated people don't cheat so often because they are afraid of losing their accounts by fair play. So, there is a cheat obstacle there if you want to raise your rating from that low.

Lower rated players don't care if they are caught cheating, because their games and account are not so valuable. Because they don't care to lose their accounts they are not afraid of cheating often.

Usually I was around 1500 in rapid and beated above 1400 players very often. On purpose I lowered my rating resigning all matches in the first move until I became lower than 1100 rating. Just for the fun to see how I grow up again. Most of the times It was impossible to beat 1100 rated players. Impossible.

I checked that in lots of the games I played against lower rated people have an accuracy of no less than 98%, 1 inaccuracy, 0 mistakes, etc. And when I played higher rated ones their accuracy is 94%, 7 inaccuracies a couple of mistakes, etc.

And a rematch with low rated players is always a cheat. I never play rematches for this reason. Once I played against 1200 player: in the first game he was 86% accuracy, 10 inaccuracies, 5 mistakes 3 blunders. For the next three rematches he suddenly was 99.9% accuracy, 0 inaccuracies, 0 mistakes, etc. Better than Magnus Carlsen.

https://www.chess.com/news/view/chess-com-month-in-review-march-2020

Chess.com Month In Review: March 2020

Fair Play and Sportsmanship

• 94,906,279 games reviewed for fair play.
• 3,975,120 accounts reviewed for fair play.
• 9,843 accounts closed for fair play (including 7 titled players).
• 403,771 abuse reports received.
• 28,506 mute actions taken.
• 22,727 individual accounts muted.
• 22,234 accounts closed for abuse.

Their rating would be higher if they cheat.

That's for every single month.

I think it was the previous month when I saw 15 titled players cheated.

9,843 accounts closed for fair play are a lot of accounts per month. Each account could have cheated in 100 games or more: 900,843 cheating games only that month. Plus all those games chess.com didn't analysed or didn't detect.

The user I said before wasn't detected by chess.com as a cheater. So, imagine.

I don't think so, because of the following reasons:

They get bored before it gets higher, because that's the most boring thing to do in the world: to see how a machine wins against an unknown random guy. Many are also closed account by fair play before it gets higher.

On the other hand they are also playing against other cheaters, so they can lose often also.

Another thing is that chess.com would be as a preference reviewing cheaters games for higher rating players than for lower rated ones. So, when the rating of a low rated player grows, their acounts are closed by fair play because now their games are more often reviewed. But until they reach that level they are freely cheating all the time.

In chess.com around 5 million matches are played per day. That's 150 millions games per month.

94,906,279 games reviewed for fair play.

That leaves behind 55 million games not reviewed, per month.

And I think chess.com as a preference analyses tournament and higher rated matches first. The lower rated matches, the less important, could be those 55 million games not reviewed.

That means that 1,8 million matches are not reviewed per day. That's 36% of games not reviewed per day. Ergo, 64% games are reviewed per day.

Because chess.com can't analyse every single game played per day, it's logical to think that their preference would be to analyze higher rated games, like GMs games, or maybe from 1400 rating upwards.

As a consecuence, if you ponder that percentage (64% reviewed games) by rating, it could give as a result that only 10% of lower rated players, for example <1400 rating, are being analysed. And 54% of the analysis are for >1400 rating.

I don't know the ponderation for sure, chess.com managers are the only ones who know.

That means that roughly more than half of the games you are playing per day against low rated players are not being reviewed by anti-cheater software.

For this reason low rated players are more difficult to beat, because you are playing actually against Komodo or Stockfish or whatever chess engine they are using.

Because you fell into the low-rated pit, it will take you longer to get out. There is a cheating barrier there.

my puzzle rating used to be around 1760 but now its 1450!!!  PLEASE HELP US

It depends on the newcomers. If they are new to chess, which I'm sure the vast majority is, they immediately get beaten by the more experienced lowest rated players who were there before the containment and who would then acquire a better rating. Those players would subsequently get beaten by the players of the rating class above them who would in turn benefit from an improvement of their rating. This would apply to every one. So you would see an inflation of ratings rather than a deflation. 

That being said, I'd like you to be right, and could even have had the same feeling as you. But I just guessed that the evaluation of the level of other players depends strongly on your current chess mojo, which you cannot really attest if not precisely by your rating fluctuation from week to week.

That's a very good point.

I was doing very well, then ended up losing close to 200 ELO points in just a few days. Not a coincidence that I was layed off from my job due to corona virus. So your question, does corona have anything to do with this? It's not exactly corona, its where your mind is while you're playing. If you're thinking about the virus and the problems its causing, or inflicting on you, then obviously its going to affect your game. My advice...if you lose a few games in a row, just trust that you're not ready mentally for the challenge. If you still want to play, switch to unrated....in you win a few games in a row, switch back. This way, your rating won't be affected. 

If you deliberately lower your rating, p8q, that is cheating.

huh

I know, don't worry. I learnt it's called sandbagging, I didn't know it was cheating, so I never did that anymore. That old account was banned because of that

But since then with this account I have losing streaks in which I lose not deliberately. Because some weeks there is too much stress at work, anxiety or other reasons we all play worst.

So, my point is, how can that be detected? it can't.