Chess.com Ratings are a JOKE

PawnTsunami wrote: "Sshhh!  Don't tell them all of our secrets!"

^ (Right you are.)

Everyone just disregard my earlier post!

Happy chess everyone.

But how do you find stronger opponents to play? Is it by setting some values in the search for a new game? Because usually stronger players do not want to play me since they have nothing to gain from playing versus me.

I fought versus a Swedish 2000 rated CM, I think two or three times in an Swedish tournament and that was a fun experience even do I lost fast in all those games. But he really shows my weakness fast. So if I would be able to play him many times I might get better way faster. However he might be a bit to strong for me since the odds of me winning is very low. But maybe to fight versus a 1850 would be a nice practice for me.

wait, looking at your stats you went from 1300 to 1800 in Rapid in under 90 days. How did you improve so fast??

In the random pool, it will be hard to do that and make consistent progress.  If you have a friend who is significantly stronger (in your case, a NM would work) and they are willing to play you in some training games, you can do that.  I would suggest having them play the openings you want to work on.  You can do the same thing by hiring a coach for the same reason (playing the training games) or by hiring a coach for actual lessons (which will help fill in whatever fundamental knowledge gaps you may have).

If you have a group of friends who are all around the same strength, you can play each other and help each other improve.  If you want to know one of the reasons kids improve so fast, that is one big reason - they form friend groups, play each other, analyze the games together, and all of them end up improving.

Interesting conversation.  

This was a new account (forgot my password to my old account after changing phones and realized I had not updated my email address on it).  The 1300 was when I was still in my provisional period - though I did get slowed down a bit when competing in some tournaments organized by my local club against kids who were underrated in their online rapid rating (one kid was a 2150 USCF, but only ~1200 in chess.com rapid ratings at the time because he only played blitz online at the time).

So that was just my online ratings catching up to where it should be.  My actual improvement came from going from 900 USCF to 1600 USCF in 3 years (as an adult, that is not bad - kids do it MUCH faster).

you are a joke

I've seen pages and pages of @PawnTsunami patiently explaining his points while you shift the goalposts and claim other people are delusional LOL. On page 2 alone he breaks down your claim about Kowarenai having 50 game win streaks and demonstrates how it's just wrong. You've never acknowledged that and just continue to claim that K is an example that proves your point instead of being one that proves Pawn's point. I know the people who are already of your opinion will refuse to be swayed by the facts, but there are also a "reasonable middle" who will see what is happening here, and learn to automatically dismiss everything you say.

look.

if you know that your rating is higher than it is, then create a new account and restart.

i know for a fact that my rating is considerably lower than it should be because i've beaten several people rated at least a few hundred points above me. 

if you aren't winning more than half of your games, you're exactly where you need to be.

stop berating other people over your rating.

it's literally just a number.

if you want to improve, do a ton of puzzles.

you'll begin to notice the patterns.

I really think that all chess websites do this

I do understand why you see it that way, but even in your example of Michael Jordan, he got better and earned the nickname "Jackrabbit" by playing much better competition (older kids) when he was younger. 

True, the chess ratings are really bad here...

You have a reading and a comprehension problem. Lichess and Chess.com both use the Glicko rating system, which is itself an evolution of Elo rating system used by FIDE; Lichess uses a slightly later version of the Glicko system than Chess.com, but the difference is not material.

The difference is in the player pool between the 2 sites, because a rating is NOT an indication how how good someone is at chess, but of where they sit relative to other players in the same rating pool.

Oh come on .. it's part of the challenge.. or is your mental fortitude not strong enough to break out of 1100

On both sites new players get to their correct rating within 15-20 games, no matter where they choose their starting level. Your claim that it takes 200 games on Chess.com has been disproven, even though you deny it.

It's actually reading this thread and seeing @PawnTsunami's detailed refutation of your opinion about @Kowarenai's games that has disproved your assertion LOL

I actually went through his games while watching the coverage of Round 11 yesterday.  His actual playing strength is about what I would expect from a ~1400 level player OTB, so him getting to the 1400-1800 range was very quick.  The reason it takes him so long to move passed that is because he plays for cheap tricks.  When the tricks work, he gets a quick win.  When his opponents are paying attention, he picks up losses (even to players whose rating is much lower than his own).  The kind of crap he is playing works in 3+0 or 1+0 games because many times guys are premoving in the opening and frankly, he gets lucky (i.e. one of his more recent games where White was playing a KIA setup and premoved Bg2 when K had played Bh3 the previous move).

You think Kowarenai is 1400 OTB strength but has 2500 online peaks because he plays for nothing but cheap tricks every game? What?

Even for the absolute youngest and best blitz specialists the biggest gap you would expect between an OTB rating and online blitz is about 500-600 points.

I have played Kowarenai before, he doesn't play rubbish, actually a lot of the games he wins are grinds where he slowly outplays his opponent (many of whom are titled players).