Fairness of playing against players who dropped hundreds of points

I am sure  many of you have felt the same thing in their games.  You have been matched against an opponent who is about your rating, but you have the feeling to be playing against a much stronger player than his rating is showing.  When you check his/her rating history after the match you can see that only a few weeks before his rating was hundreds of points higher than he is now.  Although you have been matched against somebody of more or less the same rating, this still gives me the feeling I did not have a fair chance.  Also, I do not think the number of points your rating is decreased with, is taking this into account.

So, you think you have a fair chance to win against a GM ? Maybe not the best comparison, but only to make my point you do not always have a fair chance to win. That is the reason the rating exists in the first place. But, anyway, this is another discussion. Thanks for your reply !

I think he meant that you have a fair chance to win because you can't lose and have it be not your fault. If you play against a GM and lose it's because you messed up or gave up.

#4 You always have a fair chance to win against anybody, even a GM. Chess is a draw from the begining so if anybody wins at all, it's because their opponent messed up. That's the only way to win, if somebody makes a mistake.

Or decided by who makes fewer mistakes, if below Super-GM level. At Under 1000 level, where I play, every other move is a mistake

#7, correct, that too. There was a famous quote, I can't remember who said it: "The winner of the game is the player who makes the second to last mistake".

And even at my level (2400) players still blunder quite frequently.

I completly agree with you.

The maximum ELO someone's has achived (and how fast they've lost it) should be taken into accout when matching players for a game. Your comparison about the GM is perfectly suitable in this case, 'cause it explains clearly the problem. Maybe the opponents have lost points because they've been trying some new strategies or just experimenting with the game, but they still have that expertise and knowledge of the game, so it's not fair the be match against them.

Overall, this website has many mistakes but somehow they preferer to invest their resources in banning flags and making stupid Youtube videos

This happens quite often in local tournaments (at least in open 1|0 arena tournaments I see every day): some players "lose" dozens of games in a row before these tournaments to drop their ratings significantly and thus to get lower rated opponents in tournaments, to win easily and to steal medals which just vanish when these "players" get banned.