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Why is it that there are bullet players who reached 2500 playing in 2200? or 2600+ players in 2300. I was happy to reach 2300 elo in bullet, then somehow game made me match with higher skilled players (some win-lose rate pool perhaps?) then I need to drop all the way to 2100 or even 2000. How does drop of 300 elo make sense? If this is wifi issue, my wifi is fine. Chess.com better fix the server. If this is matchmaking issue, chess.com better check the max-elo history and make people match with similar max-elo. Like my max is 2300, how would I compete with 2500elo man, those guys could beat a GM sometimes.
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Use Custom Challenge with controllable Rating Range to avoid pairing with 2500+ players
Nah my point is that some people are max 2500 elo, but lowered their elo down to 2200. This should be sandbagging no?
Feb 26, 2026
0
#6
The primary thing that matters in pairings, is the current ratings and the seek range settings. The site does not look at peaks, or win/loss records.
It's not uncommon for people to lose a few hundred elo. I've recently lost around 150 elo from my rapid max, and you yourself have lost around 300 elo from your bullet max.
Feb 26, 2026
0
#8
Just_Dive wrote:
Nah my point is that some people are max 2500 elo, but lowered their elo down to 2200. This should be sandbagging no?
Ratings can fluctuate naturally, and a peak rating isn't usually indicative of actual strength. A good run, with some lucky wins, could easily put someone higher than their stable strength.
If someone is losing in purpose, to lower their rating, that would be considered sandbagging. Tilting or being below their peak isn't.
Just_Dive wrote:
Nah my point is that some people are max 2500 elo, but lowered their elo down to 2200. This should be sandbagging no?
This "logic" can work in both directions:
No I mean let's climb the ladder back up shall we? What is going on at the top of chess players that make 2700elo people drop 100-200, making 2500-2600 drop to 2300, Making me drop hard from 2300 to 2100? Each game costs 7-9 elo at most. How is losing 30 games a day normal man? If matchmaking is fair enough, shouldn't it still stay around 50% per day? It's funny how someday is winning 80%, someday is losing 80%. Rather than every day being around 49-51%
I bet it's all because of titled tuesday, tournament and some GM trying to do speedruns. Let's give Hikaru as an "example". Let's say he does a speedrun thing again, his goal is to reach 2500 elo in one day right? At the end of the day, his fake account gets either suspended or erased, that people gets their elo back. How about people who fought each other? This is just an example but because of Hikaru, someone gonna lose 2-3 games in a row. In normal cases this person might have won 3 games in a row, but how are they supposed to win over Hikaru man. This causes huge landslide over Chess.com and makes everyone drop elo except really top players.
I play every day and found out that I tend to lose more on Tuesday and Wednesday, rather than Sunday and Monday. I assume it's Titled Tuesday and tournament thing? There's huge fluctuation of elo happening on tuesday. I found out that as long as I avoid these time, I can reach 2300, maybe 2400elo. Which I'm going to try when I have more time. When I play purposefully on tuesday night, I lose 300 or even 400 elo.
Sometimes I meet these people who just plays like a bot, perhaps is a bot. But chess.com always says there are no bots playing in ranked. I doubt everytime because there's no way people who play straight like bots stay 2000. I could beat 2300 sometimes, but these people plays like 2500 insane.
can't believe this is not getting enough attention. It makes sense to go up and down so quick if I had played only 100 games, but I played 20,000+ games. Up and down of ELO is so small now. I lost 400 elo from max, and somehow my opponents are similar to my level. Very odd.
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