I've got to 2490 a few times now and each time I tilt back down. I think it's psychological because I was winning a game which would've took me to 2500 but then I started playing like the french word for late that cc bans people for saying
Rigged Matchmaking - Researched
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Dec 2, 2025
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#3
What matters for pairing is your rating ranges, the available players looking for games in the same pool as you are, and their ratings.
The algorithm isn't trying to pair players with streaks together.
I have seen a lot of people discussing theories of chess.com being rigged and couldn't help feeling there was a lot of legitimacy in these theories. It appears I'm far from the only player who sees patterns in their game results, throughout my journey to my current 1500 rating I've noticed that I will win several games in a row and then just as I'm closing in on a milestone, a new best rating or a 100 ELO milestone, I suddenly go on a heavy losing streak appearing to lose to high quality chess. Every time I've looked at forum discussions accounts always abruptly and seemingly rudely accuse the theories of being the result of salty players and brush them off as form, so I have done the same. But recently in my attempt to return to 1500 I have suffered some heavy lose streaks of around 10/15 games at a time and then win streaks of similar calibre. I usually listen to the accounts on forums brushing it off as just 'form' but the consistency and convenient timing of these win/lose streaks are not comparable to that of any sport or other competition. In no other competition do teams/players see so many wins and losses one after each other, consistently for all the time they're playing. So I decided to do a bit of research. Many of the forums discussing this, just like this one are plagued with these accounts brushing it off as just 'form' or players 'being salty', but on closer inspection many of these accounts appear to be very bot-like, some have been on the website for years but have hardly played any chess. I also did some research into the opponents that I was winning/losing against. When I reached around 1440 I played 3 games that I won in a row, 2 of them were against players who seemed too inept at chess to be even 500 ELO, then the final player resigned after less than 5 moves without being in a losing position. This then boosted my ELO to just below 1500 and just below my best rating of 1504, I then proceeded to go on a run were I lost 7 in 8 games. After reviewing my games and looking at my opponents profiles, they were all playing way above 1500 rated games, which occasionally I do too but to REGULARLY get streaks of 7 players, playing way above their ELO is very suspicious. I'm not suggesting they are cheating, although I have been given lots of ELO back from cheating opponents recently. But many of these accounts are playing well above their ELO and some seem to have either been well above 1500 before or are new accounts that are still reaching their peak, so I'm suggesting that when players are nearing a milestone the matchmaking is possibly rigged to keep them from reaching it for a while, until they have played more chess, which they will because these win/lose streaks are incredibly addictive. I have no problem being stuck at 1450/1500 as this is definitely my peak until I get more time to study more chess but to consistently lose 100/150 ELO in about 20 games then to earn it back in such quick succession is very suspicious and incredibly addictive/stressful which if proven to be the case, is arguably illegal in the laws of many of the countries' gambling and gaming laws that Chess.com operate in.