The curious case of 1200: The Expert's rating

If you start at a young age, and you study all the basics (let's pretend you study chess like it's a subject at school, which means regular and systematic study), then you can easily get a chess title before age 18.

That's why 2000 or 2200 could be considered merely knowing some basics, like @daat said the difference between a highschooler being pretty good at some basic math, but is nothing like a professor.

But of course almost no one studies chess like that. Sure enthusiasts (like me) will buy and read a chess book from time to time, but I'm not trying to build comprehensive knowledge. I'm not playing 3 to 5 hour games every weekend. It's just a hobby.

Is your fide provisional?

Just because 2000 players aren't world class level like GMs, they are still experts of the game. 

IM Jeremy Silman once wrote that someone rated 1500 is strong enough to coach other players (I assume that he meant lower rated players). Also, chess.com - because of rampant cheating - actually has International Masters blitz rated in the 1800's and sometimes lower. So maybe ratings are relative here on chess.com

1500 FIDE, not 1500 chess.com BRUH

a 1500 FIDE is generally above 1900 on chess.com

There is zero evidence for that outrageous claim.

The thing is, you can't really compare a regular math professor to a GM. GM is like top 0.1% mathematician in the world or something like that (so some excellent PhD-s in mathematics for instance). People who have GM title are much more rare than regular math professors. You are more comparable to top 1000 scientists in their field.

So, math professors are probably not comparable to GM-s, they are probably more comparable to FM-s or something like that. 

And I agree that everything depends on the perspective, but the perspective of someone extremely strong is not realistic for most of the people. You have to consider all levels of play, so from total beginner to Magnus Carlsen. 

A grandmaster is not top 0.1. It's more like top 0.00001% or even rarer.

The average math teacher or English teacher is not in a percentile even CLOSE to what people think they are. People just have big egos when it comes to chess. Comparing only to the highest calibre players is beyond stupid. Why does someone have to be better than 99.9999% of people in order to teach/help someone else?

Yes, you are correct that 0.1% is not the best estimation. But the point stands, we can't just compare certain rating to the top people and say the people that rating are almost beginner level. That is why I said that the average math teacher can't be compared to a GM, only some top PhD-s can.

How many teachers are there in the world? What percentile do you recon the average teacher is in, if their skill were to be matched with that of the average person that STUDIES the subject they teach. It would not be anywhere close to 99%. The standards people have for chess is absolutely absurd. The total amount of professors in the world for just 1 subject is insanely high when compared to the number of grandmasters. These comparisons are just completely asinine.

I think the term rating is misleading. Its not the same as taking an exam where an a equals getting 80% of the questions right. While having millions of members (hopefully of which there are lots of active players) does help give a more accurate 'score', if a 1200 player is having a bad day, beating that person does not mean you are playing to a 1200 level. So I think the best you can say is if you are live chess matched with someone who is 'rated' a lot higher, there is a fair chance it will be a harder game.

You don't get a 1200 rating by beating a 1200 rated player once. You are missing the statistical relevance of the whole elo and glicko-2 system that is used if you think it can be compared to playing vs someone once.

Think of it in a way that if you could measure someone's performance as accurately as you can in chess, what percentile would that person be in? 

The truth is not extremely uncommon for there to be a math student to be as good or better as their highschool teacher at the math, that doesn't make the teacher inept. It happens, some kids are smart. Not all teachers are going to be geniuses in the 99.99 percentile or something better.

The amount of games would be irrelevant. So lets say I join Chess.com and by some fluke of chance my first 10 games are against some of the players in this years Tata. If I started with an 800 rating 10 losses would have me 500 rating (or something like). Am I a 500 player, not at all I have just had a string of games I lost. The rating is more a 'flavour' of the sort of player you are playing. Of course if someone is pushing a 2000 or 3000 rating, there is a very good chance they are very good and someone who is a 500 or 600 rating is very weak, but the area in the middle is probably more fluid than you think.

0.1 is not rare, lol its 0.00001%. More than 100M people play chess. Out of which only 1500 are GMs.

Yes, but as I've said, that proves my point even more.

You are just going off something crazy happening. We are talking about when the ratings are accurate, to some reasonable degree which isn't hard to determine. It's not like you judge if someone is professor quality whether or not they get 1 answer right or wrong on a test. 

lmao whats wrong with this guy, you are not even at a stage where you are 1/5 of a GM, not discouraging but its a fact

I have commented this many times but doing it one more time:

400-800 New in Chess

800-1200 Beginner

1200-1400 Novice

1600-1800 Intermediate

1800-2200 Advanced

2200+ IS EXPERT!