The Road To Zero

Creating challenges no longer works as there is no one of a similar rating to accept them. My question is, can zero theoretically be reached or am I already the lowest rated player on chess.com?

I think I just got an answer. I resigned 2 games and am still rated 100.

Oh 100 ELO(, where I certainly belong because despite a year's experience I'm still a noob)

There was a famous chess.com user who was rated 0, but I can remember his name On the other side @ChessNetwork reached a 4200 rating

must have been ages ago

@timmaylivinalie

But I remember another guy called Bowcloud or something similar 

Jerry is amazing my favourite youtuber

I took a look at your games and then come of the people's games you were playing against.   I really can't understand how the 100-200 rated players are 3 std devs below the 700 crowd.   The moves seem similar they aren't hanging pieces any more often...  Arguably some of them even played better.

As an aside I might accidentally accomplish your goal in bullet.  I can't checkmate anyone unless they help in 2 mins.     And even the bad bullet players seem to know the first 12 moves of whatever they are opening with so there is my first 90 seconds.  

I gave up as the site just wouldn't allow me to go lower than 100 ELO. Stupidly I forgot to check what percentile I was in at 100, but after 22 straight victories I have now broken the 300 barrier and am back up at the lofty heights of 1%. A lot of folks down here either need to clean their glasses or take up snakes and ladders instead. I'm no Carlsen myself but the complete lack of positional awareness among the lowest rated players is unbelievable (and sometimes pretty funny).

Yes, Lenny! 

Winning streak of 50 now, that's a personal best! Rated 500 blitz, that's not ;-) The difference between 500s and 100-200s seems to be (generally speaking) only hanging pieces when subjected to some sort of pressure. Dropping b pawns appears to be a favourite among the lowliest crowd. 'Novelties' appear after the second or at most third move in the opening, and the aforementioned losing of flank pawns for no compensation would seem to occur just because the players are totally at a loss as to how to proceed after the most obvious initial moves. It's an interesting journey.

that's called sandbagging (interesting that your username is SandyBaggs.) and you could be banned for it

I resigned 151 blitz games because I wanted to get to a rating of zero. It proved not possible to go lower than 100, so I am now playing at my best to work my way back up. It was my right to resign the aforementioned games if I felt the inclination to do so. It is now my right to play as well as I am capable of against any opponent chess.com matches me with. The concept of 'sandbagging' only applies in tournaments, when strong players deliberately temporarily drop points to get an easier draw. I am not playing any tournament games so it doesn't apply, although my name is a tongue in cheek reference to that practice.

Wait I can't follow....oh.

not true

true

what?

I've wondered before if you could get to a rating if 0 too. I think you can get below the 100 you mentioned but you'd need help like a group of friends all doing the same thing independently getting as low as they can so say 100 5 or 6 100 Elo players then one of you make a the final push for glory resign games against each one of them in turn while they maintain as close to 100 as they can and see how low you can go I have wondered if it's possible to go negative with a group of people working on this goal in this way. But who knows what the site will allow without asking a developer that can look at the code behind the site or doing your own testing. But definitely interesting.