Everyone got better over Night?

Hey there, having played more than 23600 games in Blitz I managed to get to about 1500-1600 Elo over the last 3 years. 

Suddenly, especially during the last few weeks the opponents got stronger and stronger while the ratings started dropping. I refuse to think bad about opponents cheating but during the last 2 days it goes down and down with my rating. The "weaker" the opponents, the stronger they seem to get? Am I the only one with this experience? During a few weaks and especially the last 2 days reaching my rating from 2019 while the opponents still are getting stronger? It's hard to keep on believing everything is going on fair because here and there suddenly I get opponents which play like I'd expect it at 1400 Elo (with typical mistakes) while others done't...

What are your experiences?

I know I'll have 1500-1600 Elo soon again but this only happens when I suddenly have ("magically") a whole bunch of "normal" 1400-1500 which aren't "super aware" of any tactics. So I am percieving "typical" players on the different ranges and so many of the "other kind of players" which play as if they'd have a heck of a lot of more elos...  

It's kind of enoying, that's why I'm sharing my experiences here.

😂

My advice is to take a break and play more rapid chess, 

Hi @ SangHasHung, 😋 daaa! I'm not refering to fresh accounts setteling around 1800 Elo, that's so off topic!

@ PactOfCards, your advice helped me to calm down for a while and get out of my "tilted" modus.

I'm still wondering what's going on though? As predicted it was relatively easy to climb back to 1500+ Elos (and propably even 1600) soon because the higher the ratings the EASIER it gets! This is what keeps me asking if something isn't going wrong here! 🤔

How is that possible that lower rated players play better and partially extremely better?

(I mean yesterday it went down from 1600 + Elo down to 1290 Elo and it kept on being harder!) Well if I'm the only one with this impression than let's forget about it.

thanks guys for joining the discussion!

@simpelzocker I feel similar. I really do feel like lower rated players are better now than when I was at that rating. Quite likely the result of the Covid boom/Queen'sGambitMovie bringing a lot of players of other strategy games to chess all of a sudden. If you watch older youtube content you'll notice 1400's hanging pieces. Now 1100's play at 90% accuracy. You aren't the only person with that impression at all. There have been other forum threads about it for a while now. 

MisterWindUpBird, thanks for the encouragement not being the only one. 

The Covid boom/Queen'sGambitMovie is also my most principle explanation for this observations. Another important factor of course (which the former members pointed out) is one being tilted/frustrated to certain extend after loosing one game after the other. Another explenation I read about here and there, was that some guys enjoy "demolishing" people so much, that they "intentionally drop very low" or start new accounts to than really "show" their superiority. 😋🥳 In this case we cannot talk about cheaters though it's not exactly fair play either. 

Where this usual explanations came to their limit for me and which made me engage in this post (where I'd been to lazy to do so normally) was the sudden drastical(!) loss of more than 300 Elo in a fresh state were I played pretty concentrated and had much energy (I wasn't really tilted that day). Having played more than 23600 Blitz games (just on chess.com) one would expect a more STABLE elo wouldn't one? 

And also another observation in this regard: I win easily against some opponent with an obvious advantage (almost a boring game), this opponent than hit's extremly quickly the "rematch" button. Most times I accept such an opponent absoultely destroys me as if he suddenly would have gained 600 Elos from one game to the other! 🤨🧐 This happend so often that I tend to not accept rematches over the time. 

So I guess that besides more honest chess fans the number of cheaters also drastically seemed to increase and the ways to cheat are subtle. Like they are playing their own moves but have an engine running just in case (for example when they suspect that their opponent is using one), which then tempts them to "also" use an engine from their point of view.

All that said: There is much speculation. To make it clear: I do think that the overwhelming majority is playing fair! Hence I never hit the "report" button, because I tend to think that the opponent just played great and I didn't which can be enoying but not to the extend to suspect someone to cheat (impulsively). That said, I do have the impression that cheater have increased greatly. Instead of 1 % cheating we might seem to have nowadays 10 % (ocasionaly) cheating gamers (just as an example). So since the Covid boom not only chess benefited from more gamers (which is great) but also seems to be polluted with some more cheating going on which is not so cool. 🤓 Fortunately still, as I said the vast majority has to be playing fair, otherwise I couldn't stabilize at certain elo range! The new phenomenon as compared to earlier days is that I tended to have +/- 100 Elo arround my range as opposed to nowadys, where those curious 300 elo drops 😼 (on a good day with great concentration and motivation) whith people seeming to get even better in lower ranges. One last explanation to this phenomenon could also be (which I didn't check), that most of them have freshly opened accounts and therefore are just "climbing the rating ladder" which is kind of enoying but fairplay at least. 

I don't know whether there's any truth to it, but people do seem to think there's a lot more cheating going on recently. I suppose one negative of the 20-21 online chess boom could be 'gamers' coming into chess with the attitude that there's something to gain from cheating. After-all, you hear about people playing online shooting games with aim-bots. They seem to find some kind of trolly enjoyment in beating up on people playing legitimately. So if they cheat in other games, why not chess, I suppose. It's pathetic, but it's a weird, weird world these days...

It's odd. There are all kinds of chess players here. Results are strange because of it I think. I recently responded to an 1800's question of why does the engine say trading my knight for a bishop is +2.4 to my opponent!?!? As a life long chess player at 1300, I could easily say 'Well you just removed the only defender of your castled position and handed white a stonewall style battery with a Greek gift and your white squares are all suddenly indefensible. I got a mildly obnoxious private message, and he pulled down the post. How do you even get to 1800 if you don't either know that through study, or intuitively through good pattern recognition??? Really. I don't understand at all... but if that's possible, I can see how there can be crazily strong 1100's too. You sure do get to see the full spectrum here. You can also see why it looks suss to people, until you come across someone who reliably beats good players but doesn't know how...

What is more likely

1) Players are making use of new apps that allow quick-time review of the position

2) All of these people complaining are just whingers and it's a massive coincidence that more than half my opponents now seem to follow the approach of "poor opening, suddenly shift up to a standard much higher, drop down to a lower standard once in a winning position".

My favourite ones are where they turn the engine off once ahead, then foul up and then turn the engine back on.

re : the question "if they are not playing fair, why are they still low rated", the answer is that the players themselves are so much worse than their supposed rating they often stuff up the openings before turning the engine off so badly they lose, or turn the engine off before they really have enough of an advantage to win.  

It seems to be worse on some servers.  I'll play for one session, win some and lose some - all fair.. then I'll go and do something else, and when I come back I'm on a different server and get the above scenarios in almost every game.

I lose plenty of games fairly.  I lose far more to cheats.

If you think someone is cheating please get a degree in chess. Then tell us that.

I don't believe I could discern even 50% cheater/not based off of one or two games correctly. How would you do?!

Yes,  everyone got better overnight.   

@ninjaswat

Champ, I described the process above.  It's not hard to pick unfair play when a player plays at a 200 or 300 level, suddenly raises to a 1800 to 2000 level and then collapses back to a 200 or 300 level again at the end.  

And the fact that you don't see the same thing is very likely due to your location.   I don't see many cheats either when I am lucky enough to connect to a server with majority Indian,  Eastern European or North American players. 

I hope you take these comments on board and don't ask how come these people are still rated on the low-ish side as if (A) the answer wasn't obvious or (B) I hadn't already given it.

I'm not so sure... After all, I've seen some weak 2000s and some strong 1000s. Sometimes people have done the right puzzles. Sometimes it's something else. But who other than chess.com or another mainstream website can make that distinction with accuracy?

@ninjaswat

People play at 200 or 300 and then suddenly at 1800 or 2000 and you think that's ok because you've seen some weak 2000s and strong 1000s.

Talk about a non-sequita.

Champ, you're not even reading what I'm writing.  Please stop copying and pasting from the "approved comments" sheet.

How can you tell what such a level is?

Show me an example of a "300 game" and a "2000 game"

Are you saying that no one you play can play better in one phase of a game than another? because that's what I see from you here...