There's no theoretical rating ceiling.
There is a practical one. If you're 3300 in blitz, u need other 3000+ players to verse to keep increasing ur rating. On top of that the chance of losing even 1 game means losing like 20 or more rating. So you need the skill and a large enough pool of players around ur rating to continue climbing. Eventually ur going to get to a point where there's less than 100 people anywhere near ur rating, and u can't really continue increasing ur rating.
It's possible to get extremely high by playing the right kinds of players. Claude Bloodgood was a prisoner who managed to match Bobby Fischer's rating and was the second best chess player by rating in 1997 , just due to the fact he only played his own students since he could only attend prison tournaments.
I personally think he could have climbed into the 3000+ if the USCF didn't change how it rated prison players due to him achieving such a high ranking,
It's possible to get extremely high by playing the right kinds of players. Claude Bloodgood was a prisoner who managed to match Bobby Fischer's rating and was the second best chess player by rating in 1997 , just due to the fact he only played his own students since he could only attend prison tournaments.
I personally think he could have climbed into the 3000+ if the USCF didn't change how it rated prison players due to him achieving such a high ranking,
He tried to get a furlough to participate in the US Closed (which his rating qualified him for). The prison system would not give a furlough to a person on death row so the USCF didn't have to worry about things that year (and changed the rules for following years). He was a master-level player when he started the prison club with pretty much all unrated players. Since your first rating is based on how you did against rated players there were a number of neophytes with inflated ratings in that club (if the other five people in a tournament are 300-strength unrateds that split against each other while losing to a 2300 then they will all come out with about a 1900 rating).
This is a closed pool situation that has a greater chance of appearing in a prison club, but not solely a prison situation.
This guy had a 4200 bullet rating over 10 years ago!
@chessnetwork