Low Rated Players play like intermediate players

wow???

you just like the title?

I usually play Rapid on 30 minutes on chess.com. I am trying to fight my way over 900 but it's hard. What I find at this level is there is a lot of unevenness. Someone on say 850 might make quite elementary mistakes while someone else at the same level might play like an intermediate player. Reviewing my own games also points to unevenness - in one individual game I might be rated at 1500, another one it might only be 500. I suspect there is a certain amount of smurfing going on but it probably does not explain most of the unevenness or the surprisingly good performances.

I changed to 15/10 recently, from 10.

So far, so good.

And with a few rare exceptions I'm not seeing anything that looks like cheating. And I'm winning roughly half my games.

Does 30 end up being longer than 15/10 or about the same?

That’s not true.

It depends on how many moves the game lasts.

Ok, thx. I think I'd like a 60-minute time control or 120-minute.

I am a 900 but I think I am actually pretty good at the game.

Just because low rated players don't blunder as easily doesn't always mean they are cheating! Maybe the standards of rating has gone up because low rated players have too many stereotypes these days for blundering immediately!

There is already a 60 min time control you just have to click “more time controls”. Unfortunately, not many people play that time control so you might have to wait for some time.

cheating is fairly rare, those in a position to have a clue all say, but accusations of cheating are common as mud

this because too often chess players tie their self-esteem to game results and rating, thus need an excuse when they aren't successful

"I don't suck. Chess.com sucks! It's all these cheaters!"

In the 1900-2100 range there are many cheaters (from my experience, quite a few of my opponents in that range have gotten banned.)

i think it's fairy rare

Dina Belenkaya interview, Ben Finegold, 6/15/2025

"Umm ... Vladimir Kramnik. And his fight against cheating. Do you think he's doing the right thing?"

"I don't know why he cares about cheating online. People cheat online. They get caught. They don't get caught. He came to the conclusion that everybody's cheating. So that ruins his argument... when he just accuses everybody, 'cause it's just silly. So yeah, he's obviously lost his mind. I'm the only person that tells Kramnic he's insane that he doesn't block. And I said, 'He hasn't blocked me 'cause I'm a grandmaster.' And he said, 'No, I haven't blocked you 'cause you haven't made it personal.' And I'm like, 'What? I've made it more personal than anyone. I said, 'You've lost your mind.' And his response was, 'At least I have a mind.' And my wife thought that was really funny, so she laughed at that. But yeah, I used to complain to Kramnik a lot about his crazy ideas and then I said like, 'Well, I'm done.' 'Cause he just keeps tweeting, 'everybody's cheating, everybody's cheating'. So that's, you know, now obviously if three people are cheating out of a hundred and you accuse 90 of them, then the three people get caught. Kramnic's like, 'See, I said that guy cheated.' Well, you said 87 other people cheated too and they didn't. I mean, he's gone overboard."

"What about his eternal battle against the chess mafia?"

"The chess mafia will never defeat them! Yeah. I don't know what that's all about... although I like the term 'chess mafia'."

Haha 😂

I love Ben.

delcai007 wrote:

khall3090 wrote:

"Unsubscribe to the membership, it’s just not fun grinding away and then hitting a wall of like 900 elo players playing like engines 17-20 games in a row. Influencers and YouTube can gussy it up but the facts remain, these cheaters, don't be naive, you gain any momentum in the 800-1200 range then you magically hit a wall of people playing like they're 2000's from your range."

Which is more likely, would you say, that your rating is 842 because that's how skilled you are or because you hit a 'wall' of cheating opponents? If the latter, why don't other players hit that same wall? Are they all cheating? When high rated players do a speed run, they can reach expert level in a matter of hours. How do you explain that? Why can't you reach, say, 1200 or 1500 or whatever it is you feel you actually deserve?

Wow

I think that if you want a high rating, your plan should not be get rid of cheaters or of chess.com. It should be, get better at chess.