Unfair Rating Inflation Due to New Puzzle Rating System

I earned my 3300 puzzle rating the hard way — spending around 10 minutes average on each puzzle, solving 3000+ rated puzzles, and grinding every point carefully. Back then, each puzzle earned me 5 points, and it felt like a real achievement.

Now, players are skyrocketing from 2000 to 3300 within days by solving easy 1000-rated puzzles that give the same +5 points per puzzle. This has completely inflated the puzzle rating system and made it meaningless.

To make matters worse, the percentile and global ranking have been removed from the main profile page. You have to dig into the leaderboard to find your real standing — and thousands of people have overtaken me by “farming” points with easy puzzles.

Chess.com, this change is deeply unfair to those of us who genuinely worked hard to reach high ratings. The puzzle rating should reflect true skill and effort, not a points farm.

Please restore a fair and competitive ranking system, bring back percentile and ranking visibility on profiles, and respect the community that made this site great.

Thank you.

I got to 3100 legit but explains all of this change

As someone who just went from 2100 to 3100, I want the old system back aswell. The improvemt feels fake. Why would you keep feeding me 600 rated puzzles even at 3000+ ranking. It didn't make sense at 2000, let alone 3000. Even if I get one wrong from time to time, which will set me back about -30 points, the steady feed of super easy +5 puzzles is going to win no matter what. And what's even worse, it's not even fun. Please fix.

I agree,. I am not a high rated puzzle wizard but the current system is no fun. I want to challenge myself and that is not possible this way. Very disappointed.

Have you changed your Difficulty setting? Changing to Hard or Extra Hard should help.

I did not even know that existed. Also, my statistics were not updated. It was in 'off' modus.

I changed it, and tried with a few puzzles, but no difference.

The setting was called ' collecting points' (translated). I do not see a setting 'difficulty'

I love the new system my puzzle elo is over 4,000! I'm a better player than Magnus Carlson!

Currently that setting only shows in the website. It impacts apps as well and should be available in a future app version

I agree that the recent change has rendered the competitive/achievement element of doing puzzles on the site meaningless. I enjoyed the challenge of raising my puzzle rating.

I think there is a static +4 or +5 on ratings adjustments, resulting in ranking inflation for years.

Now it has become obtrusive for anyone over 2200 or so, as most of the puzzles it serves by default are under 1900, but you still get a guaranteed 5 for solving them, regardless of rating difference or time taken.

Seems like it could be easily fixed by removing the inflation and requiring a puzzles to be no more than 500 points lower than your rating to affect it.

How to retroactively fix all the ballooning ratings is another question. I think I'd like a dual ratings system. You can see your ballooning ranking with the current approach with one score, while another has your score with the inflation removed (starting from your rating before the change if applying that retroactively isn't possible).

I quite like the ballooning rating for what it is, even if it is absurd if taken as a genuine rating, and it undermines whatever ratings people have achieved before the change.

In my last 25 puzzles, on Hard, I have had

7 - 2300+

6 - 2100-2299

5 - 1900-2099

2 - 1500-1899

5 - < 1499

The listed puzzle ratings in the UI are old and not used in the selection or rating algorithm, as I understand it, so I can't say for sure how off they are really. Those should be updated in the near future

That said, the distribution, on the shown rating looks decent and since the change I've been getting around 24-29% wrong. On the old system I was close to 50/50. Extra Hard would likely put me closer to that.

I'm still iny historical rating range, 2500-2900. My last session was a good streak so It's possible I could climb towards my highest before the update, at over 3100, but I'm not sure

In my opinion, so far, I'm still getting challenging puzzles, and while my solve percentages are higher, point increases aren't dramatic and within normal range.

Understandably, that's not true for everyone and for Standard difficulty, it's not going to be great for some. Extra Hard should be more in line with the older, pre-difficulty setting.

even having extra hard difficulty on, I am still only getting puzzles rated 2000 max. What a horrible update

at least we can still do hard puzzles on lichess or puzzle rush

Are you sure you saved and are on Extra Hard?

I climbed from ~ 1900 (pre change) to ~ 3200 atm, still climbing. And yeah - the change was pretty obvious. Just look at my elo curve. I think the Elo got effectively halved, now at 3.2k I get puzzles that I approximately got, when I was around 1.6k Rating. I also preferred the old system. Stats pages tells me now that I am better than 99.9% of other players, which... Yeah... Is just a very bad joke, idk.

Wondering if this Change got announced anywehere. Bcs basically everywhere, ppl are giga confused, deffo including me.

I just can’t see one reason they made this change...? You shouldn’t be able to pick the difficulty of your Rated Puzzles. The entire point of a rating is so that they can give you Puzzles that are at your level, but now, it’s nearly meaningless.

People who worked for higher ratings are having their ratings completely invalidated like they never earned them. This is like if they suddenly adjusted the game ratings so that 1500 was easily achievable by a beginner. It invalidates everything actual 1500s went through.

Also, the fact that you get vastly easier puzzles than normal unless you’re on their HIGHEST difficulty (Extra Hard) is very sad. I feel like it would’ve been better if Standard was the normal algorithm, and the harder difficulties were genuinely harder than you normally get in order to give people a challenge. This way, you can’t grind out rating points anymore, but if you’re feeling up to it, you can attempt something genuinely harder. I very recently got a 50-streak, and someone I know even got a 100-streak, which definitely shouldn’t be humanly possible.

On the old system I could go from 400 - 2500 plus in a few hours of puzzles.