Getting to 2000 rating is going to be quite a mountain to climb for you, unless you’re very young.

[1] https://github.com/jcw024/lichess_database_ETL/blob/main/REA...

This is since ratings only measure player's performance relative to other players in the same poll. A lot more people (and a lot more begineers) play online than in FIDE rated tournaments. So playing poll in tournaments is stronger than online playing poll, so even if we assume same rating system in all cases, players will have lower ratings in tournament play than online.

What complicates matters further is that playing polls aren't totally unified - in FIDE Elo ratings it's possible to see regional differences (indians for example are in general underrated), since playing poll is segmented by distance (due to travel costs not a lot of players play internationally). Additionally COVID19 made a total mess of ratings, since there was not enough events last few years, so majority of younglings are underrated due to not playing enough rated games, while improving as fast as the previous generation.

FIDE is currently deciding on rating reform, which will be implemented in january, trying to handle this situation.

What complicates matters even more is that FIDE Elo algorithm is not optimized for accuracy, but for calculations by hand (try calculating glicko2 rating change without computer!), so glicko2 more accurately predicts player performance.

And finally, time controls differ a lot between online and tournament play. Online even 5minutes feels slow, while in tournaments 90min+30sec/move is one of shorter time controls. Performance between slow and fast play is in general correlated, but this correlation is weaker at higher ratings (since both sides of the game have some non-transferable skills, so blitz specialists for example exists).

Of course, Hikaru has admitted that he deliberately works to inflate his online rating and has talked about the differences in the rules/mechanics online. For him, the lack of an increment in his online games (FIDE over the board blitz has an increment) and his well-practiced mouse skills help him a lot. Hikaru can flag a lot of people from a losing position, so he gets many more wins than he would have over the board. He also says he deliberately “farms” lower rated players to boost his rating by a small amount, and avoids games against dangerous opponents who are underrated (due to a lack of online play).

Higher rated players tend to be closer to their potential than lower rated ones, leaving less room for improvement, in any sport. They also will be more likely to get worse over time because, the nearer to the top, the more roads lead you downwards.

You’d have to pick a very peculiar metric to measure performance to compensate for that.

Yes, people have a skill ceiling. However, it’s not something you’re ever going to get to by just playing most games.

People naturally improve at games when they start playing. Some factors being more familiarity with the game, and making less mistakes. However, people will stall out at different ratings at that point.

However, if you do deliberate practice in the game you will absolutely continue to get better. If you’re practicing specific scenarios, have focused areas of improvement, coaching, analyze your own replays, record your practice, and watch it: You will improve.

Yes, abstractly a “skill ceiling” out there exists for you, but you’re extremely unlikely to ever reach it in a game of skill unless you’re trying to go pro in it.

If putting time in were all that were required to reach your skill ceiling, we would have way more League of Legends Grandmasters. Unless you assume the people that go pro are all just more talented, and that their practice doesn’t make a difference.

I play chess and the GM level is above the skill cap of some talented people who have put in dedicated practice since a child and are a full time professional dedicated player as an adult. The median talent at full time dedication for their whole life wouldn't reach that level, and no one who only started the game at age 20 has ever reached that level regardless of natural talent. Some of the most famous players never attain that level, including some full time professional players that are known figures today (like Eric Rosen) and historical chess theory leaders (like Jeremy Silman).

And in practice "just" GM level isn't even good enough to be a top tier player: the top 100 players can trounce the lowest GMs.

I would assume the same applies to any other game/sport that has the cache for people to train at it from childhood like Tennis, Basketball, etc.

I strongly disagree. I think that, for a given amount of effort (hours and study intensity) you’re willing to spend, everybody has a ceiling that they can reach. If what you say is true, why hasn’t Magnus Carlsen reached ELO 2900? Lack of deliberate practice? ELO deflation requiring players to get better to keep the same rating?

Ignoring that, the discussion isn’t whether you’ll continue getting better, but whether you’ll keep improving at the same rate.

> Unless you assume the people that go pro are all just more talented, and that their practice doesn’t make a difference.

I don’t see how that follows. I think the top is both extremely talented, extremely motivated, and physically strong enough to do the hours of concentrated practice.

I think it’s easier to see in physical sports. If you’re 2m tall and have enough motor skills to run and catch a ball, you’ll likely be ‘good’ at basketball in high school, even if you don’t practice much or well. To make it in the NBA, you have to be 2m tall _and_ have above average motor skills _and_ be above average robust, so that you can play x games a year without getting injured, _and_ be more willing to exercise than mossy to get stronger and more agile _and_ be above average good at reading the game.

I disagree with your disagreement, because simply controlling for total studying time and intensity is too reductionist. Different players have different sticking points when it comes to chess, e.g. weak strategic planning, weak tactics, poor positional understanding, bad endgames, etc. Your implicit assumption is that most players at some playing strength, are at that playing strength in all aspects of their game. In practice, that's simply not the case for many.

To give a concrete example, my classical rating on lichess hovers around 1800, but if you look at my tactics puzzle rating it's well above 2000, suggesting it's the positional and strategic aspects of the game that I'm weak at, which anecdotally feels true based on how I both win and lose most of my games. If I were to get a coach or deliberately work on those weaker aspects of my game myself (something I have not done), so that they're no longer the bottleneck of my performance, I could very well break this rating plateau I've been stuck in for the past half decade or so, and shoot up another 100 or even 200 points. I also have a friend of similar strength level, who has the opposite profile as me: strong positional and strategic understanding, weak tactics. And despite more or less an even record, whenever we play against each other, his wins are almost always grinds, while my wins are usually some tactical shot he missed or blundered into.

The bottom line is, at my strength level, and I'd hypothesize even up to the low to mid-2000s rating levels, these unbalanced types of players are probably more common than balanced players with similar ratings in all aspects of their game to their overall rating. The latter kind, you might be able to argue, have reached their natural ceiling; but even here I'd be surprised if they cannot improve more by deliberately strengthening aspects of their game. Conversely, based on my experience of 10+ years playing chess regularly, the vast majority of players simply don't have a good understanding of their own weaknesses. Many unbalanced players like myself, with the correct type of training and practice, even if total time isn't too much, can absolutely make significant improvements to their overall performance.

>If what you say is true, why hasn’t Magnus Carlsen reached ELO 2900? Lack of deliberate practice? ELO deflation requiring players to get better to keep the same rating?

In the case of top-level IMs, GMs, and certainly super GMs, who don't have glaring weaknesses in any aspects of their game, it's likely the case that they indeed did reach their ceiling. But these are the only people I'd be at all confident in making such claims.

You mean, "unless you have unlimited time."

I do only play for fun / to kill time, though. So a few games a day on a metro or whatever. So with no aspirations to actually improve I think I'm at the peak of my natural ability.

You should learn endgame and tactics, the basics of opening and maybe a few openings. endgame will teach chess. openings teaches you openings. especially when you're a beginner people will make moves that don't make sense. Plus aren't there like over 4 or 5 quadrillion possible moves just within the first 10 moves?

The minute you stop blundering pieces you find yourself in a nearly even endgame.

For example, if you're an 1. e4 e5 player you'll want to learn how to counter the Fried Liver attack, as it's one of the most popular lines at the beginner to intermediate level.

You don't need to know many lines 7 moves deep either, just a couple of moves is already very helpful.

Is rating on chess.com similar to rating in lichess? The article mentions 1%, but you start with 1500 in lichess??? If you lose often, you quickly go down. But if you keep an even record, you stay in 1500.

I don't understand how people learn from slamming blitz/bullet games.

As in the article, speed training helps recognizing patterns and dealing with them. At first it seems impossible to play significant moves with so little time, but you can try to just doing it. You'll adapt very soon.

I recommend starting with blitz 3+2 and later bullet 2+1. There are tournaments of 1+0... or even less time. 30 seconds is really crazy.

Is that actually true? You start at a 1500 in lichess, but that is a provisional rating and the outcome of your first few games are going to cause BIG swings in your rating. After your rating is no longer a provisional rating then that is going to slow down.

Losing a few games at the start might take a lot more wins to "even out" in rating. Just keeping an even record might not be enough to stay 1500.

The rating algorithm is suppossed to be predictive. It's only natural that the first data points cause big swings, but the amplitude will narrow after a few games.

Then, providing you win the same number of games that you lose, you stabilize. Will you keep around 1500? I think so, because the algorithm selects oponents with similar rating and with my own mediocre ratings over 1500, lichess tells me that I'm better than 60% of blitz players and 65% of bullet players.

There's a caveat though. Ratings in Lichess are not "lineal". There are annoying discontinuities. I get stuck at some level but, if I manage to go up 50 points, I get easier (but better rated) oponents and raise another 100 points. Conversely, if I get down a certain level, I can expect to sink even more.

300 cc should be similiar to around 800 lichess. Around 2000-2200 ratings even out on both sites and on higher ratings lichess ratings tend to be lower than on cc.

For improving longer time controls are better. The old adage, that if you want to play blitz better you should play rapid and that if you want to improve rapid you should play classical is still valid today. Blitz is beneficial only at higher rating ranges (2000+) to allow practising openings, and even that only in moderation. Players who don't play classical time controls (90min+30sec/move at least) tend to plateau around 2000-2200 online.

This ofc doesn't mean that blitz isn't fun - vast majority of my games are in blitz time controls.

800 is very low in Lichess. If you can think just two moves ahead without losing pieces, you get 1000 easily.

For improving longer time controls are better.

Yes and no. There are different aspects to the game. Every variety is good for something.

After playing a lot of bullet, I win easily in blitz just because the time advantage. But the reverse is also true. After playing more slower games, my fast games get better.

And there are some parts of the game that you just need to sit down with a book and a couple of boards.

But he studied, and studied, and last I knew he was 3 dan, which is about the point you can entertain the idea of becoming a pro (if I just worked harder).

Kids have a lot more free time to sink into a singular concern. Warnings about how something are out of the reach of adults aren’t actually hard rules, they’re just really good rules of thumb. But if you can make the time, it’s not impossible.

I don’t think chess is any different there. Small improvements may set reasonable expectations, but there are people who can blow right past them.

You can check that on https://europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/ and pick some players at random.

They have a nice date/rank graph and all those graphs start with an almost vertical growth which slows down and flattens. Some players play less often and get weaker but that's not the point.

I have no idea if it applies to chess too, possibly with different parameters, but why not? They are both games played with the brain by humans.

One question is what happens if you pair two of the top performers or two of the bottom ones? My prediction is that nothing changes.

The second one is related to the point of my comment. Can you build a graph date/performance? That could show curves similar to the ones of the go players and show how long it takes to flatten the curve.

As for pairing the two lowest producers, they'll sink even more as they are confused by what the other person is doing and it slows them down.

Changing someone's level of productivity is essentially untrainable in my experience. It's not a training issue. The people at the bottom know how to do the work, but any attempt to show them a more efficient way of doing it is overwhelming and confusing to them, and they shut down.

Being bad at Go and still playing anyway was an exercise in personal growth.

Ultimately, I think this is what's often downplayed in these conversations. Just because your friend was able to excel at Go in those 15 years, doesn't imply that any other specific person would be able to do the same, even with the same study. You'll find many people who attempted this but simply couldn't get past a lower plateau.

So, when you say "if you can make the time, it’s not impossible", I'm not sure that that's true. My suspicion would be that for a significant portion of the population, it would in fact be literally impossible. (edit: I was reading a different thread where somebody was asking about becoming a FIDE CM, that's what I was referencing here as being impossible for many, I don't know anything about Go ranks).

There are certainly people who need new genes. And there are people who need a new teacher. But boy oh boy are there a lot of people who would get better at difficult tasks if they got therapy.

There are of course players that know how to fully exploit mistakes in the bad openings, but when you're rated so low, openings rarely matter, especially if the opponent has to exploit a weird opening you have.

There's many more patterns related to pinning, tempo, that are worth much more for quick rating progress.

No way you get to 2000 by cheesing, maybe 1000 max. 2000 rating is not low, it’s top 0.3% on chess.com

Online chess has a lot of begineers, since its more approachable.

Edit: you’re not the same person from the comment above, my bad

I'm not saying I'm mating people in 3 moves. There are many unique mating opportunities in queen openings and many ways to create immense pressure on the king's side if the player does not defend well. Try it yourself and you'll quickly see that -2000 rated players (online) struggle with it. Similarly, you're not sacrificing development and you castle at the same moment (sometimes after black).

For example, many games I would get my queen attacked on F3 and then I would lose my rook. But this 3 move knight play on the opponents side gives you a lot of moves to create pressure, in one case you can have 3 pieces developed, while opponent has 0 (excluding the knight stuck in the corner). With the queen on king's side, you have a lot of options to equalize. If opponent is focused on saving the knight, the moves are just bad.

In 2+1 and 3 min blitz it's unlikely you'll get someone that won't make the position almost even after 10 moves.

The biggest hurdle to progress was my endgame and in blitz I found that being a piece down is rarely an indicator of loss at that level. + I did win a lot on time.

I was playing 200-250 blitz games a day and would analyze many, but I never bothered with openings. I quit because it was obviously too much.

I am not claiming it was the fastest way to progress, that it's a way to progress forever, that it doesn't have any flaws.

Chess has a very big space of patterns that you can learn that have nothing to do with openings and in my experience they count much more early on.

I shared my experience out of curiosity. Are there others who experienced something similar?

From my experience, to progress when learning anything it's enough to be consistent. The brain does its thing during sleep. When a roadblock is reached, you have to be able to identify it and make a plan to improve. Would it be more efficient to have a tested plan or a tutor? In most cases, yes.

This whole post is about how difficult it is to study chess and to improve, and you just stumble to 2000 playing for fun, with no study and no endgame knowledge. Also, consistency is most definitely not enough to improve: if you consistently practice the wrong things, you won't improve. And, if you didn't study chess at all and just played, like you mentioned, I also find it hard to believe that when you hit a roadblock you were able to identify what you needed to practice and implement a plan.

In lichess Blitz database for 2200+ rated players there are 13883 games with this position. White won 50%, drew 7% and lost 43%.

Of course this position is nothing to write home about, but for online Blitz it's good enough.

I'm 47 and started playing around 5 years ago. I only play Blitz and Bullet because I find it fun. In the first two years I went from around 1000 on lichess to around 1700. I've been "stuck" at 1700 plus or minus 100 since then.

I know I could improve with puzzles and classical time controls and study and analysis but I have no interest in that. I play games for fun. If I improve then great. If not no problem. It's the same as breaking out a game of Tetris or something for 5 minutes to me.

Blitz chess is already what a lot of people consider a variant. In Blitz format there are strategies and tricks that are outright blunders in longer time controls.

The biggest improvement by far for a casual player (at stage where you have some higher chess concepts understood) is to memorise.

Memorise and understand principles of openings lines (lines you want to play as white - few, more in depth, and most common lines you see being played - more, less in depth as black)

Memorise mating patters, there are certain setups that occur on board, knowing them can help playing them when they happen, or better angling to set them up yourself.

This was what made me drop chess as a teen. High level chess is a looot about memorisation. And that was when magic of chess disappeared for me :/

As a counterpoint to what you said, going back through your own game might not show you why and where you made a root cause mistake. If you dont have a background knowledge you will not know what to look for. And its rather a surface glance that you will 'get and forget' as soon as you start next game.

Better approach would be to study the positions you played after you are done playing for the day, or coming back to them on some other day.

Not all other games have this feature. If I play Catan with my friends, it's fun, but then the game is over. I'm not going to analyse my game and discover new tactics or strategies, like I will with chess.

Important to remember this is not a universal truth for all people.

> If I play Catan with my friends, it’s fun…

Interestingly, you and I seem to be opposites here. I only play chess for fun and never care if I improve, but spent thousands of hours in my college years analyzing and improving at Catan. I wonder if this is simply a matter of whether one prefers deterministic or stochastic games for optimization.

Older games become interesting to watch, mate in 6-8 puzzles become tenable, chess books about specific openings make more sense. Once a player knows how to finish basic endgames and accord himself properly in the middle game, they have the tools to grasp opening theory. From there on, there is a huge body of information about opening theory, playing styles, control and leverage of center, etc etc.

Much of the ink spilled about this game is a bit impenetrable without some acumen. But with enough appreciation to the past and present trends, one can fine tune one's playing style and really make the game your own.

Doing this and nothing else, I went up about 100 points a year for five years, from 1200 to 1700. (And then I stopped but I also could tell that I would have to start approaching it differently to go further.)