Discrepancy in ratings?

I've been a member at chess.com for a few years now. When I first started, my ratings were in the high 1000s to 1100s. After a while my ratings rose to 1200s, then 1300s, and a while later 1400s (though I frequently dropped back into the 1300s). My rating was as high as 1550 or so one point.

More recently my ratings have been in the high 1100s to 1200s. That's strange, because my game has gotten much better. I've done some training, which has helped. By now I've played a few thousand games as well.

I'm definitely not suggesting that I'm a master. I'm just trying to figure out the discrepancy in ratings, and wondering if anyone else has noticed it.

When my game was in the 1300s, it wasn't uncommon for players to make blunders (including me).   It might be as big as allowing their queen to be taken by a less important piece. More common would be a king-queen fork with a knight, or some other fork or skewer.

Now days it's very uncommon for my opponents to allow as much as a fork, between (for example) a rook and what might be considered an important bishop. It's really not that common for my opponents to allow for the capture of a pawn, unless they're on the attack and consider it insignificant.

I analyzed a few of my games today, and noticed that my mistakes were much less frequent than they used to be.   The same is true of my opponents.  

Occasionally I'll encounter opponents who play more like I remember people with those ratings playing.   So this doesn't happen all the time, but definitely more often than not.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar?

Thanks.          

The way these ratings work, the better the average player is, the lower everyone*s ratings.

So you’re suggesting that while I got much better, everyone else got much better than that?  Like everybody?

This started all at once, BTW. 

Personally, I use standalone software to guage my true rating. Even then it's not perfect. The only true way to get a meaningful rating is to get a bonified over-the-board rating.

Even then it's only comparable to other current ratings.

For example, one thread a while back started comparing USCF ratings in the early 90's, before Chessmsster 2100, and how today a player of say, 1500 back then, would be crushed by a 1500 today due to the ease of obtaining chess knowlege today. The average tounament chess player just has to have more chess knowlege to obtain and keep an average (1500 USCF) rating nowadays.

This happened very suddenly.  I'd been playing for a while, like I said, slowly improving, getting my game close to a consistent 1400, with the occasional rise to 1500 or so.  Then all off a sudden things changed and my ratings dropped below 1200.  Last weeks's 1200 player was now a 1500 player, or so it seemed.

I started here with an account linked to a facebook profile.  I wound up deleting my facebook account and had to create a new account with an email address.  The same thing happened with the new account.  For a while, 1200 players played like they used to, along with 1300s, 1400s, and 1500s.  I actually had my rating in the 1600s for a little while.

Then everyone got better, just like before.  All at once.  I played a few games this morning and I've been pretty off...making some stupid moves.  My rating right now is about 1130 or so, after a series of off-games.  Now low 1100s are playing the way that 1300s used to.    

Just keep improving. When you are playing folks who are 1800-2000, you'll find that they routinely drop pieces.

I hate to tell you this, but many people convince themselves that they've become stronger when they haven't. This is harmful for actual improvement, because your goals should be based on results. Improvement past a plateau takes very hard, focused work. Just playing won't do much

I think there's at least a little bit of merit to what you're saying with regards to OTB chess, because the mass of very young players in the USCF makes it hard on the rating system (and the same for FIDE, for other reasons). But I don't think this happens on chess.com. 

Hi

I have been on chess.com since 2012, and I am experiencing the same thing. My ratings would hover around 1300-1400 until about 2 years ago. Then I started studying chess and my rating bumped up to 1500. In the past 6 months, my ratings went significantly down, around 1400.

I make fewer blunders then I used to, and my chess level is better than a few years ago.

I have no doubt your 1300 in 2019 is worth more than your 1300 of 2017.

There are periodic changes to the rating system.  Elo systems do not have any particular tendency to keep a constant mean:  in fact they tend to deflate, because people enter the system with a lower rating, on average, than the one they leave with, so they take points with them.  I believe this is also true of the Glicko used by chess.com.  So periodically they rebalance the ratings to get their average about what they think it should be. 

There are also periodic crackdowns on cheating which can change ratings fairly dramatically:  when a cheater is banned they "refund" points to a lot of people.  If they ban a whole lot of cheaters at once ratings will shoot up among the opponents of those players (I picked up 30 points in Daily this month for exactly that reason).

It's a bad idea to get too attached to chess.com ratings.  Not a good idea to get attached to any ratings, frankly, but especially online ones.

tell me something, now can you beat 1600 player? or you not winning but you know you can win, you feel can, just a damn move make you lose.

if you feel like that, your rating is 1500, if you say no i cant win with 1600, then you 1300

You've only been playing since July 30th, and your ratings have fairly steadily gone from its starting point of 1400 to 11xx (it was very briefly +1500 when you first started, but the first 20 games are provisional). Keep playing, and remember to have fun!

This is a graph of your rating.

All you've been playing is blitz. You won't improve that way, not at chess

someone invited me to a 3 day game. Their rating showed 800. Now that the game has started it shows 400. I'm attaching a screenshot. In the screen shot you can see this persons' name and rating of 800. But on the actual game, it shows 400. When I agreed to accept the invitation, I saw 800 and accepted. But now if I lose it will be a significant number of points. Why does the over all rating show 800 when the person's actual rating seems to be 400?