100-rated players are way too good

I’m stuck in 100 Elo hell, a level that’s said to consist of only the noobiest of absolute beginners to Chess. People make fun of 100 Elo, saying that these players probably don’t even know how the pieces move, let alone deliver checkmate.

However, the opponents in the games I played (I’m rated 125 in Blitz ) seem so good relative to their ratings. They know how to do forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, Fried Liver, checkmate with K+Q, and more. They manage to use tactics and see moves that I never expected 100–200-rated players to know about. Yet they do it. Why are they good? Do most beginners binge-watch GothamChess nowadays?

I know some players are legitimately below 500, but there has to be a certain percent that are sandbagging down to that level for the heck of it.

If you know words like fork and pin and gotham chess it's hard to believe you're legitimately rated 100.

The biggest concept to understand is it's not ok to lose pieces for free. Beginners often think it's not a big deal to lose a bishop or a knight or a pawn... but giving away even a single pawn is a big mistake. Play a few dozen games while doing your best to not give anything away for free. Choose a time control long enough that you have a reasonable chance of accomplishing this. Do that and your rating will go up.

I saw your games and well you could have won lots of time. See that fork ? The knight was hanging. See that pawn you took with your queen ? It was protected with a knight. Myself im really bad at chess, but i guess the best way to improve, it's learning

I saw your last games, you both make serious 1 move blunders and you both don't have any strategy at all

There is too many sandbaggers on this site, I even recently played a 900 rated player and plays like a 1300 player like me, I don't think the rating system here is accurate.

The system is very accurate. It's relatively simple (and well tested) math.

In practice it may not be working for various reasons, but for example encountering a single sandbagger or cheater doesn't mean anything. The fact that ratings are stable when averaged over several games at a time means the system is working well.

I don't think so, 900-1200 here are playing almost a perfect game even though in reality 900-1200 is like beginner's level, hangs pieces all the time, I am pretty sure I am underrated on this site because I am 1900 lichess but I recently closed my account in there because it is hard to maintain and play perfectly all the time, here I am 1300 rated player.

Some lichess time controls are massively overrated compared to chess.com... that doesn't make either site inaccurate. Ratings are like markets. 1 USD is 133 Japanese Yen. Different numbers but the same value.

I've offered this before even though it's against the rules... anyone who is facing "perfect" players at a low rating and is stuck, give me your password and I'll see whether or not I can win, you know, 10 games in a row or something.

I would say the ability for chess.com players to choose to register at 400, 800, 1200, 1600, etc makes the ratings here less accurate than those on lichess which forces everyone to start at the same 1500 rating. A lot of stronger players like to start from the bottom (400) which means you'll frequently encounter severely underrated players under 1000.

Strong players starting low can be balanced by weak players overestimating themselves or starting high on purpose. It's also unreasonable to assume that one is superior to the other. Flexibility in starting rating is potentially superior if, on average, new accounts start with a rating closer to their skill.

In any case during the first few games players are moved towards their correct rating with minimal rating impact to their opponents so the starting rating has very little impact.

And even if this weren't true (if the inaccurate ratings did damage opponents) then the effect wouldn't be for ratings to become more inaccurate since ratings are relative to begin with. What would happen is the point-to-skill relationship would slowly change over time (what people sometimes call inflation or deflation).

I dunno, someday's I can beat many players, and some days I blunder my major pieces and totally don't see the board (I have a head injury/disability, I really beat myself up about this), my suggestion is learn your endgames as many players are hopeless at them. Also learn openings like the Patzer opening (1. e4 e5 2. Qh5?! Nc6 3. Bc4).

You're trying to learn Chess by playing Blitz and Bullet. It won't make much difference how much theory you know if you're blundering your pieces with such regularity. Try playing longer time controls in order to give yourself enough time to properly consider your moves.

Hi, 

I seen a few posts about sandbaggers please report if that's the case, 

https://support.chess.com/article/209-how-do-i-report-someone

Thanks 

some people start at the rating 400, and losing even 1 game will get them down to 100, so don't judge people by rating. As many have mentioned, sandbaggers will always be there. I suggest doing puzzles (best on lichess) and taking coaching if you really want to get gud

Gg

A rating is a lot a stock price. It does not reflect the current strength of a situation. Just keep playing and as you get better your rating will go up. You could be a 1200 strength but your rating is still 100 because it does not had time to catch up maybe you have not played or not enough time. Just like a stock price of value or growth stocks because stock price do not always reflect the current valuations of a company

Well my 2 cent again.

I have played for over 3 years on chess.com and despite reasonable efforts to improve and a few thousand games, got absolutely nowhere.  Pretty weird, as I played in the sub-1000 level and have a long history spread over many decades of casual chess playing including periods of club play (classical OTB rating around the 1500 mark)- so not a compete novice.  The sub-1000 gameplay was quite unbelievable.

As a result I gave up playing twice and now only play the bots for specific improvement purposes.

However a more interesting comparison is that for the last few months I have been playing real players on LiChess - around 130 games - and have seen a slow gradual improvement in rating reflective of my efforts towards improvement. May well be a short term effect, however more importantly and subjectively I feel I am playing real people, with only one exception so far whereas on chess.com that was seldom the case.  No idea of the causes of the latter - although I have proposed several guesses - but I am definitely giving the sub-1000 play a miss on chess.com for the foreseeable future.

The subjective difference between the two platforms, in my limited experience, is just chalk and cheese.

I would also add that just reviewing finished games only provides small clues to what is going on. 

If you want to know what the sub-1000 gameplay is actually like, WATCH the games!!!

I think chess.com is way too reliant on passive measures and the godhead of the ELO system to ensure fair match-ups. and are missing a lot of 'fishy-ness' in the sub-1000 levels. I also suspect low-level or new-to-chess.com players are much less likely to report or know that something dodgy in a single game. I would certainly like to see the rating distribution of the thousands of accounts banned every month! Over the period of over three years I only recovered rating points twice - only issued a compliant once for chat abuse - which was completely at odds with the subjective proception.

I am more inclined to believe that underrated players are being sandbagged by fishy technical issues on chess.com as I doubt there is any discernible difference between the player pools of chess.com and LiChess giving the large numbers involved and the fact that the rating systems only allow you to play against a small sample of the whole pool.

stuck in 100 Glicko hell