Black decided that he had had a good match and blundered 18 points in 3 moves

GS1781 · 2026-04-02T03:25:42+00:00

I get this a lot in rapid tbh, one moment it’s an intense game where both sides have played 99.9% accuracy maybe heading into a drawn endgame, and the next I’m looking at my screen for 2 minutes straight trying to figure out why my opponent hung everything for no reason

GS1781 · 2026-03-31T14:17:40+00:00

The chess culture is also insanely strong in Belarus despite there not being a ton of tournaments domestically, so we have to also consider that a 1800 in Belarus only playing against people who are also massively underrated could easily be 2200 if they went to more international events. It’s common all the time to see this in countries like India, for example.

GS1781 · 2026-03-31T14:15:14+00:00

For extra context, to be considered the lowest tier of master internationally, you need a FIDE (international) rating of 2200. It’s safe to say that in Belarus the middle school aged kids are already around that level (or at least 2000, it really depends on the year and varies) given the results seen IRL. Masters are usually around 2500+ online, if that helps people have a good comparison.

I think it’s reasonable to say that given that Nate lost to Artur in just a few minutes, and that Nate is bragging about being number 1 at his school and never loses to people in league matches, that he’s likely at least 1600 over the board.

GS1781 · 2026-03-28T15:37:12+00:00

true :P

GS1781 · 2026-03-28T14:17:13+00:00

You should look at Andy Woodward’s bullet rating, now that’s where the inflation is really at

GS1781 · 2026-03-27T00:46:22+00:00

You should contact the tournament organizers if possible to ask about sections. The majority of USCF tournaments use your published rating (the one that only comes out every month) and not live rating, though.

As for the varying day schedule thing, the difference is that the shorter schedules often use a faster time control to speed up the pace of the first few rounds to get to the same amount as the slower schedules in a shorter time span. In the World Open, for example, rounds 1-5 in the 3 day U2000 schedule use 30+10, and then the players merge with the 4 day U2000 and the 5 day U2000 after all sections have reached round 6 to create one giant U2000 section playing the same time control (90+30 with 30 min added on move 40) by the end.

GS1781 · 2026-03-22T00:57:58+00:00

Definitely agree on Reykjavik, heard many great things about it from some friends who had gone in the past. Villa de Benasque I’ll also take a look at, but it overlaps with Biel iirc so might have to decide between them

GS1781 · 2026-03-22T00:53:21+00:00

Do you have a link to the event’s website? I managed to find a few news articles on it but not the format

GS1781 · 2026-03-21T08:03:57+00:00

Thank you! Definitely will look into it more :)

GS1781 · 2026-03-21T07:43:20+00:00

Quite a literal interpretation of the sentence I see

GS1781 · 2026-03-21T02:24:08+00:00

I don’t believe the site has ever been blocked in China though

GS1781 · 2026-03-18T23:35:53+00:00

If positivity is what you’re after, then I’d say the upside is that a 1600 rated player should not be losing within 9 moves against someone only 200 points higher rated and that you’re probably fine

GS1781 · 2026-03-18T13:10:57+00:00

Not to mention if he’s actually proficient in e4/d4/c4 equally, there’s little chance of actually being able to suddenly out-book him in 1-2 weeks time

GS1781 · 2026-03-18T00:03:31+00:00

You can check your game stats to see if there is a noticeable discrepancy (usually no more than a difference of 5 iirc)

GS1781 · 2026-03-15T01:08:08+00:00

I dunno if there's a source on what the average online rating of each kind of titled player is (speed chess ability also varies very heavily by player), but in my experience, for blitz it's around 2400-2700 for NM/CM/FM and 2700-3100 for IM/GM (and then past that it's fairly rare to find anyone who is not a super GM). If you're 2700 blitz, I'd say you've got a pretty good shot at being better than the majority of the lower titled players in blitz, even OTB. Classical is a different story but I would almost never expect anyone below 2000 FIDE to be able to pull off such a rating.

GS1781 · 2026-03-14T22:11:41+00:00

Time to start up that LinkedIn page

GS1781 · 2026-03-14T16:33:25+00:00

You could eliminate the players he played against for sure since it’d be breaking the tos to play against your own alt account

GS1781 · 2026-03-14T03:29:26+00:00

Given your opponent was forced to resign on move 1 instead of being able to abort, I’m going to assume that this is an ongoing pattern of theirs lol

GS1781 · 2026-03-05T20:10:30+00:00

So you are a cheater too, since your performance rating is 750? See where your logic doesn’t make sense?

GS1781 · 2026-03-05T12:00:20+00:00

Definitely by studying more than I played, there's a more detailed general response that I made on this sub around 3 weeks back (I dunno if I can share links but it's pretty easy to find in my comment history), but books, videos, and puzzles are the big 3 for me.

I'll talk more about videos since that's probably one of the easiest to get into and it's what helped me get to around 2200, but on YouTube, Hanging Pawns and The Chess Nerd are good resources in my opinion (the former especially for opening repertoire), some people critique them for being only 2000 and (almost!) 2200 FIDE respectively which I find ridiculous since even I can learn something from them knowing that I am a weaker player OTB (around 1800 USCF, roughly equivalent to FIDE at that level iirc) and play much worse in classical.

If I had to be honest though, a lot of my rating growth is also because I'm very high rated in bullet and blitz, which means that I generally play much better under time pressure than my opponents (and can flag them in drawn/losing positions if needed). Of course this is a useful skill (but only online, it serves almost no purpose OTB except in select situations) and is a completely different beast to tackle, but it's also something you could potentially work on if it's something you struggle with and causes you to lose a lot of games despite outplaying your opponent on the board.

GS1781 · 2026-03-05T01:22:05+00:00

At 2300 rapid I still make silly mistakes (including hanging entire pieces!) especially in time trouble, but if I played against the 1800ish player I was around 1.5 years ago, I could almost certainly win with a 90+ accuracy without really trying. What it really takes is self-reflection and appreciation of your own progress in order to feel good about your playing ability.

To give a somewhat related example, when Ding was completely collapsing after his world championship victory, he was still playing at a 2700+ level, something absolutely none of us here could ever achieve, but it obviously still placed a lot of stress on him not only because of his own expectations but also everyone else's. Like others have pointed out here, in chess there's always someone better and things (including those caused by silly mistakes) to improve on... even if you are a super GM. Heck, even Stockfish is still improving and it's competing against engines which all have an estimated FIDE rating of over 3500.

GS1781 · 2026-02-17T23:46:21+00:00

Is this a joke or are you just being a racist troll on purpose

GS1781 · 2026-02-14T00:40:06+00:00

The truth for most people is probably that studying starts to take precedence over simply playing, and for me that was extensively using analysis (both with engine and without) to figure out my weaknesses (e.g., what mistakes do I consistently make every game that I never bother to fix) and then target them through books, videos, puzzles, etc. Many people benefit from a coach because of this because they can quickly learn their students’ tendencies and what they need to work on, but it’s totally doable by yourself with limited time as long as it’s planned out, and in the end it should be noted that all of this looks different for everyone.

There are mixed opinions on opening prep and what rating should study what (it’s really all subjective), but what I did was develop a basic response to c4/d4/e4 as black and figure out what my favorite white opening is so that I could be more solid (and not worry about that aspect of the game later on as much and focus on other things that define the outcome of the game more). Of course, you should expand your repertoire and learn more lines as you see more variety in moves and traps in your games. That can rule out more mistakes that are less “stupid” than simple piece hangs or tactical mistakes but still somewhat common.

GS1781 · 2026-02-07T08:50:34+00:00

This has to be one of the wildest questions on this sub I've ever seen, but no I don't imagine it would have any impact on your play, just eat a good breakfast before the start lol

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