Is this really 1200 rated play?

These blitz games have as much depth at the 1200 rating as my 30 minutes games have in the 1600+ rating. Is blitz full of sandbaggers? These opponents in blitz feel like they are playing much stronger than 1200. After I won this game, I had to wonder if this guy was also 1200ish, he played alright even after he blundered his knight. He put up a much better defense than a real 1200 player would have put up down a minor piece. Maybe it's because people don't resign as often in blitz games after a major blunder as they would in a 30 minute game? They make you work for you win in blitz even if their odds are hopeless.

I could post a hundred games where sub 1200 players absolutely smash me with zero mistakes/blunders and only a few (if any) inaccuracies.  I've come to the conclusion that there are many new accounts of higher level players that are used either for sandbagging or for testing openings. Often just opening 1 f4 causes opposing players to abort or opening 1..b6 (owen's) causes an instant resignation...leading me to believe that it's a higher level player looking for test a particular opening line. All in all I believe this deflates ratings of others. I could likewise post a hundred games of me smashing a 1300-1400 rated blitz player.

Is there something going on in this entry level bracket that I'm not aware of?

I think it's just that when people make new account they are assigned 1200. They could, in reality, be very strong players. They may have just registered for chess.com but have been playing elsewhere. There is always a risk that a 1200 player is much stronger or weaker than 1200. I don't think there is anything suspicious in it though, in general. 

Giving away pieces on moves 11..., 12... (you could of simply captured the Bish and been up two pieces and then simplified by exchanging on c6), and again on 19...,

It's hard to tell an opponent's playing strength by one game but If he or she is over 1200 I don't think play showed it here.

I do agree though, I have played hard games against lower rated players.  Surprise moves, weird lines, strong attacks all happen from 1100 and up.  Are they making it hard or am I making it easy for them?  

I can only speak from my unscientific experience, and I may be biased as I've played a ton of blitz and very little standard over this and my last account.... but standard players are generally god awful in comparison to blitz players. It might be sandbagging, but I have a hunch it's just a weaker player pool in standard. That said, I haven't played too much standard on this account so maybe it's changed. (And the game you showed was almost definitely a sandbagger)

There could be other explanations as well.  Chess playing bots of various strengths that are legal, I.e. employed.

I've stated this before in other threads but I'll repeat it again because you're new here.  My USCF rapid rating is 2056, but my blitz here is 1555.  Why?  Because I don't like playing an opponent I can't see unless I'm a bit blitzed myself.  I drink and smoke a lot before playing online.  Most of the time I miss simple stuff but sometimes we get to a position I play well despite the buzz. I hope this helps some.

Those all are straight forward moves and I am pretty sure that 1200 can play like that. I am 2000 rated player , I play 1 mins bullet and in one game I incidentally saw stockfish analysis of one of my bullet game and I had only 1 minor inaccuracy(sound impossible , sound like a cheat ).  At first I was surprised and then I realized that it was straight forward QID with exchanges and simple endgame. It depends on the complexity of game, we do make several inaccuracies if there are many tactics and variations but if there is straight forward play like this it is possible.

I don't believe any bots are legal are they? You mean like filler bots to reduce queue times?

Right.  

I think it's about 1200 rated play, maybe less. Some of the mistakes were pretty bad which happens a lot in the 1000 to 1400 range. If a 1200 player plays very well sometimes, like Corum said, its because they are a very good new player. But from what I have seen it's possible to lose badly to someone rated the same as you if they (or you) have just come off a string of games where the opponent wasn't rated accurately. If someone plays about 200 points better it's not that surprising. If they play a 1000 points better, then something is wrong.

In the starting position it seems to me that you have a winning developmental advantage, thus the game needs to be opened immediately  so 1.f5 , since blacks g6 is weakened, you can try to play fxe6 followed by Nf4 infiltrating on the weaknesses.  After 13.Qxf6! there will be a rook sac on h6 no matter where the black lady goes, yes?! But of course, hard to see in blitz

Here is a game I would expect from a 1100 and a 1300 over-the-board, G60 D5.

Black is the better player.

The game in the OP is certifiably 1200-ish rated. There's no question about that. I don't play 1200 often, but I've played 1400-1500 and they're way better than that. So I know it has to be 1200-ish or lower. And without that "evidence", the premise for the thread is gone and I'm not sure what we're even talking about.

Looking at OP's own blitz rating (1271 after >1000 games) I think it all makes sense, and there's really nothing odd or controversial about the game. Two 1200s ducking it out, what's there to phone home about? On the part of the opponent I don't see brilliant moves nor tenacity. All I see are inferior moves and hanging pieces left and right. If you think that opponent is too good at 1200, maybe it's time to take a hard look at  your own rating.

Again another game where a guy plays 23 of 34 perfect moves against a rare opening (f4). Seeing that he made an error on move 9 suggests that it was human. However, he took nearly 30 seconds to make even the most obvious winning moves and 3.8 seconds to play the final move skewering the King and Rook that even a 800 rated player would have seen. 

This guy has no experience playing f4 or playing against f4 in his history, yet he plays the whole opening perfectly?!?  Sandbagger or bot troll for sure.

https://www.chess.com/live?#g=2527559548

Nb4 threatening c2 is a common tactic in many openings.

Ng4 is a common move in f4 openings to threaten e3 and f2.

No offense, but I think a 1200 could play this game, you just got unlucky, getting hit with a wave of simple common tactics winning all your material.

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But anyway, yeah, rapid ratings tend to be a lot higher. 1200 blitz being 1600 rapid is probably not quite right, but if you're inexperienced with blitz this may be true for you.

Also I've made a lot of accounts on chess.com over the years. Every single time I'm surprised how solidly at least one of my 1200-1400 opponents plays.

So for chess.com, regardless of rating, there's a certain quality to the players here. They'll probably blunder stuff if you wait long enough, but most of them are developing their pieces and catching simple tactics even at a low rating.

Beginners tend to play long time controls, so it wouldn't surprise me if a 1200 in rapid blundered material every game in the first 10 moves

By the way, sometimes when my opponent is really bad I'll play random openings... and more than a few times opening with 1.f4 against a clearly worse opponent has gotten me in big trouble after the move d3... precisely because of the weak e3 and f2 squares.

As a general rule, play 0-0 and Ne5 before moving the d pawn off of d2. That way your knight, queen, and bishop are all guarding g4.

I believe that the 1200-player in the game played pretty normal for a 1200-rated player.

@kagaca02    How about this game? The enemy player, white, purposely blunders his queen on move 11 (you can tell by how quickly he plays move 11 and recaptures on move 12, like 0.1 seconds), then proceeds to play almost Godlike. It's still a human player (not a computer cheat) because he ultimately makes a few errors and at no point did he ever take a long 1-2 minute intermission to move or enter the position into an engine.  However, his strength AFTER move 11 (losing his queen) does not reflect a true 1200-1300 player, I would go so far as to say even a 1600-1700 player could not have held like that down a queen. This was a 1800+ sandbagger

https://www.chess.com/live#g=2528546413 />
Anyone that is truly terrible enough to blunder their queen and open e3 on move 1 isn't going to play other moves with such accuracy and ferocity. This game is a great example of a sandbagger trolling the lower bracket by sacking his queen and then smashing the noob. This is what people like me have to play against nearly a third of our games.

Basically the way it goes in this 1200 bracket: A quarter of the games are retards that play random moves and blunders and lose before the 15th move. Another quarter are players you recognize that put up a good fight (50-50 win chances), a third of games are sandbaggers that troll you hardcore on accounts you've never seen before and the remaining sixth are terrible players who stall for 1-2 minutes when they get into a losing position and then start playing better than Magnus Carlsen (hmm, what happened here!)

If you have any more doubts that he's sandbagging, then just look at how he bludners his queen. He blunders it "in the best way possible" only getting a -3.5 on the evaluation in my favor instead of a -6/-7.

I wouldn't doubt if he guides the game into this position reguluarly for the purposes of trolling.

A lot of chess streamers Grandmasters do "speed runs" where the create new accounts and just destroy players as they speed run up the ratings.  Chessbrahs and I think Botez even have entire streams where they Speed run and purposefully sac the queen every game.  It's lame for the poor folks who are expecting to play players of their own strength only to get curb stomped by some grandmaster who is streaming.  Tons of video of this on YouTube.