bumpitty
Chess ratings and CPU standards
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Yeah, teach an adult the rules and that day they'd play at a strength below 1000 for sure. Just how far below 1000 I don't know, but I agree with you that a rating around 1200 is someone who has spent time with the game beyond some little 5x11 rule sheet that came with a $2 set.
People might get the wrong impression when chess for them is beating their cousin once a year at Christmas... there's a big wide world of players out there, and if you don't even know the name of the opening you just played you're probably fish food.
I think there is a misperception with the ratings scale and how players/ people self -evaluate themselves relative to that.
The first problem is ratings inflation due to unused 1200 or unrated accounts that people have made but don't play with causing the ratings to artificially inflate for under 1200 players.
When I was rated 800-850 a year ago I was in the 25% percentile according to the stats page, and right now I'm rated approximately 1140 in all 3-categories and I'm rated in each between 61-64% percentile, despite still being below the 1200 bump, which I think once I reach I will jump to around 75% percentile.
From what I've seen so far I feel like the average player on this site is about 850-900; the casual log in a few times a week to play chess player.
The more serious player who learns most or some of the openings, watches youtube instruction and learns tactics and tricks is at least 1000, and more advanced to 1200.
Players who are hardcore and serious about the game are generally 1200-1800 while the experts on the website/ semi professionals are 1800+ and the experts are titled players over 2000.
The CPU further enforces this steep slope by suggesting the "Easy" computer is 1150 and the "medium" is 1250. In fact the "EASY" computer plays an average opponent of 1186 (higher than me implying at least 66% percentile rated) and has a win: loss: draw ratio of 1:1:1 implying that it is on par with the 66% (or greater) level of rated players online. This doesn't make sense, thereby implying the "EASY" computer is better than 2/3's of the chess community.
The "medium" computer plays an average opponent of 1320 and has a 1.5:1.3 W/L ratio implying it is better than a 1320 rated player, most likely 80% percentile on the website
This is a steep slope between beginner, average player, intermediate player, advanced player, semi pro, expert/ professional.
The "Easy" computer is built for high level intermediate players, and the "Medium" computer is built for advanced players.
You could argue it's as such for players to "improve", but it isn't worth experiencing for most players who care about statistics who may be discouraged by a high loss ratio to the CPU.
When I read through a thread last year about the average level chess player I saw responses like 1200. No. That's completely unfair, because that represents the average semi-hardcore chess enthusiast who most likely has high school club or private instructor experience. If you play the truly average chess player who knows the game it's probably actually like 700 rating in the real world. Online; it's probably 850-900 when you take out rating inflation of new accounts for this website. These are players who casually play once in a while or are evolving their skills. To be over 1000 on this website you need to legitimately look at openings and study topics and "learn" the game.