It depends on how you calculate it. As I recall, under the original formula for ELO, if you were more than 400 points above your opponent, your rating would drop even with a win. The current formula used by FIDE doesn't allow this, and caps off at 400. What this means is that with repeated wins, your rating will only be 400 above your opponent. Larger player pools mean the top players are likely to have higher ratings even if, objectively, they're no better than their predecessors. Given an infinite pool of players, ELO ratings have no upper bound. It's not a perfect analogy, but think of pouring sugar into a pile. The width of the pile is like the ELO spread. As the pile rises higher, it also spreads out. At the same time, it's only going to spread so far because the sugar rolling down the side will only pick up so much speed in the process. But, if you poured sugar forever, the pile would never stop spreading outward.
Maximum Possible Elo?
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Nov 1, 2017
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#3
That sugar analogy actually makes sense if I think of it like a normal distribution. If you have infinite players, there will be someone with an infinitely high rating, as well as those with a rating of basically zero, even though the majority or mean will be basically the same as if you had far fewer players.
Does this mean that we might one day see a player break 3000? Carlsen is at 2850 or so right now.
Assuming that Chess *can* be solved for now (and I highly doubt it can), what would be the maximum possible Elo of a player, assuming that they basically never lose, or have perfect play. Is it infinite, or is there a limit.
As an aside, say a 2000 rated player (or 2800, I guess it matters little) played a 1200 rated player (or computer, again, it doesn't matter much) 10,000 times or so, winning all games. At what point would their rating stop increasing, if ever? Is it possible for an Elo to go down by winning, or would it continue indefinitely at an exponentially slower rate (or would it just get to +0 for winning)?
Sorry if this is a) a load of stupid questions or b) has been asked before, I'm just curious. For the record my rating is low, it's just hypothetical for me.