Simple trick to boost your elo rating [it worked]

This is a post about I have read a couple of days ago.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/what-s-wrong-with-the-elo-system

It talked about some statistics of the elo rating and whether your elo is expected to go up or down playing against other people of various elo ratings.

In a nutshell, the post takes your current elo as 1900 (as an example) and suggests that your elo is more likely to increase if you play against players that are either too below you (700elo below the current elo [1000-1300]) or you play against players that are rated slightly above you (100-400elo above [2000-2300])

I tried this out myself, and made custom challenges using chess.com where I set a custom range of elo ratings for my opponents to be slightly higher than mine.

And the unexpected results where that it kinda worked. I pushed from ~1300 to ≈1410 at the time of writing and let me tell you, I met some opponents who were 10 times more terrible than one of those ~1250 opponents.

Mind you, 1400elo is considerbly lower than a lot of you people and than the 1900 data in the article.

Still, try it, have fun and let me know how it went!

Of course, it's always just possible that you got a little better playing 200 games in the last month.

Well, in fact I did get better. But still I play on a daily basis and I didn't make this breakthrough until today (I reached 1400 before on 21/3/2020 but that is beyond the point)

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Imagine this. Alot of 1200’s started their accounts at beginner which started them at 800 elo. So they’re all stuck playing each other and the occasional newbie. The players get sort of stuck in that whirlpool of 700-1000.

The best way I've found to increase my rating is to just be selective with my opponents

I wish the custom match feature allowed us to play abit higher. I set mine at -25 to +400 and I usually just get someone that's dead equal to my rating. *shrug*

The best way I've found to increase my rating is to just be selective with my opponents

I wish the custom match feature allowed us to play abit higher. I set mine at -25 to +400 and I usually just get someone that's dead equal to my rating. *shrug*

See I have the opposite problem. I set mine to +25 and anything below but I keep getting people too close to my rating for my liking.

What I did, which seemed to help me recover from a massive tilt in blitz (about 200 points), was to change the rating spread of my opponents to this range: -400 to +25. By doing this I felt that I will play opponents that are lower than my rating so I can refine my tactics and gain back points in the process. Regardless though, I have had good challenging games (for my rating) and I'm enjoying my time spent playing chess.

I will try see if it works

I will try it