What I've learnt from smurfing

Disclaimer: I have not broken any chess.com guidelines, I closed my previous account a couple months before making this one. This is the only chess.com account I currently own.

Smurfing: act of a high-skilled gamer playing within a lower-level character or competitive bracket

Source: Wikipedia

For those stuck in the 800, 900, 1000, even 1200 rated brackets, do not worry! The people in this range are not the same rated as you. In other words, they are also smurfing. 75% of the opponents I've versed here play way too well to be low rated. These people are hindering you from growing.

I've made many new accounts over the last 10 years. I never had a problem getting my rating to where it should be.

Not to mention it's impossible for 75% of players in a large bracket like that to be underrated. You can't reasonably make the argument they all purposefully offset it by resigning because this is 100s of thousands or millions of players.

Notice too that you can't reasonably make the argument that they just close their accounts and reopen because 800-1200 is high population band, meaning your argument is essentially that the "real" rating curve should have a large depression in the 800-1200 band instead of what it is now (similar to a bell curve).

The following is for blitz ratings:

I will say that many players, some as low as 800, have surprisingly good fundamentals for their rating. For example some of them put a pawn in the center early in the game, develop their knights and bishops, and castle. Many players in the 800-1200 band are also aware of basic tactics... together this means they're very hard to beat for players who have not put some effort into playing/studying chess.

75% of the people I versed are not the majority of the people within the curve. I probably got placed against a lot of the smurfs. The point is... there are a lot of smurfs within this range.

You didn't capture the bishop on move 15 because you understood that you would lose your queen.

However you seem to have short term memory problems, because on move 19 you lose your queen to that same tactic anyway.

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Not sure this is a smurfing problem as much as a git gud problem.

I played some friendly rapid games with a ~1600 (on a past account of mine, a few years ago).

They played a lot of typical inaccuracies that showed a lack of experience and long term term planning.

Then in the endgame they started making high quality moves... the kind you can't make unless you calculated the tactics and had a lot of patience and experience to defend them flexibly, meeting long term strategic needs as well. They were able to solve all the difficulties of their position and eventually draw. I don't know if they cheated for sure, but it certainly felt very strange and I didn't play them anymore.

To be fair, I've also played a lot of casual OTB games at local clubs. Probably equal amounts of blitz and rapid.

Sometimes "bad" players manage to play good games. The kind that if it had been played online you'd suspect sandbagging or cheating... so don't be quick to judge. Luckily places like chess.com exist that use very high tech cheat detection so that most of the time we don't have to guess.

Someones got some ego problems. Look, get over yourself. You're not Magnus Carlsen, you're a 2000 rated untitled player that doesn't even play real chess. 5 minute games and 1 minute games aren't real chess. Good for you if you can make moves faster than the opponent but that doesn't make you good.

So get the f off the high horse.

Now, about that game... it was a 5 minute blitz game... I was rushing and didn't calculate at all.

Kid, stop making excuses, there aren't cheaters on this website, chess.com works hard to remove them. if you're not good enough to play longer games, admit it and get over it. Having a cry and making false accusations aren't doing you any good.

The truth is right in front of you, you're not as good as you think.

You've played a lot of OTB games but you're not titled, meaning you're not good.

Lmao, facts!! You keep saying it how it is.

Doesn't almost every coach say that the key to development is regularly playing stronger players than you?

I don't play "real" chess? I don't really play any chess at all anymore. I think the last serious game I played was in March. Everything since then has just been for fun, and on this site, unrated (except for a few rated drunk games which I surprisingly didn't utterly lose).

Anyway, my point was you proved you were good enough to see the tactic, it's just you were inconsistent. That's not a sign of sandbagging, it's just a sign of you not playing to your potential... because again, you obviously understood that tactic just a few moves ago.

You're rated 1000 which means you haven't been playing chess very long. I've been playing for about 20 years now. So I can't say that I care about your personal metrics for what's good or not. Once you've been around the game a little longer, maybe I'll care.

If you looked through all my losses, I'm sure there are a few that are completely embarrassing, so it's not good to judge someone off of something like that.

Having said that, the game I posted of his was the first loss I looked at. Interpret that information however you want

Reading over my comments, I see that I was a little too sensitive. Sorry for snapping. The short term memory loss and the git gud part rubbed me the wrong way.

If everyone’s underrated then that means they aren’t underrated.

l o g i c

lmao u alright mate? dont matter what the point is, its how you express it. saying someone has short term memory loss is not the right way to express a point.

besides, what do u know ur 800 rated lmao