[chongli]

If you follow the link to the data analysis [1] you’ll see that the argument is based on higher rated players. Low rated players have much higher variance in their rating and can improve by quite a lot, just by learning to stop blundering. That’s basically the situation you’re in.

Getting to 2000 rating is going to be quite a mountain to climb for you, unless you’re very young.

[1] https://github.com/jcw024/lichess_database_ETL/blob/main/REA...

[Someone]

But that’s not surprising at all if you assume every player has a ‘ceiling’ performance they can attain, isn’t it?

Higher rated players tend to be closer to their potential than lower rated ones, leaving less room for improvement, in any sport. They also will be more likely to get worse over time because, the nearer to the top, the more roads lead you downwards.

You’d have to pick a very peculiar metric to measure performance to compensate for that.

[Zyst]

I play competitive games in tournaments. I would disagree with your characterization.

Yes, people have a skill ceiling. However, it’s not something you’re ever going to get to by just playing most games.

People naturally improve at games when they start playing. Some factors being more familiarity with the game, and making less mistakes. However, people will stall out at different ratings at that point.

However, if you do deliberate practice in the game you will absolutely continue to get better. If you’re practicing specific scenarios, have focused areas of improvement, coaching, analyze your own replays, record your practice, and watch it: You will improve.

Yes, abstractly a “skill ceiling” out there exists for you, but you’re extremely unlikely to ever reach it in a game of skill unless you’re trying to go pro in it.

If putting time in were all that were required to reach your skill ceiling, we would have way more League of Legends Grandmasters. Unless you assume the people that go pro are all just more talented, and that their practice doesn’t make a difference.

[esrauch]

I'm not sure about Leagues rating system but I would definitely believe that the top echelon in most serious sports/games is reserved for people who are both more talented and also hardcore practice.

I play chess and the GM level is above the skill cap of some talented people who have put in dedicated practice since a child and are a full time professional dedicated player as an adult. The median talent at full time dedication for their whole life wouldn't reach that level, and no one who only started the game at age 20 has ever reached that level regardless of natural talent. Some of the most famous players never attain that level, including some full time professional players that are known figures today (like Eric Rosen) and historical chess theory leaders (like Jeremy Silman).

And in practice "just" GM level isn't even good enough to be a top tier player: the top 100 players can trounce the lowest GMs.

I would assume the same applies to any other game/sport that has the cache for people to train at it from childhood like Tennis, Basketball, etc.

[Someone]

> However, if you do deliberate practice in the game you will absolutely continue to get better

I strongly disagree. I think that, for a given amount of effort (hours and study intensity) you’re willing to spend, everybody has a ceiling that they can reach. If what you say is true, why hasn’t Magnus Carlsen reached ELO 2900? Lack of deliberate practice? ELO deflation requiring players to get better to keep the same rating?

Ignoring that, the discussion isn’t whether you’ll continue getting better, but whether you’ll keep improving at the same rate.

> Unless you assume the people that go pro are all just more talented, and that their practice doesn’t make a difference.

I don’t see how that follows. I think the top is both extremely talented, extremely motivated, and physically strong enough to do the hours of concentrated practice.

I think it’s easier to see in physical sports. If you’re 2m tall and have enough motor skills to run and catch a ball, you’ll likely be ‘good’ at basketball in high school, even if you don’t practice much or well. To make it in the NBA, you have to be 2m tall _and_ have above average motor skills _and_ be above average robust, so that you can play x games a year without getting injured, _and_ be more willing to exercise than mossy to get stronger and more agile _and_ be above average good at reading the game.

[jyscao]

>I think that, for a given amount of effort (hours and study intensity) you’re willing to spend, everybody has a ceiling that they can reach.

I disagree with your disagreement, because simply controlling for total studying time and intensity is too reductionist. Different players have different sticking points when it comes to chess, e.g. weak strategic planning, weak tactics, poor positional understanding, bad endgames, etc. Your implicit assumption is that most players at some playing strength, are at that playing strength in all aspects of their game. In practice, that's simply not the case for many.

To give a concrete example, my classical rating on lichess hovers around 1800, but if you look at my tactics puzzle rating it's well above 2000, suggesting it's the positional and strategic aspects of the game that I'm weak at, which anecdotally feels true based on how I both win and lose most of my games. If I were to get a coach or deliberately work on those weaker aspects of my game myself (something I have not done), so that they're no longer the bottleneck of my performance, I could very well break this rating plateau I've been stuck in for the past half decade or so, and shoot up another 100 or even 200 points. I also have a friend of similar strength level, who has the opposite profile as me: strong positional and strategic understanding, weak tactics. And despite more or less an even record, whenever we play against each other, his wins are almost always grinds, while my wins are usually some tactical shot he missed or blundered into.

The bottom line is, at my strength level, and I'd hypothesize even up to the low to mid-2000s rating levels, these unbalanced types of players are probably more common than balanced players with similar ratings in all aspects of their game to their overall rating. The latter kind, you might be able to argue, have reached their natural ceiling; but even here I'd be surprised if they cannot improve more by deliberately strengthening aspects of their game. Conversely, based on my experience of 10+ years playing chess regularly, the vast majority of players simply don't have a good understanding of their own weaknesses. Many unbalanced players like myself, with the correct type of training and practice, even if total time isn't too much, can absolutely make significant improvements to their overall performance.

>If what you say is true, why hasn’t Magnus Carlsen reached ELO 2900? Lack of deliberate practice? ELO deflation requiring players to get better to keep the same rating?

In the case of top-level IMs, GMs, and certainly super GMs, who don't have glaring weaknesses in any aspects of their game, it's likely the case that they indeed did reach their ceiling. But these are the only people I'd be at all confident in making such claims.

[zelphirkalt]

And not to forget to avoid disappointment: An online 2000 is maybe an offline 1800 or so. Online ratings are in general higher than what people actually have offline.

[Oreb]

That’s pretty much the opposite of how I feel. I can win against much stronger players over the board than online. It’s so hard to summon the same focus and energy in an online game.

[chongli]

It’s just a fact that online ratings are inflated. Hikaru Nakamura is rated 3231 (at the moment I write this) in blitz on chess.com but 2874 in blitz over the board, according to FIDE. That’s a difference of 357 rating points!

Of course, Hikaru has admitted that he deliberately works to inflate his online rating and has talked about the differences in the rules/mechanics online. For him, the lack of an increment in his online games (FIDE over the board blitz has an increment) and his well-practiced mouse skills help him a lot. Hikaru can flag a lot of people from a losing position, so he gets many more wins than he would have over the board. He also says he deliberately “farms” lower rated players to boost his rating by a small amount, and avoids games against dangerous opponents who are underrated (due to a lack of online play).

[_fizz_buzz_]

I am not sure if that is generally true. It’s true for lichess and chess.com (compared to ELO) It really has only to do with the formula they use. They have different formulas. I think e.g. lichess has a formula so that the median is centered around 1500. This is different from how ELO is calculated. I would assume if they all had the same way to calculate the rating, it should be somewhat close.

[smatija]

Yes and no - they use different systems, but even if they used same system ratings would be different.

This is since ratings only measure player's performance relative to other players in the same poll. A lot more people (and a lot more begineers) play online than in FIDE rated tournaments. So playing poll in tournaments is stronger than online playing poll, so even if we assume same rating system in all cases, players will have lower ratings in tournament play than online.

What complicates matters further is that playing polls aren't totally unified - in FIDE Elo ratings it's possible to see regional differences (indians for example are in general underrated), since playing poll is segmented by distance (due to travel costs not a lot of players play internationally). Additionally COVID19 made a total mess of ratings, since there was not enough events last few years, so majority of younglings are underrated due to not playing enough rated games, while improving as fast as the previous generation.

FIDE is currently deciding on rating reform, which will be implemented in january, trying to handle this situation.

What complicates matters even more is that FIDE Elo algorithm is not optimized for accuracy, but for calculations by hand (try calculating glicko2 rating change without computer!), so glicko2 more accurately predicts player performance.

And finally, time controls differ a lot between online and tournament play. Online even 5minutes feels slow, while in tournaments 90min+30sec/move is one of shorter time controls. Performance between slow and fast play is in general correlated, but this correlation is weaker at higher ratings (since both sides of the game have some non-transferable skills, so blitz specialists for example exists).

[Suffocate5100]

"unless you’re very young."

You mean, "unless you have unlimited time."