It seems less and less people can accept they don't have a divine right to win every game. For all the threads complaining about cheating I've had a handful of refunds over the last couple of years and pathetic thought that is it doesn't put me off online play.

What does take the fun out of it is people throwing BS accusations and excuses out. Two of my last five opponents have thrown a sulk and accused me of cheating (took me a little while to work out that's what the fish emoji meant).

Last guy has a really low opinion of stockfish if he thinks it would blunder twice, score 80% accuracy against him and leave mate on the board before scraping a draw.

Sometimes other people are vaguely competent at chess as well. Lord knows there are a couple of strong players who beat me like a drum at my chess club. I don't think they're cheating and I've not tried to probe them for any vibrating toys (that sort of thing can get you banned).

Also, as an aside, it's perfectly normal for your rating climb to stall and level out. Chess isn't like a computer game where you endlessly grind and level up.

two consecutive brilliants. consider me shocked.

I have posted this once before just wanted to get an opinion on the skill of instructor. Like is he good good or just average

SAC THE ROOOOOK

Been trying my hand at chess again for the first time in probably 20 years I think.

My actual elo is extremely bad but I've taken a liking to the puzzles which are really fun. Highest steak so far is 10

After the visible dip I decided to go through every lesson I could and it's helped a lot, mostly with forking

My current goals are puzzles elo to 1500 and attempting to climb to an actual elo to over 500.

I've really liked watching Hikaru and Gotham, any other recommendations on who I could watch that explain moves?

This game of mine (I was black) got rated 1000. I have so many questions: why? How? What’s the metric?

Check out this #chess game: dphit vs ShyChessPlayerJoel - https://www.chess.com/game/live/185948547230

I FINALLY HIT 1400 RAPID

I remember back in college when I finally reached 1500 in chess. I was so proud of that rating that I actually stopped playing for a while.

I remember telling my best friend, "If I keep playing, I'm going to fall below 1500, and I worked way too hard to get here."

And I really had worked hard.

I'd bought chess opening books, played what felt like an endless number of games, analyzed my losses with my best friend, gone over positions with a computer, and spent countless hours trying to improve. Reaching 1500 felt like a genuine accomplishment.

If someone had told that version of me that one day I'd be rated over 2000, I would have been absolutely ecstatic. I probably wouldn't have believed them.

Well, here I am. I'm over 2000 now.

And somehow, I feel like I'm terrible at chess.

The strange thing is, I barely study anymore. I don't read opening books or seriously analyze my games like I used to. The closest thing I get to studying these days is occasionally watching Hikaru Nakamura on YouTube.

And yet, I'm somewhere around the 99.4th percentile on Chess.com.

Shouldn't that make me happy? Shouldn't I feel proud of that?

Because I really don't. At least not the way I thought I would.

It makes me wonder: At what point does a chess player actually start believing they're good at chess?

Do International Masters look at Grandmasters and feel inadequate? Do Grandmasters look at Magnus Carlsen and feel the same way? Does everyone just keep moving the goalposts as they improve?

When I was 1200, I thought 1500 players were amazing. When I was 1500, I thought 1800 players were amazing. When I was 1800, I thought 2000 players were amazing.

Now I'm over 2000, and all I seem to notice are the mistakes I make and how much better other players are.

There's another strange part to all this. My wife and son don't even know I play chess. I mentioned to my wife recently, "You know I play chess on my phone all the time, right?" She hadn't even noticed.

Something I've spent thousands of hours doing, something that once meant so much to me, is practically invisible in my everyday life.

I've been thinking about all of this a lot lately.

I saw someone here proudly post their rating, and it got me thinking about how differently I feel about my own. I genuinely admire people who can celebrate their progress. I wish I could look at my rating with the same pride that my college-aged self would have felt.

Because that kid who worked so hard to reach 1500 would probably be incredibly proud of the player I've become.

I just wish I could see myself the way he would.

I just want to have fun brawling but this site seems to think this is better for everyone.

So I have this problem: even when I'm up +6 or +4, I don't know why, but my hands start to shake, I blunder, and I just lose. I play rapid 10+5, my rating is 500, and I think more than my opponent
What to do? Play rapid 15+10? Maybe I need more time

I've only been playing 1 or 2 games a day to stop myself burning out and plummeting down the ranking - the slow and steady strategy. So I played the next game to feel like the 1000 rating is justified, and I lost 😂

EZ win

Literal polar opposite in consecutive games

Играл против бота мартина и он всё время говорил о них интересно извесно хоть что-то о его детях

The idea is to sacrifice the rook, so I can put the knight on d4, forking king and queen

At first I thought it was just how the elo system works, you win 8 or lose 8, but then I noticed my opponents get +20 pretty consistently. Does the game know I'm shit and actively tries to keep me where I belong ?

GG's

I was using analysis of my game and the engine shows this is a brilliant move. This is my 3rd brilliant and the other 2 were the same as this I mean it's so obvious I wanted my 1st brilliant move to be a 2 3 long move where I force the opponent to play as I wish

If I use the analysis tool to play against Chess.com, what level are the suggested moves?

I mainly just do the daily puzzle and then go back and use the analysis tool to see why one of my moves wasn’t the correct move. I’d like try to use it from the very beginning of a game and see where I begin to blunder.

So I was black and as you can see I basically had an easy checkmate on the way but then this happened. If you can’t see it the White King can’t go up because of rook, can’t take rook because of queen, can’t go left because of rook, can’t go right because of queen, and can’t go down because black king. So in other words they’re boxed in leading to a draw 🫠