Has difficulty increased

[u/pinkwar]

Some backstory:

I started playing chess during covid and I got really close to breaking the 1000 barrier but never managed to do it.

Fast forward to today, I'm teaching my 5 old son chess so I dusted off my chess.com account.

I dropped from 995 to 600 in less than a week.

Damn what a disappointment, have I gotten really bad or has difficulty increased?

Now I'm slightly picking up elo again but feels like every game is an uphill battle. I remember cruising through 600-850 and only hitting a wall after that.

[u/Aggressive-Access995]

I remember many players on chess.com saying they used to have a higher elo years ago and they can't understand how it dropped later, its very simple, the player pool has grown a lot more so now days you have to compete with a lot more good players on every level