The overall level has risen!?

@Hitsugaya said in #8:
> People have access to openings since ages, it doesn't mean they're learning them... unless I'm doing it all wrong!

Thats true. But with Chessable (f.e.) it is just so much more convinient. Youtube also does a greate job in that to give you some basics is a brief amount of time.

But your right I started playing chess 2 Years ago and love the
FCO: Fundamental Chess Openings from Paul Van der Sterren. Just such an awesome book.

so collectively we are getting stronger, playing better chess?

more people more difficult

@dooeyDecimal

Exactly.

Collectively, we are all getting better to the point that we can play 3+2 blitz games at 13 average centipawn loss and 97% accuracy without making a single error.

If we keep getting better at this rate, pretty soon we'll all be playing as well as the computers do.

@Kinginski2 you saw my game.. that was a banger.. my opponent played extremely well

The Moke effect. So many are using scripts, so many billy bots. What a waste of a beautiful interface.

Another indicator coincidentally...

There are a couple of threads like "bring back my rating"

well level can change depending who leaves the pool who enters the pool and what level those people are.

GIven high volatility of the pool and starting rating being 1500 the median on any pool is about 1500. So whe covid and QueensGambit whole lotta of weaker players entered and there was - probably - small shift in people getting better ratings. Maybe they are leaving now?

In a system that is not anchored to anything small inflation or deflation will happen all the time

There is a cryptic (for me) remark made by a user called Alayan (#7) in this thread

lichess.org/forum/general-chess-discussion/rating-inflation-it-is-hard-to-think-that-my-level-is-grown

It was written during the obvious rating inflation of the Covid period. He said:

"Thibault purposefully made rating inflate a few months back to get 1500 as the 50 percentile rating.

I'm not sure what's going now, but 1500 is 41% in the blitz elo graph and the 50% point is around 1575."

Unfortunately he didn't give any sources for this claim, but somehow it sounded well-informed.

I'm still wondering if it is true that the median rating level is being tinkered with by server admins, and how exactly it's being done?

All I know if that a 2000 today is a stronger player than a 2000 of twenty years ago, at least in the Canadian chess federation. Not sure if the OP meant strictly lichess but when it comes to ratings that potentially actually matter, yes the overall level has risen. I haven’t been a member of lichess long enough to detect any trend on this platform.