A rating is a noisy thermometer. Read the trend, not the day.
By Chess Goat · Updated
A flat line can hide real progress. It can also hide a habit you haven’t touched in years. Before you change your training, find out which one you’re looking at.
“You may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win. You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player.”
How chess.com ratings move
Chess.com uses the Glicko system (chess.com’s own explainer). Next to your rating it keeps a second number, the rating deviation: how sure the system is about you. When it’s unsure, after a break or on a new account, each game moves you a lot. When you play steadily, the deviation shrinks and each game moves you less. The details are on Glicko rating system (Wikipedia).
Two things follow from that:
- Streaks are normal. Even a player whose strength never changes will have runs of wins and runs of losses. Ten games tell you very little. A few hundred tell you a lot more.
- Read the line over months. Look at your rating graph by month, not by session. A bad Tuesday is weather. A flat year is climate.
Plateaus might not be what you think
FM Dalton Perrine makes a good point in FM Dalton Perrine: Plateaus Don’t Exist (in Chess): a rating measures you against the other players in the pool, and the pool keeps getting better. If you’re studying and your rating is steady, you may be improving at the same speed as everyone around you. That still counts.
It cuts both ways, though. If you aren’t studying, reviewing or changing anything, a flat rating probably means exactly what it says.
Signs of progress that rating hides
- Fewer one-move oversights per game. See Stop blundering.
- Higher accuracy than your opponents, game after game, not just in wins.
- Better conversion: fewer won games handed back. See Win won games.
- Fewer losses on time from positions that were fine. See Time management.
Two players, two answers
Fake plateaus: tired, tilted, rushed
Some flat lines aren’t about skill at all. If you play your worst chess late at night, after two losses, or in twenty-game sessions, your rating will measure your worst habits, not your chess. Read Tilt and Time management before you blame your openings.
The 20-loss audit
This takes an hour, and it tells you more than a month of new material.
- Open your last 20 losses.
- For each one, find the first move where the game really turned. Do it yourself first, then check with an engine.
- Give it one label: hung material, missed threat, missed win, opening, endgame, clock, tilt.
- Count the labels. The biggest pile is your next month of training. Ignore the rest for now.
“Losing is learning.”
For another view on what to do next, the Zwischenzug newsletter’s “Your rating’s not going up. What now?” is worth a read.
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Skill, or sessions and tilt?
The free Goat Card shows your rating trend, your streaks and how you score after a loss. You can see in seconds whether a flat line comes from sessions and tilt rather than from your chess.
The Goat Report adds an engine accuracy trend across your games and tells you whether the improvement is real or luck. The Goat Report is $5, paid once. See a blitz sample and a rapid sample first.
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