Is ratings accurate?

I have problems beating 1100 - 1300 players, but i easily defeat 1600-1800 players. I feel it is a lot harder to play at low rating. Why is that?

Hello my friend. I think 1600-1800 players want to see every detail when they play with low rating players, don't want to loose the game, finally they loose. But low rating players struggle to win all games. Of course they don't exactly know playing chess, but they try. :)

Skimming through your games, you lose most of the games that you play against players 1600+. You win occasionally against high rated players, and those games are certainly more memorable when you do, but that's within the margin of error of the rating system (especially at faster time controls). If you look in your profile and check your analytics, you can see the distribution of wins against players of different strengths.

Yes you are right maybe! :) I remember more when i win against a higher rated player.

@Zhai #1
My experience is that the U1300 are not always playing very bad, but sometimes play quite good chess, taking their time for some moves, only to blunder in time trouble. Time management is part of the chess games with a chess clock.

Doing better against players of a certain higher rating than a certain lower rating is not totally unheard of. Sometimes it is better to not see tactics if you do not see enough.

1800 player may see a way to win a pawn. They go win the pawn.

However, a 2000 player, Sees that pawn then thinks: "This is not a good pawn to take. It gives my opponent some initiative and they can maybe get it back with interest in a few moves".

Then a 1600 player may not even see to take that pawn at all. They are blind to it. So they don't go after the pawn and wind up in a better spot than the 1800.

Think of it like being blind or not, and you are thirsty. Totally blind person (1600) doesn't even see the bottle so they don't drink it. The 1800 person sees a little bit of blurry things. They see it and drink from the bottle marked poison... Then the 2000 someone with decent enough eyes thinks that's poison I'll avoid it.

Once you are at 1700 level you are accustomed to the way games usually go. Then when some lower rated player does something tottally weird, if it's not immediately obvious that it's a blunder it makes you question everything.. Why is that not usually a move? What do I have to do to punish this? This really throws you off your game sometimes.

@achja
Yeah exactly! Sometimes 1300 players can move so good moves i just watch like wtf. Also some random moving chess bots are 1100-1300 rating so that must mean if someone just moves randomly then their rating is about there, but this is not the truth.
@RandomMoverBot
@CaptureBot

Also, blitz and bullet are really volatile. Because you have limited time, many moves have to be made on the basis of understanding of the position, instead of full calculation. Some games you get more critical moves right than others. And the same goes for your opponent. So if you play your best game of the day against someone who plays his worst, you might beat someone much higher rated.

As a personal anecdote: in the last few days I've won games against players rated 2400/2500, but also lost to players rated 1600 (and felt outplayed by 1300's). Doesn't change that their ratings were accurate.

Its Psychology. Play using Zen Mode but OTB work on your psychology.