What happened to bullet ratings?

I hadn't played bullet for about a year until a few days ago, but when I reached my blitz goal of 2500, I decided to try my hand at it again. What I found when I did so was shocking: I was steamrolling past all of my opponents with ease. I'm currently rated 2550, but my win rate is still around 80%, and I'm pretty sure I can get to at least 2700 if I keep playing.

The last time that I played bullet on Lichess a year ago, I barely made 2400, and it took me several days of grinding to get there, too.

Moreover, it isn't even just me. Pretty much all of my opponents have bullet ratings that exceed their blitz ratings by around 200-300 points, and if you look at the latest titled arenas, such as this one (lichess.org/tournament/may24bta) and this one (lichess.org/tournament/jul24lta), the difference in average rating between the bullet and the blitz arenas is indeed around 200 points. This 200-to-300 point difference holds if you look at the leaderboard (lichess.org/player) for bullet and blitz, respectively. For some players, like Danya (@RebeccaHarris), the difference is even more extreme in this case almost 500 points even though Danya has always been rated around the same at bullet and blitz on chess.com.

What the hell happened? Has it always been like this, and I randomly got way better at bullet for absolutely no reason (my blitz rating has not significantly improved during that time), or did bullet ratings get significantly inflated in the past year?

It's well agreed that bullet ratings have inflated a lot in the past year, compared to other rating levels which have stayed roughly the same. Not sure why though.

@crtex said in #2:
> It's well agreed that bullet ratings have inflated a lot in the past year
Do you have an actual snapshot of the rating distribution from a year ago to support such claim?

Agree with the first post. Way easier to gain bullet rating. A year ago I was struggling to hit 2200. My blitz rating has stayed the same.

For higher rated players or Gms, they don't play much blitzs

nonsense, there is no rating "inflation" recently.

You just had a winning streak which happens once in a while.
Play the monthly bullet arena or the elite bullet arenas and you will quickly notice how tough it is to keep a bullet rating clearly above 2500!

Of course if you cherry pick your opponents you can reach higher numbers but it doesn't mean anything...

@mrbasso said in #6:
> nonsense, there is no rating "inflation" recently.
>
> You just had a winning streak which happens once in a while.
> Play the monthly bullet arena or the elite bullet arenas and you will quickly notice how tough it is to keep a bullet rating clearly above 2500!
>
> Of course if you cherry pick your opponents you can reach higher numbers but it doesn't mean anything...

A winning streak spanning 600 games? I don't see your point.

And cherry-picking opponents? What? I almost never play more than a few games per opponent. I never cherry-pick opponents.

It's a well-known fact that tournament ratings are deflated, as they always have been. Even if I do play bullet arenas and lose rating (which I don't think would even happen), that would only prove that tournament ratings are still deflated.

Who cares? Bullet is a pointless activity.

Why not? 600 games is nothing in bullet. I can play it in one day. A win streak in this context does not mean to win every bullet game, it just means to overperform compared to your usual results...

Earlier this year I easily got to 2603 during such a win streak but you have to almost win every game in arenas to keep it which is hardly possible for me. The opening is too bad for that...

Nobody even bats an eye at this, huh? Jesus this site is a cesspit.