Ranking in Bullet

Hey there

I don't want to flame or anything, but I noticed that I dropped about 200 rating points. I was a decent 1950 player in bullet, now having trouble vs 1700 players. I don't really know what happened, I play (at least with white) the same opening (f4) and get into comfortable middle games, but opponents always get an edge with some tactics or whatsoever.

I wonder if maybe the rating system was changed, so that prior 1900 players are now 1700 players? At least to me it seems like these players on 1700 are even stronger. Or is it really just me? Playing bad? Could somebody check my games? My feeling says no.

Welcome to old age, join us.

🧐

Seriously though: The tide goes in, the tide goes out.

Remember that.

I was losing a lot of games too when they updated lichess. I'm not sure if they changed the rating system though. Anyways, since I was losing so many games, I decided to take a break from chess. When I came back, I was playing way better chess.

Hope this helps @Proxava

@Proxava
Train your tactics
I too feel the same about the rating change 1400 in blitz is damn easy now
Try not to play f4 orf5 or something
And try to premove
With this it took me about 3 days to go from 1300 to 1600 in bullet
I know how it feels

I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but the fact that you have 14,000 bullet games and almost 4,000 in blitz indicates that you don't play to improve, just to move the pieces.
With all the arrival of new people due to the pandemic, in addition to the people who have already played here for a long time, it is obvious that there is going to be an increase and decrease in the strength of the players in some points
and later it adjusts a bit as they play a little more and find a more stable rating.
That also contributes to many increasing their ratings 100-150 points above their normal performance.
Now, even if you are a bullet player, your strength is usually not far from your level in blitz. Maybe you should train for a couple of months, improve your lines, concrete repertoire, tactics, endgame, and then see how far you can really climb, I'm sure that with a couple of hours of effective training every day you could reach it without problems.
It is useless to be able to make 60 moves in a second if you have 6 pieces against.
Im guessing that you are a guy in his 20s, 30s? So its s great opportunity to improve if you have that much free time. Maybe not to go for norms and stuff, but to be a very decent club player, around 2000 ELO (lichess) if you just play for fun and dont want to lose more points, play with people with a range of 50-50 to your current rating, so if you dont belong to this ELO, you should climb quickly against your rivals, also, in the moment that you struggle to win, thats your rating

And for the second part about analyzing your games. ]I think the main problem its that you move in a very mechanic way, as you can see it was a great advantage for white here, you have 40 seconds in the 20th move, a lot of viable moves, and still premove and lose your bishop in a very silly way. Even if speed is important in bullet, theres not much to do when u blunder pieces like that.
One hell of a tool here is Chess Insights, you can check everything thats wrong and right about your games, in what part of game your better, how often u blunder pieces, how many errors you make in different time controls, what openings and defenses give you the most victories, what lines give you a pain in the ass, and more stuff you can use to identify whats wrong and need to be changed.

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@MasterLucienJaccon , yes usually I do the same. But disturbs me quite a bit, being so low, wanna have at least 100 more points.

@Ameershahul29 yes, tactics is good point. I do tactics, but not regulary. Probably I should do a schedule. However f4 is my move, and I won't stop playing it. It is playable.

@LoboDementorBUAP Indeed I don't play bullet to improve. I don't think bullet is the way to improve your chess very much. I play bullet mechanically to get an intuition. Maybe the pandemic affected the rating overall and people improved a lot, so I felll, because I didn't improve, right? So if I make a schedule with tactics and a bit of opening theory, endgame theory everyday, I should climb again, probably. If that is what you are saying. I am also a club player, I am missing real competitions, my rating is 1600 there, but I draw and beat 1700,1800 players, I just lack games, I only started competitive chess just before the pandemic :-/ I haven't found any friends for bullet yet, in my club there are not very bullet addicted players like me. So I have to play random bullets. Would you recomend me Swiss bullet arenas? I would like to try that, because then games get more value, it seems. I am indeed in my midtwenties, and a bit of free time for chess. Thank you for your help.

About the analysis, thank you. This is exactly what I need, a better player that shows me my mistakes in my games. True I blundered my bishop there. But you have to admit that my opponent also played very good for his rating. Usually on 1950 I didn't encounter such strong players. I can't cite a game right now, but I will later. Blundering even more than that in much simpler positions. Could you perhaps give me a bit of insights in your chess career? How did you become a solid bullet player? Do you play competitive chess? Do you train tactics daily?