No, seriously, this has gotten out of hand. Ratings on this site are completely and utterly useless now to describe someone's skill level because they have shifted dramatically from their traditional meanings.

In numerous pieces of chess literature <1000 is considered beginner, 1000-1500 is intermediate, 1500-1800 is club, 1800-2000 is advanced club, 2000 Expert, and so on. And it's obvious that the glicko system chess.com uses is meant to emulate that with some degree of accuracy, otherwise it wouldn't be nearly the same system used by official governing bodies of chess...

The Numbers

September 2016 Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/54c1nv/player_rating_percentiles_chesscom/

April 2023 Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/12vd1xe/chesscom_percentiles_april_2023/

June 2026 Source: https://www.chess.com/leaderboard/live/rapid right now.

https://preview.redd.it/chzkk3jp939h1.png?width=1422&format=png&auto=webp&s=705d653fc5f44e29d2a75aa67f1455f4b5af25a3

https://preview.redd.it/d9dcuumq939h1.png?width=1420&format=png&auto=webp&s=2d10f85fc87c24c3fd4869ff198af35d675ba9d4

https://preview.redd.it/vv99s4dr939h1.png?width=1410&format=png&auto=webp&s=5915fc14d0df855dc368377d53308197678fc7d0

https://preview.redd.it/h71tt84v939h1.png?width=759&format=png&auto=webp&s=dfe15c4bdd0a3f9cd550773f8b15b5558e0d59fe

Proposed approximation of how much ratings should be adjusted to recreate a healthy rating distribution.

This is a table approximating how much the ratings need to be adjusted to have a similar bell curve to 2016.

But they're all beginners! They can't have a rating that high!

No they're not. Think about it. Which statement makes more sense logically in the context of chess skill and active online play.

1. Most chess.com players are complete beginners who struggle to make logical moves at all and should have a rating that reflects a scholastic beginner level of skill. Historically, something similar to an average six-year-old USCF player.
2. Most chess.com players are intermediate players, some are beginners, some are club/advanced. Most players ratings are in the 1000-1500 band reflecting intermediate skill, an understanding of basic tactics and calculation.

While statement #1 is funnier, it's not true. It's absurd.

Ratings are supposed to reflect skill level relative to the other players in the rating pool, but they've all been dragged downwards by new players making new accounts.

The current median is so low it is psychologically damaging

So many general principles and pieces of advice revolve around certain skill levels. "Oh don't learn that until about 1000," "Oh you'll want to learn that around 1500..."

"Yeah 600 is a complete beginner level you just need to learn basic tactics like forks, pins, and skewers at that point." But when a 600 is in the 65th percentile, I think it's safe to say they're well aware of basic 2-3 move tactics and probably solve puzzles regularly...

All of the players currently in I'd say 400-1000 band are intermediate players, but their ratings and the advice and descriptions that have surrounded those <1000 numbers historically tell everyone they're beginners and they need to learn basic tactics to progress... This was true for <1000 rated players prior to Covid, it is not true now.

All of these players feel like they're classified as "beginners" when they have put in a decent amount of work to "get good" at chess, and they can destroy their friends and family who don't play chess regularly, because they're intermediate players, so their rating should reflect that.

Even when making a new account and selecting your skill level, Intermediate puts you at 1200, which is in the 93rd percentile of players! This should not be the case.

The starting ratings have changed

Back in the day, chess.com started you at 1200. Now when you make a new account and select "beginner" as your skill level (most people don't know what to pick and they want to play it safe, as to not get paired against strong opponents, so guess what they're going to pick), pair that with the COVID boom, and now all of a sudden you have millions of new players of varying skill level playing in the 400-rating bracket, dragging down 500s, 600s, etc. in their progress upwards towards their "true rating."

The bottom of the pool is a dogpile of beginners

Players rated 100 vary from those who make random legal moves to those who have an entry-level knowledge of tactics. A 100 is supposed to be someone who barely knows how the pieces move and makes borderline random legal moves.

Right now, since the bell curve keeps shifting downwards 100, there is a bunch of players of wildly varied skill level, albeit all beginner-level, rated 100. Some are playing their first chess game while some are playing their 300th chess game. This shouldn't be the case.

Bot ratings are way too high!

Or... maybe they're just reflecting ~2016 rating skill. People often say they play weaker than they are by some 500+ rating points, while bots around 2000+ are accurately rated. People constantly say things like "I'm 400 rated, but I can usually beat the 1000 rated bot, what gives!?"

And if you refer to the 2026 Now vs 2026 Fixed chart I have at the top, guess what? A 400 should probably be more like 1150 or so...

Chess.com please redistribute the ratings using historical percentile data to reflect a healthy bell curve centered around ~1200 like it used to be. The current rating system is damaged and needs to be repaired with intervention.

Edit: I put together some more supporting evidence in a comment, thought I might as well put it here also:

The rating distribution is absolutely supposed to form a nearly-perfect gaussian distribution. The current distribution is non-functional.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem

Official Glicko documentation: https://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf#:~:text=If%20the%20player%20is%20unrated%2C,team%27s%2Fplayer%27s%20rating

All unrated players must be set to 1500 initially (or some other static medium-level rating would be fine like 1200). Chess.com doesn't do this, they allow players to select their rating at the beginning, most people pick beginner which puts them all at 400. Many of them are practically speaking much stronger than a 400 is supposed to be, dragging rating down across the board.

Now we have a bunch of players who are all bunched up in the low hundreds that should be spread out over several hundred rating points at least. Theoretically a 100-rated player should be a player who loses EVERY game they play, forming the ABSOLUTE BOTTOM of the rating system. Not an entire wall of players.

Pretty much every game or hobby or skill where if you can quantify their skill level numerically and graph it, it will form a nearly-perfect gaussian distribution. A few people are terrible, a few people are elite/pro level, and a TON of people are within the 2nd and 1st deviations between them forming the bulk of the distribution, clustering around a "medium" strength.

Lichess rating distribution

https://preview.redd.it/pph249gl1a9h1.png?width=1621&format=png&auto=webp&s=0f31f8d6c174ca8407f1b42c4929e7781ae549b8

FIDE prior to changing the floor to 1400:

https://preview.redd.it/6rpbmjhf1a9h1.png?width=1300&format=png&auto=webp&s=01934346492c30b2f0db618d0d5dc90790002681

Rocket League Player Rankings

https://preview.redd.it/27f3iqqv0a9h1.png?width=630&format=png&auto=webp&s=a13f473c0ea78dd1c286f55772e4dae76e18e24e

CS2 Player Rankings

https://preview.redd.it/ufuut25t0a9h1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=0663b7873b5fb4f2bbfb69ac6f37172848286f77

For a glicko-style system to function properly, it must have very few players at the bottom, forming the bottom.

My theory is that it WILL eventually shift back, so long as we don’t see a massive surge in new players again. Why?

Every ~400 rating points is what I consider a sort of tier of dominance. Using the glicko math the expected outcome is 9/10 every 400 rating points. A 1000 playing a 600 is expected to get 9/10 points.

So over time if a 100 is someone who barely knows how the pieces move, then a 500 will eventually be someone who scores 9/10 against that type of player and so on. But this probably take years and years to happen.

This is a problem I feel needs addressing. I apologize for the wall of text but I wanted to be very thorough in what exactly it is that I’m talking about and why it’s important to the sub and perhaps even reddit in general. If you guys know of other telltale signs that it's a bot comment please let us know in the comments.

Comments everywhere are being written and posted by some kind of bot(s) using an LLM to write them. While these comments are largely harmless, admittedly, I think it’s very important to know when the information you’re receiving is coming from a glorified random number generator or an actual person who is active in the sub you’re posting, commenting, or lurking in. Their responses can be very generic or vague and oftentimes spread misinformation. The most troubling part of all of this is when these comments get a lot of upvotes, this means that the bots are working as intended.

I also get some downvotes sometimes when I point out a bot comment I presume because people are skeptical and want to give the account the benefit of the doubt. Afterall, who is this guy who thinks he can spot a bot based on one comment? It’s good to be skeptical, but after I describe what these comments look like I’m hoping you can identify these same comments and downvote them to get these damn bots out of our subs. Wouldn’t you like to know if you’re getting information from a random number generator or from a person? If you wanted an answer from an LLM wouldn’t you just go use an LLM instead of a reddit post?

I frequent subs involving the worlds of PC hardware, chess, and sometimes vehicle maintenance, and for some reason these bots are very common on these subs (or at least I see them there because that’s where I’m usually commenting…) r/pcmasterrace r/pcbuildhelp r/pcbuild r/chess r/chessbeginners r/mechanicadvice just to name a few. I’m sure they’re also common on other subs with lots of discussion in the comments.  

There’s several things I’ve noticed that these comments all have in common (and the worst part is I’m sure that this will become out-of-date eventually because by my acknowledging of these traits whoever is making the bots is obliged to change these traits so they’re harder to identify…)

Obviously, a comment having only one or two of these traits is NOT a telling sign that it is written by one of these bots, but when a comment has several of these signs I believe it is highly, highly likely to be one of these bots. Some of these signs are VERY subtle and are also done by real accounts, but when they’re all happening in unison, something is up.

Typical traits of these comments and their accounts:

• The biggest one is very hard to describe and takes practice and exposure to identify, so bear with me. It has the default “LLM” writing style to it. The way it talks is very “LLM.” You probably won’t be able to identify it unless you’ve used LLMs a lot or otherwise read content generated by them frequently. It has a particular writing style that I can identify by simply reading the first sentence of any of these comments, which then prompts me to look for the other traits. There’s just something… “off” about the way they read…
• There’s another style I see from time to time that tries to be almost like “overly gen z” and it talks using modern slang and putting 1-2 emojis at the end of its sentences. These ones are usually very short, only two sentences usually.
• They’re also now starting to employ grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors to try to fly under the radar. But from what I’ve noticed it’s egregious. It almost looks like someone  who has English as a 2nd language is typing or they’re 10 years old. Still retains the “LLM” default writing style, but with random errors thrown in.  
• I’m pretty sure they only respond to text and image posts, not video posts. I don’t think I’ve stumbled upon any responding to a video post (an LLM interpreting a video as input is not a thing afaik).  
• Immediately starts by relating to OP. “Oh I remember when I dealt with…” “Yeah I felt that way too…” that sort of thing
• Two paragraphs long. This is not guaranteed, but is common. Otherwise it will be one or three paragraphs long.
• It’s NEVER negative. It’s always positive or otherwise neutral. It will never give someone negative feedback. Every comment is some kind of attempt at sharing a similar experience and offering some advice.
• If the account has its comments visible (I’m pretty sure most of them do) the comment was the first one made in days, sometimes only 2-3 days, sometimes a couple weeks. But either way it will never make multiple comments in the same day.
• Account has a randomly generated username (although this is very common in general, so take this with a very large grain of salt) i.e. u/Random-Words1234 style username
• If the account has posts they’re from a long time ago. I suspect that these bots are using “used” accounts a lot of the time, accounts that used to belong to a real person and now no longer do.
• It replies to a comment as if it were responding to OP’s post. I’m not sure why but this is also common. Of course, it can happen by new reddit users who hit the wrong reply button, but I’ve noticed it several times by the bots now at least. Oftentimes it responds to my comment as if it were responding to OP’s post which is how I notice it in the first place.
• Despite what I just said in the previous bullet point, they will NEVER respond to your comments. You can reply to the bot's comment and ask it a question, you can do its u/ in your comment to send it a notification for your comment, and it will never respond. So, u/Vegetable-Board7603, u/Lazy-Stable-2345, u/One_Hyena_9438, u/Trick_Growth_9280, u/Imaginary_Fly_3121, u/Difficult-Let1405, u/Practical-Impress607, and u/Sad_Main_1198 let me know if you feel differently.

To my great relief, while looking for examples I found that some of you guys are indeed picking up on it, albeit in a very obvious example where the bot didn’t pick up on sarcasm by OP and said it was impressive that OP was better than Magnus Carlsen at Daily and puzzles…

https://preview.redd.it/3dpq6vvk256h1.png?width=612&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d89458aa2ed62e815b7dee1a4b73d88076d80f6

Now, I understand I can’t just rattle off all these vague descriptors without giving some examples, so I’m now going to go digging around on those subs and show you what I’m talking about so you can see some examples. I’m also going to use my gptzero free uses (I don’t pay for it, and I don’t recommend paying for it, this is not a sponsored post) to demonstrate that they are indeed written by AI. And I know- I know- AI detectors aren’t perfect, but frankly in my opinion it’s not 2022 anymore, these detectors have had YEARS to compile examples of “AI” writing to train their detection models on, and they are now quite effective. Yay I’m human! I’ve played with them quite a bit and they’re now VERY good at detecting LLM writing even when I play with the LLM’s writing style. But I digress, here are some examples I can find:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1u0jfsg/comment/oqim5wy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button  

https://preview.redd.it/ef6vbnsk256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=e4458ac5a430e5d75c7c65b24312bd98a22f20a3

https://preview.redd.it/tzh4disk256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=53d15da18048570cc4a2e88cae5cfc9b5a31a0ef

https://www.reddit.com/r/chessbeginners/comments/1u0j7o9/comment/oqikn45/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

https://preview.redd.it/5x2zynsk256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=c69f26176f99c8889cc66386654b1420c1f2a3f3

https://preview.redd.it/h2iawhsk256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=485c55efa1ecab52bef92902cb0a7c14ed6a6d3a

https://www.reddit.com/r/chessbeginners/comments/1tzzpez/comment/oqeipi9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

https://preview.redd.it/8sri6tuk256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=086efb3d9b444e55bcdb5b515a2ff40c4d5cbe5d

https://preview.redd.it/51c12xrk256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=a1f95b0877b3d2d444bb2e8f60235061e8755388

https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicAdvice/comments/1tzx3x2/comment/oqe1ftc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

https://preview.redd.it/dt1z7a3l256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=fb7ef6691351f8bb920ce203cfd098989be582c8

https://preview.redd.it/ur803zrk256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=c140c9d93bd23f4bc01005d3499bdf56e0685e4c

https://www.reddit.com/r/chessbeginners/comments/1u0mf1p/comment/oqj9bdw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

https://preview.redd.it/2p9rejuk256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=e8d6abb5c6c8d26697982b0d14228efcbce93195

 

 

https://preview.redd.it/smke6lsk256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=9905e37049596be2b0f49a7325e473e2c848a5f7

https://preview.redd.it/5n5w97vk256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=24cf4210917a1636ea78e1ad00169a8a603ec622

https://preview.redd.it/1fevtzrk256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=3f36db170dc0f960923b041f2f076ec0b41f5a41

https://preview.redd.it/oprs2rvk256h1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=11778164b992a8a410c81c0df0613f174fd5bf20

 Hopefully you now have some idea of what these comments look like. If you know of other telltale signs of comments being from a bot please say what they are in the comments!

Going on desktop and setting the engine to 1000 and bullying it for a quick game is one of my guilty pleasures. Being able to play without really thinking about it too deeply and come out with a win is nice. But to still try to get something out of it I still run a game review on these games and look at my inaccuracies and see what I could have done slightly better.

I do this quite often so I'm very familiar with the numbers it outputs to me. Very consistently I get something like:

Accuracy - 85-90%

Opening - 95-100%

Middlegame - 80-90%

Endgame - 90-100%

But tonight I decided to play it, and I got numbers WAY lower than expected. My overall accuracy was a little over 70%, and for middlegame it gave like 55% I think, so I said "yeesh, that was pretty bad" and played it four more times... all getting the same numbers MUCH lower than I'm used to... So I decided to lock in and try to play a very clean game against it and make sure those accuracy numbers were high!

So it went like this:

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nf3 Bg7 4. Nc3 d6 5. Bf4 Nbd7 6. e3 Rf8 $2 7. Bd3 $6 Bh8 $2 8. O-O b6 9. Re1 g5 $6 10. Bxg5 Bb7 11. e4 c5 $6 12. e5 Bxf3 $6 13. Qxf3 cxd4 14. exf6 Bxf6 15. Bxf6 Nxf6 16. Qxf6 dxc3 17. Qxc3 $6 Rg8 18. Rad1 Qd7 19. b3 Qb7 20. Be4 Qb8 21. Bxa8 Qxa8 22. g3 Rf8 $6 23. b4 Kd8 24. c5 bxc5 25. bxc5 Qc6 26. Qa5+ Kc8 $6 27. Rc1 Kd7 $6 28. Red1 Rg8 $6 29. cxd6 Qb6 30. Qxb6 axb6 31. Rc7+ Kd8 32. Rxe7 f5 $6 33. Rxh7 b5 34. Rh5 b4 $6 35. Rxf5 Rh8 $6 36. d7 Rh6 37. Re5 Ra6 38. Re8+ Kc7 39. d8=Q+ Kc6 40. Re6+ Kb5 41. Rxa6 Kxa6 42. Rd5 Kb7 43. Qf6 Ka7 44. Rd7+ Kb8 45. Qf8# 1-0

https://preview.redd.it/zm8deftief4h1.png?width=687&format=png&auto=webp&s=4bd13102fe903b41286a739a0f1ac01e7be04140

Only two inaccuracies, no mistakes, misses, or blunders. Not bad. But I get 77% accuracy...? and 60.6% accuracy for the middlegame....? Really? Still?

At this point I'm convinced something's changed. That's five games in a row it's output numbers way lower than I'm used to and I know this game was played decently.

So I dump it into Lc0 0.32.1 locally and run a report. I'm also very familiar with the numbers that Lc0 outputs, against the 1000 bot it gives me 95%+ accuracy and usually 10-20ACPL, much more optimistic numbers than chess.com game review to begin with, but that's what it usually spits out for these me vs 1000 bot games.

https://preview.redd.it/ifyxuz7kef4h1.png?width=1026&format=png&auto=webp&s=94a92456c43b29152d7bc03b51b78c83f6738d05

And what do you know, a whopping 7 ACPL, and 98.2% accuracy, so this is on the cleaner end for what I usually get for these 1000 bot games.

This pretty much confirms it for me. They changed something with the game review accuracy calculation internally. Maybe switched it back to CAPS? I really have no idea.

Not sure how old it is, definitely last 10 years, possibly last 5 years.

Overweight probably Caucasian male, I think I remember slight wavy long brown hair, making repetitive techno-style beat towards camera, probably in bedroom, then after a few seconds another video of him head bobbing and making a simple melody is overlaid on top of the video facing sideways and as far as I know the video ends unless there's a longer version somewhere. It's definitely meant to be a sort of humorous video, amateurish, filmed on phone or webcam. It's a stupid video, but I desperately tried to reference it earlier and now it's bugging me that I can't find it anywhere...