I think this article has an important lesson. Here is his graph now: https://lichess.org/@/peidi https://lichess.org/@/peidi He quickly dropped those 200 point

I think this article has an important lesson. Here is his graph now: https://lichess.org/@/peidi https://lichess.org/@/peidi He quickly dropped those 200 points right back. In chess there is luck. Not luck like you hit a 9:1 longshot on the draw from a deck, but in other ways. Ratings don't account for personal differences. There are plenty of situations, all the way to the world champion, where you will have 3 players A,B,C of about the same rating. But A crushes B who crushes C who crushes A. One of the most famous here was Kasparov > Shirov > Kramnik > Kasparov. Keep getting paired as 'A' to your 'B' and you can hit a major hot streak. There are also simple practical things. It's not uncommon to run into a player that's drunk, exhausted, on tilt, or whatever else that's just completely throwing them off their game. Which probably leads to maybe the most important point. In chess there is a huge element of variance in your own mental ability. It can be short term - did you sleep well, do you have anything grinding in your head, etc. It can also be longterm for a countless array of reasons. Current world champion Magnus Carlsen was recently asked who his favorite player from the past is. He responded it was himself from 3-4 years ago. His game has undoubtedly deteriorated over the years for no great reason. He's probably just started to lose the motivation he once had. Nobody would argue against him being the best player alive, and few would argue against him being the best player of all time. Where's his motivation supposed to come from now? And while those examples are negative, they have perfectly equal opposites on the other end. Sleeping extremely well, very clear headed, highly motivated? Things like this don't necessarily last, but when they're there - they can give you a very substantial boost. So the lesson? There's variance and randomness in places you'd never expect to find it. In order to find genuine improvement it's important to be able to appreciate the difference between randomness and legitimate change. It's not easy, but I find there is a pretty simple clue for it. When you find yourself not wanting to play as much because you might screw up your rating - you have already subconsciously (and consciously really) accepted that you're overrated. This is a really common phenomena that I think we're all guilty of at some point or another. As the author of the article states, "As you can see in the chart, I played far fewer games in all of March to November than those sixteen days in February." That's a red flag for cognitive acute overratitus. Fortunately the cure is simple and fun - play more!