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I love that HN hyper-focused on your 600 points observation. However, 600 points means you went from 1500 (the start) to at least 2100, which is almost universa

I love that HN hyper-focused on your 600 points observation. However, 600 points means you went from 1500 (the start) to at least 2100, which is almost universally recognized as "pro" or at least semi-pro for chess. So yes, logarithmic curve and dimensionless pedantry and all that, I'll grant you; but that's missing the trees for the squirrels in the forest, since 600 points means "I went from noob to pro." No one expects Magnus to gain 600 points, since that's quite impossible. I guess you could argue that it's possible for someone to start at 1500, then really suck at chess and drop to 900, and then merely become average again (1500), and claim a 600 point improvement. As with the other observation, I agree, that would be impressively misleading. I'm not sure that's the claim, though. EDIT: I retract every claim. I am in fact an idiot, since the article does say they went from 1200 to 1800, not 1500 to 2100. This is what I get for writing something dumb. At least I admit it right away though. Sorry. At least it's proof that the pedantic-ness wasn't so pedantic. I also take solace in the fact that the actual title of the article was stripped: the title says 1200-1800, not merely 600 points, which in this case is crucial info. But! It was remarkably stupid not to actually click on the link before writing, and this is rather public proof that sometimes I don't. Perhaps that's a strong signal that in the future, I need to be. :)

joshuamorton 5y ago
The full headline is 1200-1800 on lichess, which has a mean of 1500. So they started below average, trained up to something like 65 percentile on lichess. Its good improvement yes, but as someone at that rating, I'd be a mediocre club player at best (no more than 1600 FIDE, and probably less)
- pverghese 5y ago
  He didn't claim to be a pro. He's talking as a beginner..the improvements to be had.
saurik 5y ago
I am struggling to understand your point, as this person did not start at 1500: they started at 1200. Imagine if they had started at 900, not gone down and then back up as you posit for some reason?
Kranar 5y ago
Unfortunately OP was right to be pedantic. Consider that you assumed the author went from 1500 to 2100 in 6 months, which would be an absolutely monumental achievement, and yet the actual article says the author went from 1200 to 1800, which is nice, certainly nothing to complain about, but nothing even remotely as impressive as going from 1500 to 2100. 600 points, in and of itself, is almost meaningless.
- CaptainNegative 5y ago
  And not only 1200-1800, but 1200-1800 on lichess, which due to that site's rating inflation is probably closer to 700-1300 USCF/FIDE. It's a good climb but nothing particularly mind blowing.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
slingnow 5y ago
Your comment is all over the place with assumptions that are odd / incorrect and easily corrected by reading the article. First of all they went from 1200 -> 1800, not 1500 -> 2100. Second, just because you are given a preliminary rating of 1500 doesn't mean that you are a 1500. I don't know where you would get that idea from. If my 10 year old nephew signs up for lichess and never plays a game, by your logic he's a 1500 rated player. Third, an elo of 2100 is definitely not "pro" in chess. Especially not an unofficial lichess rating of 2100. A FIDE rating of 2500 is the minimum to be considered a Grandmaster, which is the beginning of anything resembling pro.
- yupper32 5y ago
  Meh, I'd say you could be a pro at the IM level. Plenty of IMs do lessons and stuff. But yeah 2100 lichess is not even close to pro.
CydeWeys 5y ago
> I guess you could argue that it's possible for someone to start at 1500, then really suck at chess and drop to 900, and then merely become average again (1500), and claim a 600 point improvement. This is showing some pretty serious misunderstandings about ELO ratings. 1,500 is absolutely not the starting point. When you first learn Chess, your rating will be low hundreds (like under 500). It takes a decent bit of practice to work your way up to 1,500, at which point you are already decent. 1,500 is roughly average among people who play Chess competitively. You certainly don't start there. 1,800 means you're good enough to beat most players at an average low level local tournament.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  ... Oh. It turns out that watching GothamChess doesn't make me a chess player. Thank you for that. It's mildly interesting analyzing the source of why I was so wrong: As someone who aspired to be pro at Dota (but was never too skilled at it), my "competitive instincts" have been calibrated for games where you do indeed start at some baseline, even among competitive players, because you will quickly be balanced out to the proper ELO. For example, in HoN (precursor to Dota 2), 1700 was widely considered pro, whereas everyone started at a baseline of 1500. The noobs were quickly punted down to lower than that. (It could've even been 1300 and I'm misremembering, but the point is, the competitive scene was still balanced around 1500 as a baseline.) Ditto for Dota 2, back when they had explicit MMRs. (MMR = ELO.) Nowadays they don't have MMR, they have ... tiers? ... since they realized that it kind of sucks having a community obsessing over what your actual number is, rather than what division/tier you're in. So they were like "Ok, congratulations, you've reached Immortal tier, you're now a pro." Anyway, when there was MMR, it still started at some baseline. Because again, the noobs would quickly be punted down to where they belong. 5k was widely considered pro back in those days, back when 5k meant something. But MMR inflation meant that the benchmark then became 6k = pro, and eventually 7k was top tier (I think?), so this was already a de facto tier system. Point is, saying "1,500 isn't the starting point" for chess, but yes of course it's roughly average among people who play Chess competitively. The competitive scene is all that matters. Me blatantly not reading the article was based around the assumption of "Of course this is referring to the competitive scene." As I said, it's interesting just how wildly wrong those assumptions were. :)
dfan 5y ago
I'd start considering players to be "pro" at around 2600 lichess rapid, which is a pretty normal rating for an International Master. (Mine is over 2200 and I just consider myself to be pretty good.) 1800 is still in the "learning how to play well" stage but getting there from a standing start in 6 months is indeed nice progress. He doesn't seem to claim it's anything more than that, which I appreciate.

joshuamorton 5y ago

The full headline is 1200-1800 on lichess, which has a mean of 1500. So they started below average, trained up to something like 65 percentile on lichess. Its good improvement yes, but as someone at that rating, I'd be a mediocre club player at best (no more than 1600 FIDE, and probably less)

pverghese 5y ago
He didn't claim to be a pro. He's talking as a beginner..the improvements to be had.

saurik 5y ago

I am struggling to understand your point, as this person did not start at 1500: they started at 1200. Imagine if they had started at 900, not gone down and then back up as you posit for some reason?

Kranar 5y ago

Unfortunately OP was right to be pedantic. Consider that you assumed the author went from 1500 to 2100 in 6 months, which would be an absolutely monumental achievement, and yet the actual article says the author went from 1200 to 1800, which is nice, certainly nothing to complain about, but nothing even remotely as impressive as going from 1500 to 2100. 600 points, in and of itself, is almost meaningless.

CaptainNegative 5y ago
And not only 1200-1800, but 1200-1800 on lichess, which due to that site's rating inflation is probably closer to 700-1300 USCF/FIDE. It's a good climb but nothing particularly mind blowing.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

slingnow 5y ago

Your comment is all over the place with assumptions that are odd / incorrect and easily corrected by reading the article. First of all they went from 1200 -> 1800, not 1500 -> 2100. Second, just because you are given a preliminary rating of 1500 doesn't mean that you are a 1500. I don't know where you would get that idea from. If my 10 year old nephew signs up for lichess and never plays a game, by your logic he's a 1500 rated player. Third, an elo of 2100 is definitely not "pro" in chess. Especially not an unofficial lichess rating of 2100. A FIDE rating of 2500 is the minimum to be considered a Grandmaster, which is the beginning of anything resembling pro.

yupper32 5y ago
Meh, I'd say you could be a pro at the IM level. Plenty of IMs do lessons and stuff. But yeah 2100 lichess is not even close to pro.

CydeWeys 5y ago

> I guess you could argue that it's possible for someone to start at 1500, then really suck at chess and drop to 900, and then merely become average again (1500), and claim a 600 point improvement. This is showing some pretty serious misunderstandings about ELO ratings. 1,500 is absolutely not the starting point. When you first learn Chess, your rating will be low hundreds (like under 500). It takes a decent bit of practice to work your way up to 1,500, at which point you are already decent. 1,500 is roughly average among people who play Chess competitively. You certainly don't start there. 1,800 means you're good enough to beat most players at an average low level local tournament.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
... Oh. It turns out that watching GothamChess doesn't make me a chess player. Thank you for that. It's mildly interesting analyzing the source of why I was so wrong: As someone who aspired to be pro at Dota (but was never too skilled at it), my "competitive instincts" have been calibrated for games where you do indeed start at some baseline, even among competitive players, because you will quickly be balanced out to the proper ELO. For example, in HoN (precursor to Dota 2), 1700 was widely considered pro, whereas everyone started at a baseline of 1500. The noobs were quickly punted down to lower than that. (It could've even been 1300 and I'm misremembering, but the point is, the competitive scene was still balanced around 1500 as a baseline.) Ditto for Dota 2, back when they had explicit MMRs. (MMR = ELO.) Nowadays they don't have MMR, they have ... tiers? ... since they realized that it kind of sucks having a community obsessing over what your actual number is, rather than what division/tier you're in. So they were like "Ok, congratulations, you've reached Immortal tier, you're now a pro." Anyway, when there was MMR, it still started at some baseline. Because again, the noobs would quickly be punted down to where they belong. 5k was widely considered pro back in those days, back when 5k meant something. But MMR inflation meant that the benchmark then became 6k = pro, and eventually 7k was top tier (I think?), so this was already a de facto tier system. Point is, saying "1,500 isn't the starting point" for chess, but yes of course it's roughly average among people who play Chess competitively. The competitive scene is all that matters. Me blatantly not reading the article was based around the assumption of "Of course this is referring to the competitive scene." As I said, it's interesting just how wildly wrong those assumptions were. :)

dfan 5y ago

I'd start considering players to be "pro" at around 2600 lichess rapid, which is a pretty normal rating for an International Master. (Mine is over 2200 and I just consider myself to be pretty good.) 1800 is still in the "learning how to play well" stage but getting there from a standing start in 6 months is indeed nice progress. He doesn't seem to claim it's anything more than that, which I appreciate.