Ranks Need To Be Reset Once A Year

This is to encourage people to play more and grind for skill, it is to prevent rating inflation, and ensure that everyone is truly playing at their skill level. You won't have 1800s that should be at 1100, and likewise 1400s who should be over 2000. Also, people should play 20 placement games before they get a rating to know their skill level. Then assign them a rating based on the skill of their opponents, and win / loss record.

Reason. Many people think that Lichess and other sites ratings don't reflect what their FIDE OTB rating would be like. This is because of the different rating systems Glicko2 vs ELO, and the player pool size. Much smaller for FIDE, but higher quality players, where on a website you have casual and players who are aspiring to become professionals. The goal of this is to ensure that the pros are playing pros, and casuals are playing each other. A simple rating like there is now is not taking into account the quality of the players. Not every 2000 rated player has the same understanding of the game, and some got their rating easily, where others had to grind to that rank. Right now, as it stands, it is hit or miss if you will get someone who truly deserves to be at their rank, while others are not. Example: A guy creates an account plays 30 games, gets lucky and gets a 2000 rating but only has intermediate knowledge of the game. His opponents may have disconnected, or were having an off day, etc. But he has a 2000 rating that he does not deserve. Then he plays someone who is also 2000, who then trashes him, and then goes on to get a rank he doesn't deserve.

Eventually you have this chaos where many people are at ranks they don't deserve, or who think falsely about what kind of players they are facing at their rank. Then they make assumptions about some of their opponents being cheaters, when in reality they didn't understand the game as much as someone who really is at a 2000 rating would understand. So on and so forth.

A rank reset would fix this, and this will also get inactive accounts out of the metrics as well which can skew numbers such as "you are better than BLANK % of people on this site". Well, that is not necessarily true if there are many inactive accounts. How would you know how well you are actually doing, and if you are really progressing or not?

A rank reset is needed. Once a year.

People who get a 2000 rating by 'getting lucky' (I would argue this is highly unlikely after 28 games though) will quickly reach a more accurate rating after playing more games. Remember, ratings only compare you to the rest of the player pool, so if for some reason there is an influx of much weaker players who reach 2000, the other 2000's will subsequently get an increase in rating. Thus, everything will balance out. This is of course highly unlikely (if not impossible), but rating inflation is a thing (albeit at a much less drastic level).

@AtomicChessSensei said in #2:
> People who get a 2000 rating by 'getting lucky' (I would argue this is highly unlikely after 28 games though) will quickly reach a more accurate rating after playing more games. Remember, ratings only compare you to the rest of the player pool, so if for some reason there is an influx of much weaker players who reach 2000, the other 2000's will subsequently get an increase in rating. Thus, everything will balance out. This is of course highly unlikely (if not impossible), but rating inflation is a thing (albeit at a much less drastic level).

While I agree, we must consider the high volume of players on a daily basis where it is possible a good portion of them is like the scenario I described. Lichess starts everyone at 1500 I believe, so a couple good wins when you start your account rockets you into the 2000 territory, and I bet this is more common than we think. Even after 28 games or so, if they were playing 25% of the people that were like them, it could be enough to maintain the 2000 + rank even though they really don't belong there. Now yes, there could be strong players who will beat them and over time could eventually push them down to the rank they deserve, but also the player can choose to stop playing just before their account drops below 2000, and then go on to play casual anonymous games, or non-ranked games. This is messing up the rating pool, and causing many to have an inflated rating, and likewise it would also prevent the skilled players who are stuck at a lower rank from ranking up where they can play people at their skill level. This would be for those who play a lot of games and are getting very little to no gain or loss from their rated matches.

I bet right now, there are some 1600s who could and should belong above 2000, and there are many above 2000 who have no business being rated that high.

A rank reset once a year fixes this.

As a bonus, people will have a better idea of what their OTB rating ought to be, and how they are truly progressing.

It's true

Most of the point of having an elo system is for match-making. No one gets anything out of playing wildly mismatched games.

If you feel like seeing a number is somehow offending you / your sense of what your opponents elo "should" be (according to you) - this is why there's "Zen Mode". If OTOH you're actually bothered by not often enough playing games with an opponent who is on your skill level, it's immediately obvious that your suggestion would only make the problem much much worse (by literally having everyone play everyone with equal likelihood...)

Absolutely no complaints about Lichess rankings. I'm just outside top 3000 for classical, just in the top 14%. On another site I make top 3.3%, ranked about 576,000. Now that is bullshit.

A points reset for accounts that are inactive for a year would make more sense.

lowering the samplesize as a way to improve statistic relevance is completely absurd.

I would believe an annual rank reset would more likely DEVALUE a person's rating and make less people motivated to play chess if they will just lose all their progress.

This "idea" is about as terrible as the "bots for cheaters" thread, but just note that everyone's rating gets less stable if they take a break in a category. If you peaksit, your rating will lose reliability because it will be way more fluctuant if you decide to come back.

@InkyDarkBird said in #8:
> I would believe an annual rank reset would more likely DEVALUE a person's rating and make less people motivated to play chess if they will just lose all their progress.

Maybe for some, but it would also increase motivation to play for many others. It would not devalue the rating of someone who is truly playing at their level. It would only devalue the ones who don't deserve it. This encourages them to increase their skill to be where they think they should be at, and for others who do have the skill but are held back by the current system, it would give them an opportunity to get to the skill level they are playing at.