@Motroskin said in #1:
> Is is kind of personal stuff like mood, health or this could be something else, like imbalance of lichess pairings, their testing for your robustness, etc.?
>
> Most of these 12 lost games today were like fighting a brick wall after totally won (be me) game. I won most of these games and suddenly the opponents improved like replaced by another person and I lost having no chance to stand.
>
> The weirdest part is this win-lost pattern in most of these games. Easy win at first part and then meet impossible pace and precision from opponents.
>
> Am I the only person who gets this?
no - you're not alone. This happens to me too - - Yes, sometimes it's definitely a mood thing, like you're just playing bc of boredom (ie just moving pieces around without much thought, just hoping to win bc it's a nice buzz - so that ain't good) -- or sometimes it's bc you've played too long and get into a tilt frame of mind, which is just a downward spiral of losses where the only escape is invariably to just stop playing rather than falling into the trap of thinking "I'll stop playing after one win so I feel a bit better about it!" which rarely happens in that frame of mind. Playing with low blood sugar level doesn't help focus either, etc etc. But these are all obvious reasons right? So I presume you would have thought of all these possibilities (and more) first before you posted your observations regarding the difficulty of opponents - and I guess if any of these suggestions would have applied to you you wouldn't have been so inquisitive as you would already be aware of the potential reason. Ergo, as you postulated, the question arises - is there an entirely different reason for this?
I've thought the same thing. Here's a question for you - Does the same thing happen to you on any other chess sites on just as much a regular basis? I say that bc in my own experience this has never happened to me on
chess.com, whereas it has happened a number of times here (and I'm talking about the sudden wave of opponents that you mention where it just seems impossible to win) - and I'm not talking about tilt or having not eaten or mood or sleep, just suddenly after a couple of games that feel pretty much 50/50, suddenly I feel like I've got absolutely no chance, like I'm being completely outclassed. That would be normal for a few games of course, but not say 20 in a row. The last time this happened to me I won 2 in 20 games (I think?) - so yes, that doesn't sound like balanced pairings to me either, and the outcome certainly doesn't reflect the 50/50 chance of a win you would expect when matched with similar ratings (albeit, where mood sleep food etc are not significant factors). I look back at these games afterwards on these occasions and the opponents openings are almost all alien to me - whereas normally (at my slightly above average level) you tend to see the same 3 or 4 openings regularly appearing (whether you know how to deal with them or not - they mainly seem familiar).
Conversely, to the same degree, I've also noticed that sometimes there seems to be a wave of players that seem to be significantly easier opponents.
Is this the sort of thing you are experiencing aswell?
Anyway, with all this in mind, I have some thoughts.
As this has never happened to me on
chess.com (I've been using that site for just as long) and as I have noticed this a good few times on this site, like you, it makes me think that there's something in the method of pairing that SOMETIMES is not as random as we might imagine, even though the ratings suggest a similar level.
For instance, an opponent with a rating of 1700 might themselves be on a losing streak and is in fact usually more of an 1800 player (or more) but is just having a bad few weeks - or maybe the 1700 rating more accurately reflects the opponents actual level, or maybe the opponent has had a personal winning streak record and 1700 is the highest they've ever had (ie, in general they don't play to such a relatively high standard). I wonder if the algorithm for some reason has a bias towards sometimes MAINLY choosing opponents that fit the first instance (the ones that have been on the losing streak - ie a more difficult game for us), and then sometimes MAINLY choosing opponents on the winning streak, and all other times (the majority of the time) pairing us more fairly with people whose rating is actually a good representation of their ability. That is, maybe it's not randomly pairing us by simply comparing the rating value.
Anyway, that's the feeling I personally get when this keeps happening. I'm not assuming for one minute that this is categorical - it's just an idea that makes sense of the situation in question. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm not, - it's just a postulation folks! but needless to say, bring on the down thumbs!
Motroskin, do you have any theories aswell that you have thought of on the matter? I'm very interested to hear what you make of it.
