3110: Global Ranking

Global Ranking

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Title text: Starting a meta-leaderboard for tracking who holds the record for ranking behind the most distinct people on an online leaderboard.

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Explanation

This explanation is incomplete: This page was created recently and is the 3110TH BEST PAGE. Explain what "rating floor" means and describe the system used. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Cueball comments on his ranking on a chess platform, such as chess.com or lichess, which both have millions of chess players. He notices that being ranked so low is quite remarkable.

Indeed, most sports only rank the best, most professional participants. Especially before computerization, nobody bothered to rank more than a few hundred or thousand competitors, largely because it would have been impractical. Even in chess, up to the mid-1990s, the FIDE rating floor used to be 2200, which only included some of the best players.

As of 2025, the FIDE floor is 1400, which allows intermediates to be rated and ranked. However, platforms such as chess.com and lichess, which have appeared since the creation of the Internet, do not abide by the FIDE floor limitation either, with chess.com placing the floor at 100 and lichess at 400, allowing even complete beginners to be rated and ranked. Ranking placements on chess.com go into the millions. Specifically, chess.com currently has about 218 million users, about 58 million of which have a Rapid rating. Being 7,145,000 would put Cueball just shy of the best 10% of players, with an Elo rating of about 900.

If being in the same ranking placement in different leaderboards has the same meaning to anyone, it is possible that being the lowest rated player on chess.com makes one worse than anyone in any other activity where rankings are applied.

Cueball then explains that he enjoys playing chess for communicative reasons, to gain friends. White Hat points out the toxicity that appears to be rampant among the people he is playing with, which may be found in many hobbyist online communities, especially ones that are related to gaming. But Cueball, while aware of the issue, seems to take the abuse he is getting as an expression of a complicated kind of friendship.

In the title text, Cueball has managed to flip his terrible ranking into a great one, by creating a combined ranking of online leaderboards, where a lower ranking elsewhere translates into a high ranking in the meta-ranking.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[Cueball is seated at a desk, and uses a laptop. White Hat is standing right behind him.]

Cueball: I'm ranked 7,145,000^th globally on this chess platform.

Cueball: It's hard to be ranked that low in any activity.

[Zoom on Cueball talking]

Cueball: Few pastimes even have 7 million rated players. Until the Internet, it wasn't really possible. You could be this bad, but only unofficially.

[Cueball is now facing White Hat]

Cueball: So in a sense, I'm worse at chess than anyone was at anything for most of human history.

White Hat: Why are you still doing it?

[Cueball is back on the laptop]

Cueball: Well, no human has ever had this many friends to play with.

White Hat: That person is calling you some very obscene names.

Cueball: Our friendship is complicated.

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Discussion

I'm 1300 rated on chess.com, and it says I'm better than 93% of all players. Why, then, am I still called "Intermediate?" Shouldn't being better than 93% of players make you advanced? 67.160.217.239 03:53, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Probably because Magnus Carlsen is 2839 in live rating right now and has been 2889.2 is 1300 chess.com even equivalent to FIDE 1300? I've been 1810s Lichess without the question mark for provisional rating which is equivalent to 1410s to 1510s chess.com and haven't even studied much chess. Like if someone plays a King or Queen's Gambit against me I don't know what to do beyond general opening principles. I know it's futile and bad to try to keep the Queen's Gambit pawn and both Queen's Gambit Accepted and Declined are good moves but I'm probably making a move at least as suboptimal as the Philidor Defense within the next few moves. I know Nf6 is most common top level response to 1d4 (I don't play 1d4) but I don't know what to do after that I seem to do better if I respond Double Queens Pawn Game. I don't know how to play or defend 1c4 I just know 1c4's not bad and can cause a reversed Sicilian. I sometimes have to resign endgames someone of my rating should win cause I don't know what to do and don't find out I'm fucked till after I do the fucked move. I independently rediscovered (not from being fucked like how I learned of Blackburne) some massive moves that crush folks as high as "defends weak tricks like Scholars" but they don't fall for it above a certain rating. Some Internet players are really bad. Not so much on lichess but on another site vs the lowest rateds I could eat rooks through fianchettoes without bishops or undefended b2/7 and g2/7 pawns or O-O-O check to knight fork king+rook then they move to the only square where I could then knight fork their K+other R even though every other legal move was far better crazy bad play like that. I think that was the guy who said he was "high on weed lol". The worst players will let you do things like queen to the side then fork K+R through the bishopless fianchetto (it's sometimes copying your i.e. g3 without knowing should fianchetto Bg2. It's really fun when you advance all pawns to same rank and they do they same 2 ranks over even though both are bad plans then you wreck them cause they're rated hundreds at best. Also really cool is when you X-ray attack or win a piece with a skewer or pawn fork or a player is so bad they let you move a piece in line with their king behind a shield even though they don't have to then you eat a defended piece with the shield piece by discovered check I've even done that with double check. Then I miss stronger play and go back to higher rated opponents. 2600:387:15:4B31:0:0:0:6 05:14, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

The rating system used at chess.com is a variant of the Elo rating system in use in organized chess since 1960. "Elo ratings measure the results within a closed pool of players rather than absolute skill." In the years BIE (Before the Internet Era), that "closed pool of players" consisted of those who participated in tournaments, a small subset of people who play chess. The ratings attempt to identify players of approximately equal skill level, useful for such things as tournament seedings or groupings, and it makes sense that the numbers established when the system was 'trained' primarily on tournament players have persisted to the present, despite the massive increase in the number of players in the pool, most of whom are of low skill. Thus, a 1300 ranking is "intermediate" in terms of tournament players, but in the 93rd percentile of all players. 2605:59C8:160:DB08:A0C4:5767:423F:40FA 05:50, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Because you're intermediate between the people who are better than you and the people who are worse than you.82.13.184.33 08:59, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Unless the used chess platform prohibits users to create multiple accounts (and very effectively enforces that) and removes deceased players, it is very likely that there are fewer than 7,144,999 real persons ranked above Cueball. --134.102.219.31 13:13, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Maybe Cueball used a bot to create a few million of them so that he could game his way to the top of his meta-ranking. 82.13.184.33 13:57, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Stephen Pile, founder of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain, was expelled for writing the bestselling Book of Heroic Failures. Likewise, I think being at the top of any leaderboard should disqualify you for Randall's meta leaderboard. I propose a meta meta leaderboard, based on scoring low on both the chess thing AND Randall's board. Pretty sure that everybody would score the same aggregate and would be both on top of AND at the bottom of this board, ex aequo. Easy to program, too.193.32.249.136 15:25, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

That takes me back. I actually got a copy of the BOHF as a prize, at school (not entirely sure whether there was a hidden message there), possibly for a book review I did (I thought maybe it was my one of Foundation And Earth, but that wasn't even published until I was in a different place... so not that... or I failed temporal mechanics spectacularly...). 92.23.2.228 18:54, 3 July 2025 (UTC)
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