In addition to variance of opponents’ skill, there is also a substantial luck factor. Any search algorithm that can’t search the entire tree has uncertainty about how good moves are, which effectively translates into luck.
I think there’s a good chance your observations are still valid (also because you have intuition about how well you play on top of results), but it is a possible factor.
You can get up to around 1600 ELO pretty much just by not making stupid one move blunders. I am ranked around 1550 and obvious blunders that I should have caught are consistently the reason I lose games.
I don’t think this is in conflict with what I said. Blundering is itself a matter of luck. You can have both players play sufficiently reckless that they risk 1-move blunders, but then one person gets lucky that they’ve never made one. I assume you’re familiar with the situation where you make a move that’s only not a blunder due to X where X is something you didn’t think about while making the move.
Also, I don’t know how literal you meant your post, but I don’t think it’s true that you can get there by ‘just’ avoiding one-move blunders. If your positional play is sufficiently worse than your opponent’s, you should lose even if your opponent blunders a minor piece at some point and you don’t. I think it’s more like, most people around 1500 are somewhat even in positional skill, and you can separate yourself from them by avoiding blunders.
(Out of curiosity (or perhaps because I’ll challenge you), what time format are you 1550 in?)
In addition to variance of opponents’ skill, there is also a substantial luck factor. Any search algorithm that can’t search the entire tree has uncertainty about how good moves are, which effectively translates into luck.
I think there’s a good chance your observations are still valid (also because you have intuition about how well you play on top of results), but it is a possible factor.
You can get up to around 1600 ELO pretty much just by not making stupid one move blunders. I am ranked around 1550 and obvious blunders that I should have caught are consistently the reason I lose games.
I don’t think this is in conflict with what I said. Blundering is itself a matter of luck. You can have both players play sufficiently reckless that they risk 1-move blunders, but then one person gets lucky that they’ve never made one. I assume you’re familiar with the situation where you make a move that’s only not a blunder due to X where X is something you didn’t think about while making the move.
Also, I don’t know how literal you meant your post, but I don’t think it’s true that you can get there by ‘just’ avoiding one-move blunders. If your positional play is sufficiently worse than your opponent’s, you should lose even if your opponent blunders a minor piece at some point and you don’t. I think it’s more like, most people around 1500 are somewhat even in positional skill, and you can separate yourself from them by avoiding blunders.
(Out of curiosity (or perhaps because I’ll challenge you), what time format are you 1550 in?)
I’m 1550 in blitz. Mostly I play on 5+3 on lichess. Pm me if you want my handle on that site.