There is a book on inuition and perception called 'The Invisible Gorilla', which is currently in the top 1000 books on Amazon. Among other interesting things, it refers to a poll of chess players in which they were asked if their ratings were accurate. 21% said they were; 4% said that their rating was too high, and 75% belived that their rating was too low.
Three out of every four players belived that their true strength was more than their rating.

The players were not unfamiliar with the game. They had an average experience of 20 years. So they knew what strenght was.
Nor were they talking about a delay in games being reported, which can give a rapidly improving player an artificially low rating. A year later the vast majority of players were still at or close to their same rating.

This reminds me of a study that was in the news recently. It rated how well our kids are learning across various countries. (I think it was mostly science and math scores, but I don't recall exactly.) Anyways... the U.S. students weren't doing too well compared to many other developed countries. However, they rated much higher in their self-confidence: they *think* they are doing better than they are.

So, I don't know about that chess study, but I wonder if it was all Americans!

As Terence Reese said, "A man who plays up to himself is hard to beat." Most players do not play up to themselves, and so their ratings do not reflect their true strength.

When Billie Jean King was commentating tennis tournaments, she used to talk about a player "raising the level of her game" during a match. For serious players this is an important concept. I used to know a dan player who, IMO, did not have the skills of a dan player. But he won a lot of games because he simply refused to lose.

This is in line with research that indicates that people generally think that they are more skilled than they actually are. However, as is often the case, other research indicates that the framing of the question can make a difference. For instance, what if players were asked how many games they thought they would win if they played 100 games against players with their same rating? Although that appears to be an equivalent question, it would not be surprising if the average was very close to 50.

Yeah, this doesn't strike me as surprising ^^ Funny thing is, I always say about my Go strength that it is something around my currently rank.

To Bill Spight:
Out of 100 games, I'd say I would win about 53%. At least this is what KGS Analytics tells me ; )



post scriptum: Oops, I just see. I didn't even play 100 ranked games on KGS until now :O This is approximately 5 games a month since registering...

In this day and age it is most refreshing to see someone quote Terence Reese. I wonder how many here know who he is (without googling)

I'm a keen bridge player (only recently taken up go), so of course I know who Terence Reese is

GET OUT!