Are 1500s actually good, or just better beginners?

I recently went through many games played by 1500-1600s, and the sheer variance of game quality is wild. As a 2050 elo player it makes me wonder, what does it actually mean to be good at chess? Is 1500 elo really a respectable milestone, or are 1500s just better beginners who understand the game a bit better? What do you think?

@Iateadogyesterday said ^

I recently went through many games played by 1500-1600s, and the sheer variance of game quality is wild. As a 2050 elo player it makes me wonder, what does it actually mean to be good at chess? Is 1500 elo really a respectable milestone, or are 1500s just better beginners who understand the game a bit better? What do you think?

1500 is a respectable milestone.

@Iateadogyesterday said ^

I recently went through many games played by 1500-1600s, and the sheer variance of game quality is wild. As a 2050 elo player it makes me wonder, what does it actually mean to be good at chess? Is 1500 elo really a respectable milestone, or are 1500s just better beginners who understand the game a bit better? What do you think?

I don't know it's like a really good beginner getting into the milestone zone I myself plenty times lost to 1500 so they're a very very very strong beginner

@Iateadogyesterday said ^

I recently went through many games played by 1500-1600s, and the sheer variance of game quality is wild. As a 2050 elo player it makes me wonder, what does it actually mean to be good at chess? Is 1500 elo really a respectable milestone, or are 1500s just better beginners who understand the game a bit better? What do you think?

It's a respectable milestone but if the rating is temporary, it can be just a beginner but normal 1500's can very strong too just my Bullet is 1923 and I lost to some 1500's they're very good beginners

1500s and 1600s are good at tactics. positional play on the other hand? horrible.

source: i am a 1600

i think 1500 is a respectable milestone.

1500 does not mean beginner. I know OTB players who are about as weak as I am, and they have played chess since the eighties. They’re just not very strong.

And what is good and what is not is highly subjective. On Lichess, 1500 is around mid-pack, so you could say that’s pretty good. But a Lichess 1500 would probably place in the bottom quarter of section B in a Finnish OTB tournament (with only A and B sections), typically winning 1–2 games out of five. That doesn’t sound quite as good.

At a children’s event, obviously, they would do a lot better.

1500 on lichess? The ratings on different platforms are not comparable. For instance, about 80% of players on chess.com have a rating of less than 1000 compared with about 16% of lichess (if memory serves me right).

I agree with you that the ratings here (and on chess.com) don't seem to be adequately sorting players by strength. I get games against 1300s that are tightly fought, where my opponent plays sharp moves and makes few mistakes, and others against 1400s where my opponent blunders every other move (and I'm talking about players with hundreds of rated games on lichess according to their profiles). It's hard to understand why the strong players aren't moving up the ratings and the weak ones down.

@Iateadogyesterday said ^

What do you think?

If a player has played 50 games and has 1500, he is a good rookie.
If a player has played 1000 games and has a rating of 1500, he is stuck in development.

My ratings on Lichess were all provisional (some of them still are or would be if I played those variants) when I started here...they began at 1500 with a question mark at the end.

I am not sure where 1500 falls on the rating scale, but I would be happy to be 1500 in the U.S. Chess Federation (I am below 1000). It seems as if 1500 on Lichess is not terrible, but it isn't advanced. I have had over 1700 on Classical (Lichess), but I fell back down below 1700 after trying to play too many games in a row.

I work with a chess instructor online...he is an IM, and really knows a lot about chess. I'm not too concerned about my rating on Lichess, but I would like to raise my USCF rating so I can someday establish a FIDE rating. It might take me 10 years, but that's fine.

@petri999 said ^

1500 does not mean beginner. I know OTB players who are about as weak as I am, and they have played chess since the eighties. They’re just not very strong.

And what is good and what is not is highly subjective. On Lichess, 1500 is around mid-pack, so you could say that’s pretty good. But a Lichess 1500 would probably place in the bottom quarter of section B in a Finnish OTB tournament (with only ...

You are half right about the children bit because I am nine and am 1900 rapid