I came here after four years break. No matter for reasons, but I decided to participate to see how I can perform today. You know, years go by, covid eats our brains etc. From rating 1741 in 2018 now I dropped to 1597, performing on level of 1100. This was sad to me, but I was prepared too see I declined. However I was surprised how much I dropped. Started investigating a bit.

First I was trying to look at other players. I found one that is really interesting. Actually he's a hero for me, because Codeforces Round #777 (Div. 2) is his 777-th round! Best regards ruban :) If you take a look at his rating chart you'll notice a drop in rating somewhere in 2020. At first sight seems to be a 150 points drop.

There are some mysteries behind Elo rating system. I am not an expert, maybe some of you know it better. But there are ideas that huge growth in players caused by covid may cause rating deflation, like this discussion on a chess forum. (Basically deflation means that rating decreases while skill stays the same.) At Codeforces we also experienced huge income of players in 2019 and 2020. Just taking random contests from 2019 and 2021:

• Codeforces Round 538 (Div. 2) 2019-02, 6141 players solved A
• Codeforces Round 700 (Div. 2) 2021-02, 13356 players solved A

(By the way, such growth is not visible in problem C.)

It's important that I look at cyan segment. Things may look differently in other segments, especially in red group.

So I am writing this to share my thoughts and possibly make us all conscious of the fact. But also to ask:

Can you say more about rating deflation on Codeforces? Is it possible to calculate what number today resembles given number in 2018? Of course I'm interested in a number that reflects actual skills, although I know Elo is in general relative.

Update 2022-03-16: Here you'll find a tampermonkey script that shows who on the rating page has the greatest contests count (on F12 js console). With this you can find users close to you and watch their graphs.