The whole point of the article is that the average active Lichess user would be 95th percentile of people who know how to play chess.

So someone who only knows how to play chess would be considered a participant? Maybe this is what the author intended, I don't know. However, I find this definition of "participant" strange, because it allows us to truthfully say that someone is a participant, even though they don't play chess (they know the rules, but don't play).

I've played chess plenty of times. Against my parents growing up, against friends, computers, etc. Probably played 50 games of chess in my life. Compared to none at all, that's a lot. But I've never actually studied the game. I don't know any theory, haven't memorized any openings, etc. I have no idea what my rating would be, but I'm sure it'd be low. I expect there are plenty of similar people out there, who "play" chess, meaning they have done so on occasion, but are not in any way students of the game.

That still sounds completely wrong. I might give you 75th percentile but certainly not 95th.

Yep, I'm forever 'amazed' (read: not surprised) that this type of content continually makes it to the top of the front page of this website.

With the way the author described Overwatch, it sounds like the equivalent to 95th percentile for chess would be more 50th percentile for chess, because in order to reach around that level, one would have to put in that type of work as described to purportedly reach the 95th percentile in Overwatch.

Based on my understanding with the Lichess's blitz rating system (which of course can't be directly mapped to any other rating system), I expect that players rated 2175 Glicko in Lichess blitz could roughly be getting close to 1800-2000 Elo with FIDE if they played FIDE classical tournaments and were rated accordingly.

For comparison, FIDE's rating floor is 1000, but newbie players would likely remain "unrated" because they "aren't (yet) good enough" to be 1000 after 5 rated games. Meanwhile, GM Magnus Carlsen currently has a "live" FIDE rating of 2863.9 Elo (live, as opposed to published monthly rating).

As a further comparison, popular Twitch chess streamers WFM Alexandra Botez and WFM Anna Cramling have FIDE ratings of 2020 and 2057 Elo respectively, and Chesscom blitz ratings of 2195 and 2084 glicko respectively. I think they would simply wipe the floor at most (but not all) chess clubs that exist in the world.

There really aren't a lot of players who go through my chess club who are at or near this level. It really takes a lot of work to get anywhere close to that standard. The amount of work it takes for most to get that good would require chess to be their main hobby, if not something more. That, or they have to start it from a young age and also be quite obsessive about it.

Exact numbers aside, this level strength in chess isn't to be sneezed at, and requires significant investments of time - often over a "lifetime" (where lifetime = 10 or more years of a high level of dedication, focus, and good guidance), which for many young players, it is most of their lifetime. Most chess players will never reach this standard of chess, despite following all the basic advice as per the post. So I just find top 5% / 95th percentile being bandied about to be applicable for any field as somewhat laughable or fabricated. Maybe the figure is real for Overwatch, but for things like chess, speedcubing, and instrumental/vocal music, it just doesn't quite work that way as much as many would wish it did. Yes, the overall message of practising and learning is good, but when extraordinary claims such as "95%-ile isn't that good" get thrown about with Overwatch being used as primary evidence, the substance isn't much more convincing than typical clickbait. Survivorship bias?

I also immediately thought "this can't be true for Chess..."