Comment by jmb99
I mean, if you’re in the top 3 percent of anything, yes that’s pretty good, but not unbelievably so, especially in the field of chess. If for instance you randomly put together a classroom full of chess players, there’s decent odds one of them is better than top 3%. Two classrooms and it’s almost a certainty.
Put another way, looking at chess.com users, there are ~6 million people who would count as the top 3 percent. Difficult to achieve, yes, but if 6 million people can achieve it, it’s not really a “humble brag,” it’s just a statement.
It made me smile to hear “I’m only 97th percentile” isn’t a humblebrag. You may be employing an old saw of mine, you can make people* react however you want by leaning on either percentages or whole numbers when you shouldn’t.
* who don’t have strong numeracy and time to think