Specialists are the Most Annoying Rating Bracket on Codeforces

Newbies are new. Candidate Masters are actually pretty good. Masters and above have already proven themselves. Specialists, meanwhile, have somehow managed to combine the confidence of a seasoned competitor with the accomplishments of someone who still gets stuck on Problem C every other contest.

A Specialist's entire personality consists of being exactly one contest away from greatness. They don't solve hard problems; they almost solve hard problems. They don't become Experts; they are about to become Experts. They don't improve; they have a training plan that will definitely work starting next week. Every conversation eventually circles back to the fact that they're on the verge of a breakthrough that has somehow been imminent for the last two years.

Every Specialist also has a detailed explanation for why their current rating is fake. They're underrated. They're unlucky. They had a bad contest. They had a bad week. They had a bad month. Somehow every Specialist is secretly much stronger than their rating suggests, despite the unfortunate fact that the rating system has spent dozens or hundreds of contests stubbornly placing them in exactly the same range.

Specialists also love discussing competitive programming far more than they enjoy doing competitive programming. Ask them about training and you'll get a thousand-word essay. Ask them about intelligence and you'll get a two-thousand-word essay. Ask them about rating inflation and they'll produce a full statistical report. Ask them to solve the contest problem in front of them and suddenly they need "a little more time to think."

Their relationship with stronger competitors is equally fascinating. Specialists talk about Masters and Grandmasters the way medieval scholars talked about mythical creatures. They have elaborate theories about how top players think, train, and recognize patterns. They can explain exactly what separates a Specialist from a Grandmaster. What they cannot explain is why they just submitted their fourth wrong answer on a 1400-rated implementation problem.

Specialists are also responsible for approximately 97% of all "rating doesn't matter" posts immediately after losing rating. Curiously, rating becomes extremely important again after gaining rating. Scientists have studied this phenomenon extensively but have yet to identify the underlying mechanism.

Perhaps the defining characteristic of Specialists is their unwavering belief that everything is about to change. The breakthrough is coming. The consistency is coming. The huge rating gain is coming. Expert is coming. Every contest is supposedly the one that will finally reveal their true level. Yet somehow their graph continues to bounce around the same hundred-point range like a trapped particle in a physics simulation.

This is what makes Specialists unique. Newbies know they're beginners. Experts at least have evidence that they can solve reasonably difficult problems consistently. Masters and Grandmasters have already demonstrated their ability. Specialists, however, exist in a permanent state of almost. Almost good. Almost consistent. Almost strong enough. Almost there.

Which is why, despite having a higher rating, Specialists are arguably the real Newbies of Codeforces. A Newbie lacks knowledge because they haven't learned it yet. A Specialist lacks knowledge because they've convinced themselves they're much closer to the finish line than they actually are. A Newbie knows they have a lot to learn. A Specialist often believes they only need one more contest.

In the end, a Specialist is just a Newbie with a few hundred extra rating points, stronger opinions, and significantly more elaborate excuses. And that is a far more dangerous combination.