At a rapid tournament in the 2024/25 season, I had one of those runs you remember: game after game held together, until the field thinned and the pairings got spicier. The first time I went down was against an International Master (IM) — a fair reminder of how sharp rapid chess gets when title players show up on the neighbouring boards.
Rapid rewards instinct and preparation under a short clock; when an IM converts a small edge at that tempo, you learn more in one sitting than in many casual games.
FIDE publishes the rapid calculation for the February 2025 list here (tournament-performance inputs for that period):
Current rapid, blitz, and standard numbers are on my FIDE profile.