Has anyone else felt that same ranked players in the morning in NA (afternoon Europe) are stronger than evening NA?

I always play on the same settings, but am sometimes confused by the huge difference in playing abilities of my opponents earlier in the day and later in the same, i.e. players earlier the day seem much stronger...

Could be - I play on IGS and to me at least it seems the ranks get a little stronger after 5-6 in Japan. Also Friday's and weekends. Or it could just be me - if you think your opponent will be harder - then they often will.

Given that KGS tries to calculate ranks across all games this could only happen if there were two distinct pools of players with little interaction. This could happen, of course, but it seems unlikely as it would not take too many games between the pools to synchronize the ratings.

Could it be that what you are seeing is a difference in style between those people who live on the two continents. I don't know whether there is a difference or not, but that could explain your perception.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

If some players of the same rank seem stronger to you, it is probably because your skill sets don't match, in other words, they are stronger at aspects of the game that you are weaker in. And visa versa - selective perception?

It's also worth noting that while morning in America is afternoon in Europe, it is also evening in Asia, so you might be getting Asian opponents at this time who may tend to have a skill set different from yours. Later in the day, these players in Asia will either be pretty tired or asleep.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Looked at this page, but didn't really help me understand.
https://www.gokgs.com/help/rmath.html

Why would synchronizing the ratings not take too many games to readjust pools? Is that an assumption or is there math behind?
Just curious to understand how that'd work.

As for other reasons such as personal strengths/weaknesses, I'm sure that's possible. I'm more curious to know if there'd be reasons why two (or more) distinct pools could exist...

I don't think that non-interacting pools are necessary for the effect. Maybe the european players play stronger during the daytime than during nighttime. A large proportion of them could be drunk in the evening, for instance.

True.

Hmm... It would be interesting to see if we could develop a method to find the peak hours where certain groups of players (e.g age/geography/etc.) make more mistakes. E.g Shorter games might indicate larger blunders...

You could then hypothesize that if a certain player from a different group always plays at that time, there would be a possibility that they have an easier time ranking up...

Lots of if's and but's... But! I'd be curious to know the results of such research...