I once got wrecked by Cataclaw's smurf account back when he was top 5. I was like, "you know, Cataclaw has a nice M3 strat he likes to use as soviets" and then he's like, "dude, here's my real steam profile" and I was like, "OHHHHHHHHHHHHH".
It was pretty sweet.
On the other hand, when speaking about rank, I am currenlty 1800 something. It's a pile of horse shit, really. With Ostheer, I've been in the 2500s after a 15+ loss streak, and I've been as high as 217 before said loss streaks.
It's really sad. For example, this game began my terrible losing streak:
https://youtu.be/S_6GDuNetaY?t=21m50s
(nevermind Romeo's slightly-off audio). To be fair, in that game, I should not have spammed rifle nades and waited for LMG42s, but you know, whatever. My micro was still half decent.
Seriously, watch it. The combination of TM-35s and ISU-152 wipes is hilarious. After that I just dick around with a tiger and pio.
But sometimes, we just get shafted. That game against Cataclaw, I lost. Then against VonIvan, I lost (because my computer crashed due to porn) and then I went on to lose twelve more games in a row.
Bottom line is: Ranks, especially below the top 500, don't really seem to matter much. To a certain degree they certainly do, but the fluctuate with every game they're not really an accurate indication of skill. My typical Ostheer rank is between 1400 and 1200.