The "best win" rating is more important than your own in many respects.  Your own rate can be contrived by playing lower rated opponents. It might be a good idea to increase the prominence given to the best win.  It could be done as follows:

display the rate against name e.g. buttonc 1590 (1583)

and on your profile instead of:

 thus:

It might encourage players to go for the heavyweights.

I like your idea, but some best wins are from timed out games which I think should not be displayed because it isn't a true win.  I bet the boys upstairs could fix that.

I agree with Tom543. But I know where you're comming from, but too me a time out win, is as good as a win of checkmate in OTB if someone times out that's it too !

But then what about if someone purposely timesout when they are losing?

I say include every win, if you won then that's all that counts too me. I don't care how I won I still count it.

Well if there already losing then it wont matter to you anyway will it.

I dont count in my mind a timeout as a genuine win in turn based games, but thats my personal concept anyway....

As the 1583 in focus, I'm not sure I would welcome this level of prominence! I have lined up some heavyweights to give buttonc a trouncing!

It would certainly be a good idea to exclude some wins. Until recently my best win was against a high rated player who was banned. In fact, I only "won" because said player's games were automagically resigned after the ban!

i don't really think i am at a level of chess i should care, but if the goal is to make the ratings reflective and undertandable at a glance, perhaps it could list, say, the 5/10 best wins rather than just the single highest (if this is visually messy, perhaps a link to click on 'best wins' which would expand).

'average opponent' can be misleading. the top player on this site could be kind enough, for my benefit, to play and thrash me a hundred times - his/her average opponent rating would drop massively, but he/she wouldn't be any worse a chess player (unless simply being exposed to my rubbish can rub off by osmosis - not entirely impossible, perhaps we are all lessened by it). so if ppl care about ratings and the overall opponent rating is privileged, top players lose simply by playing the lower rated players (win or lose, we bring that stat down for them).

'highest win' (singular) can also be misleading - my best 'win' is a time out. maybe u take what u can get day to day, but for someone else just trying to quickly assess if i might pose them an interesting chess game, it overinflates and it doesn't really assist.

if it listed the 5/10 best wins, the chance remains somebody might have got a whole collection of great wins simply by timeout, but it becomes a lot less likely than if only one is listed.

meanwhile, timeouts which are less than 2/3 moves simply shouldn't be counted towards anything.

regarding this time out thing I can see the point if player A is winning and times out, but I have had several opponents who didn't have the manners to hit the resign button but just let their lost position time out.  I know they did this as they were online and moving in other games at the time.  So to me a time out is a win.  I suppose in their minds they think that people look at the loss and say "Oh MM only won on time"...assuming perhaps that people either won't look at the position or not realise it was a lost position.

Joly regarding the average opponent stat, it is true of high rated play lower rated that stat comes down.  But the person's rating still goes up as long as he/she wins.  So if a 2200 plays a 1200 they get one point for a win.  Indeed it's probably easier for a 2200 to mow down 20 x 1300 raters than beat one 2200 and less risky. 

My best win is over 2500, but there are plenty of better players and indeed higher rated players than I who have lower rated best wins.

 Thanks MM78, I am aware that the winner's overall rating must increase no matter who they win against (though it might go up by 1 or less if the difference is sufficient - kasparov would need to, and i suspect could if desperate enough, beat me several thousand times consecutively to receive an extra 10 ratings points).

my broad point was that player ratings are based on performance over time and never by a single game (this is, reasonably, considered more indicative) but best win is (by definition) determined by a single event. i was merely suggesting that 'best win' might be improved by becoming 'best wins' (since one best win, by time out, might be due to the other player's vicissitudes of life - stay behind for that big promotion, or quit your job and go finish your internet chess - but half a dozen good wins are less likely to be the result of this).

This is pointless because you can just look at the AVERAGE OPPONENT and rating, then you will get an idea of how good a player is.

Thats not always the case either. U have to check there archives to see what kind of skill's they might have. Ratings and stats can be deceptive i believe...

How it is handled, including how to deal with time-outs, can be a secondary issue.  Do you think the basic proposal is worth persuing?  Any comment from staff?

If this suggestion were added to the wishlist#3 request list ( http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/chesscom-feature-requests-and-wishlist-3), it could be considered alongside other candidates for interface enhancement.

Ummm... why does my best win say n/a?

My best win was in blitz vs a 1375 rated player in a rated match, why does mine say n/a?

The best win on your profile is 1148 (K-STYLE)