Does anyone else think that the tactics trainer ratings we get are EXTREMELY over-rated? It's almost comical. Our true playing strength seems to be several hundred points lower than our tactics trainer rating.

I realize that different ratings are on different scales and aren't meant to be cross-compared, but there must be a correlation. I'm curious to know what's the relationship between tactics ratings and actual playing strength.

Here's my suggestion: could chess.com make a graph with the tactics ratings (y-axis) plotted against the true OTB ratings (x-axis) for everybody? Of course, we could only include people with both an OTB rating and a tactics rating, but there should be enough members to give a statistically sound picture. It doesn't matter if the OTB rating is FIDE or USCF -- they are fairly close for our purposes.

That's because chess.com players pool is very large, and most players are recreational players. So if you're a regular player, you end up on the top end of the ratings quickly.

OTB competition is much tougher, so no surprise there is such a rating gap between the two.

Maybe it is a suggestion that most players on chess.com are tactical wizards? My TT rating is far below my game ratings, but I'm a positional player so that is to be expected.

 just because you are a positional player doesn't mean you can't be good at tactics. You should be good at both, no matter your style.

the tactics trainer i used under-rated me  ;(

 Well, just remember all the one move captures that are rated over 2000.  I think that should give you an idea. 

my rating is 2339 woooo, anyways chesstempo.com gives you an estimated FIDE rating based on solving statistics of the players on there that actualy have FIDE ratings, i dont see why chess.com couldnt do it. They factor in average time spent per puzzle, accuracy, difficulty of puzzles solved. but this is only  based on how good you are at solving tactical puzzles. an entire game consists of so many other elements that the only way to determine your real rating is to, well, play otb...

Your Tactics strenghes although extremly important is different from other aspects of chess such as Positional Play, End Game and even Opening theory. It does not represent your overall strength. If your tactical strength is 1900 but your positional strength is 1000, opening knowledge is 1000 to 1300, and endgame strength even  lower, well it will all balance out in your overall USCF rating. So remember, Tactics although the most principle thing to learn in chess especialy for anyone lower that (EXPERT LEVEL ELO 2000) is not all the aspects of chess that makes up your overall rating.

my tt rating is sometimes ~600 points ahead of cc. i think tt is easier bcuz u know there some sort of combo there

You must be playing a different TT then me, I rarely ever see individual tactics rated over 1300-1400.  Like OMGdidIreallyjustsact, my game rating is higher than my TT rating.  TT is nice but not very reflective of game conditions, hell it takes me a few seconds just to figure out which color I am and find my rooks.  In a game, I could see the tactical potential as it developed.  The TT is a tool and a very good one, but as a rating tool - it is irrelevant.

really? my tt rated at its highest is 2100, and my cc rating at its highest is 1600 =0

Since I am a bona-fide patzer I worry less about my tactics rating and concentrate more on the percentage of problems I am getting correct.  That to me is a much better gauge of how I am doing in tactics training.  I love the website Chess Tempo for tactics training but even that site has my FIDE rating as an estimated 1700 or something which is crazy!  I am not anywhere near that strong of a chess player..YET!

But what I do pay attention to at the Chess Tempo stats pages are the fact that my percentage correct has been going up slowly but steadily.  That is what i am looking for.  Rating schmating.

The tactics trainer rating is likely designed to give an arbitrary classification scale to the problems within the trainer. This allows it to choose problems that suit your TT rating; it's not meant to be compared with your ELO or anything like that.

The correlation between chess rating and TT rating would only be applicable to those who play tactically. If you use the trainer a lot but ignore tactics in play, any correlation would not be relevant. Also keep in mind that your opponents probably use the tactics trainer as well, so you can definitely lose to a tactical shot.

Personally, my TT rating hovers around my chess rating, to about 200 below. There's just a skill level on the trainer (for me) where things become obvious, so it's hard to dip much below that.

There are some pretty accurately evaluating tactics training programs, but the main point is that most average players are good at tactics but suck at everything else - e.g. don't know openings, typical plans, have a horrible endgame technique. Thus, for instance, they may score 2500 on the tactics test (and actually be close in terms of tactics to a GM), but fail at everything else and be rated a lot lower.

IMCheap, that's interesting that you should say that. Whenever people say, 'chess is 99% tactics', I always thought, no. But I never had the ability to back up my doubts, so kept quite. You'll see loads of forums regarding tactics, but few about planing in chess.

I'm actually having a read of, The Art of the Middlegame by Keres and Kotov at the moment and already have learnt more than I would have if I'd spent the same amount of time studying more tactics. Don't get me wrong, I do like tactics forums :)

They say so because tactics decides most games, but don't forget that in order to deliver a tactical blow your position must be good enough. If you're worse, then there just won't be any opportunities to show off your skills! So who cares if you can see a complicated mate in 7 in 10 secs if you get a lost position from the opening?

The reason why people spend more time discussing tactics is that it's fun and easy. Anyone can post a diagram with a nice tactical shot following, but you can't formulate that easily and quickly the beauty of your positional play which you demonstrated to outplay a person. It's much harder to perceive.

P.S. Good book, have a nice read!

I dunno, TT evaluates me reasonably well, compared to Online Chess. It goes up and down of course, a bit more than my Online rating. And I am much worse in live than in slow chess. But I agree, it would be curious to see a comparison of, say, TT, Online, Live Chess and FIDE ratings.

IM IMCheap is quite correct if you take me as an example: I hate openings, I hate memorising but I love tactics. I don’t have fide, but I guess it is around 1300 and my best tt is nicely over 2100.

I would disagree a bit here though about the importance. TT will teach you a skill of calculating your moves and because of that you could actually understand the theory of openings/middle game/endings instead of you just memorising them. Example being again me only (and thus not being really too decisive) after having my tt rating pimped up some 1000 points I could actually understand the teachings off the chess mentor  without too much time (only hours not days) to around - a bit less- the level of my tt rating.

My guess is that the difference can be as huge as 500+ points, but that is extreme. If you are balanced player I don’t see why the difference could not be very small.

I'm a 1200-1300 Live Chess player, with a 1700 TT Rating, and I wholeheartedly agree with the opening post.

TT ratings aren't expected to completely reflect true playing strength, but it'll still be interesting to see a graph of TT ratings plotted against OTB ratings. And this should be easy to do: chess.com could make up a survey asking for people's OTB rating (if they have one) and TT rating. The graph itself should take 2 seconds to make once the survey results are collected.