If a player rated "0" defeats another player rated "0", will the loser's rating go into negative? Would the winner's rating increase?

I think all rating systems specify that no players rating can be below 0.

These are the things that keep Gowda up at night.  lol

The losing player would not go negative (no ratings lower than 0!) and the winning player would go up (how could you be rated 0 if you win a game?).

Lol... how embarrassing would a negative rating be?!

Agreed with Nytik.

I think the average oyster would have a rating around 400. to approach zero I think you need to actually be a decent chessplayer, able to play moves that have a high chance of losing even if your opponent is also trying to lose.

Darn! If duplicate accounts was not banned, I sure would like to try that experiment!

BTW, hsbgowd must be a programmer - only programmers worry about one-chance-in-a-million exception handling!

I WAS a programmer. Good guess! (or did you cheat and read my profile) 

It depends on how the system is designed, but I've never seen one which permitted negative ratings.

As Fiveofswords points out, though, anyone rated 400 and falling almost has to be trying to lose, perhaps in some perverse attempt to get the "lowest rating" title.  First Grade scholastic beginners with the attention span of Labrador retrievers earn higher USCF ratings than that, and at their level they are probably underrated compared to chess.com ratings. 

Don't try his challenge with an oyster at home, though.  They nearly always lose on time.  On the bright side, you get to roast them if they lose.

I read somewhere that scholastic chess can go as low as 200, or maybe it was 250. I wonder what the game would look like. Like mine, maybe.

Someone has a zero rating?    How would you even find such a fact?

Ah, thanks.  I went to Members -► Search. 

Weird.  Those players both only very rarely make it past move 1.  Almost like they are trying to lose...

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/why-on-earth-would-somebody-resign    I asked about this myself.

The rule says you may not "deliberately" manipulate your ratings.

I don't see a practical way a reasonable player reaching a rating 0. At least in chess.com the number of players below 600 is very small. If you keep on playing against 1000+ rating players, I don't think one person can reach 0 even after 10000s of games.

So a ban for these people for deliberately inflating the ratings then.

Yeah, I kinda get the impression that it's a deliberate action to sabotage the rating system somehow...  I mean look at those members' game history.  One of them has like 50 / 55 games with a movecount of 1.  That just seems 100% deliberate to me... not even trying.

************ "resigns" after 1/2 moves. His timeout ratio is 0%. Some of his game have game name "Who wants points".

Makes no sense. You dont get win points for beating a 0.

I think Ima report this to staff, see what they say...