SHOULD CHESS.COM GIVE OFFICIAL PLAYER RATINGS?

Ratings of players in chess.com are based on ALL games whether they are from tournaments, rated friendly games or just purely fun (but rated) games where it is not unusual to see high rated players lose to much lower rated opponents. Thus, the current ratings may not be representative of a player's real strength.

I suggest that chess.com create another players' rating based solely on chess.com’s officially sanctioned tournaments. Therefore, a player can have two ratings – the current one which can be called the UNOFFICIAL RATING and another called the OFFICIAL RATING (based on the above suggestion).

I’m aware that there are many players in this site who care much about their ratings and there are also those who don’t bother at all. But in my opinion, rating players based on official games will make player rankings (in turn-based play) more authentic. 

I suggest that chess.com organize tournaments where a player can earn official point ratings. Such tournaments may be based on players current ratings. Thus, we will see more players of more or less equal strength play against one another and not just choose players they prefer to play. 

This may also encourage more players to participate in tournaments and raise the quality of competition. (I notice that even in top tier tournaments only a handful of top players partipates). Wouldn't it be nice to see the top 50 or 100 players competing in one tournament to see who really is the legitimate numero uno in chess.com?

Any thoughts, comments, suggestions?   

"official" as in with FIDE and USCF etc?

If so, then no. People cheat on the internet.

No, he meant official as a rating only for tournament matches held on Chess.com.

I think this is one of many good alternatives. I would also impose limits to people who lose too many games on time which alters ratings and does not reflect player's true strengths.

Friends have advised me once you get to around 2200 on this site you will run into cheaters but perhaps with "official" chess.com ratings limited to tournaments it will be easier to monitor

I like the current system just fine. Some players don't play in tournaments for various reasons including the fact  that tournaments drag on forever. Also, non-paying members are not allowed to participate in nearly as many tournaments as premium members. Every player would have two ratings --torunament or "official" rating and plain rating. This is unnecesarily complicated.

My games that are in matches for Chessaholics Anonymous or my region are every bit as official as the tournaments I play. That's one problem with the suggestion, although some modification to include team matches and tournaments would answer this objection.

I already have some 35 online chess ratings. I pay attention to two or three of these, but only my USCF OTB matters as much as a rating can--the quality of chess play is far more important than ratings. Ratings, however, serve as benchmarks to measure improvement, and are thus useful for setting goals. An official chess.com rating will not be more valuable than my present online chess rating. My casual games with friends that are rated far below me ar unrated.

Thanks for you reply Jaguarphd.

I don't mean FIDE nor USCF nor any recognized chess organization but 'official' internally in chess.com.

As I've written in my post, current ratings include results from even 'fun' (but rated) games. For example a much highly-rated player lose to a much lower-rated player in just a few moves. I believe that they are caused by unintentional blunder which maybe was due to overconfidence or just plain oversight on the part of the stronger player. But I also believe that if the game is a formal one like in a tournament, such gross blunders will very unlikely happen). But just the same, the game affected the ratings of the players.

You maybe right with your observation Aansel. Perhaps cheating could be minimized because 'official' games can be subjected to closer scrutiny.

 If ever, perhaps the 'official' games be limited to a maximum of 3 days/move.

This proposal assume that people are playing less rigorously in games not played for official tournaments, and their rating is being penalized for this. That is the player's problem, not the rating system's problem. If you don't want to be penalized for playing "for fun," don't play the "for fun" games as rated ones.

For those of us who already play that way, the "official" rating would be less accurate than the "unofficial" rating. That's because the rating is an estimate using played games as data. The "official" rating will have less data to work with, and thus be less accurate.

minimum, not maximum

It seems to me that the solution is simple: if you are playing a game that "doesn'y matter", is "caual", or whatever you want to call it, just play it unrated. I cannot see how a game where the players have 3 days or more to look over the position before moving is anything but a serious game of chess.  

Without designating it the "official rating" it should be relatively simple to have a distinct "tournament" rating as a subset of your online rating, assuming that chess.com has been keeping track of which games are or are not tournament games. 

I'm guessing that most members of chess.com have not played in enough tournament games to give them a very accurate rating, and we wouldn't want to devalue the "online" games, which are really the core product of this website. 

A suggestion I had posted. Since it appears to me some people take the playing of games more serious than others. Some play tons of games and have tons of time outs. My hypothesis is that paying members of chess.com in general take the game more seriously so have a member only rating where members can play either in the free or member site depending on their mood and how serious they want to play while free members can only play in the free group. I am guessing the member group ratings would then be a more accurate measure.

it would definitely give me an incentive to join. On ICC I do not guests (similar concept) as otherwise for what I need the paying part of the site offers little.

Call me crazy but having any rating considered "official" within a rule structure that allows you to use books and databases seems a bit wacky.

Playing the first 30 moves with someone elses brain really isn't cause for any type of award.

 I dont agree! You can get cheats at any rating level its just the higher ones get noticed the easier.

If a player loses a (rated) game to a much lower rated players its the higher rated players fault for making to many mistakes and losing the points or the lower player, played brilliantly. I dont believe any extra rating system is needed its great how it is.

 many people would cheat if it was like that so alot of those top 100 players would have used a software to help them.

You made a valid point. But I guess the whole idea about Nightfly’s suggestion is not only about casual games being played as rated but also the seemingly deliberate avoidance of top players to play against one another on a more frequent basis. You can browse through the games of some of the top players and you’ll know what I mean. And there maybe some reasons for this:

1. Some top players maybe are just too slow for other top players liking. 2. Top players pick opponents they think they can beat. These are usually the much lower-rated players with a handful of losses. Very few top players dare to engage much lower-rated players who have clean win slates because they are dangerous! 3. Games between top-rated players more often results in a draw and therefore unproductive (in terms of points gain). The effort could be a month long game (oftentimes much longer) while producing no gain in points but has the risk of even losing some points. They would rather pick a ‘beatable’ lower-rated player even if they only stand to gain a point or two.

If there will be ‘official’ ratings based on sanctioned tournaments I think we will see more top players engaging one another and therefore will produce more draws than wins (as in FIDE tournaments for example). This would also make the ratings in this site more realistic. As it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if the top player in chess.com breaches 2900 points in the near future because top players just keep on collecting a point or two instead of getting draws or nil points.

odessea chess, clearly you don't not know how the rating system works, it knows those with a clean slate and so you don't lose so many points, but one thing you are correct on is, you can chose your opponent, and therefore you can be higher than your actual strength, or lower, depending on who you chose to play,