USCF Ratings

I have a friend that I've played 6 times OTB...and I have won all the games...but his rating on CC is like 1750...which is way higher than mine.  I am not sure how all the different factors come together to make the difference.

Why don't you mention  the biggest variable here, which is computer assistance? Only Rybka or Fritz can turn an 1800 ELO player into a GM.

Yes, +250 give or take is about right.  :D

are live ratings comparable to over the board? or is there a large rating difference there as well?

The ratings on this site are an excellent guide to an appropiate selection of opponents on this site, and they serve well to to assess proabilities of certain results. Comparing ratings here to ratings elsewhere or presuming some mythic "real world ratings" has entertainment value, but no statistical significance.

so, im rated like 1550 live, what would that be USCF?

I respectfully disagree. 

A 1200 rated player, no matter how much time he had, would lose to a player of Topalov's caliber 99.99% of the time, even if Topalov had only 3 minutes per move. 

The 1200 rated player might be able to work through a lot of the tactics, but would be overwhelmed by a world class GM's thorough knowledge of positional Chess. 

It wouldn't even be close.  Trust me!

correction....1200 player would lose 100% of the time

An experiment can be done with Fritz or ChessMaster or any other chess program. Set 6 hours for you and 3 minutes for the computer, and see what happens... (I know Fritz is not Topalov... but we can not try with Topalov, so...).

BTW: A 1200 player having 6 hours for move is the same (or worst) than a 1200 player having 1 hour. A 1200 player:

1. Does not know what to think during 6 hours.

2. Is tired after 30 minutes of thinking

3. Has forgotten his thoughts after 10 minutes of thinking

I know this well, as I am not too far of 1200 probably, hehe :P

I'm one of those people who make use of my resources in cc, so my rating is inflated by well over 500 points, although my performance rating in the few OTB tournaments available is close to 1800 and class a, but I have not proved it yet lol.

Yeah, weaker player probably aren't the best cc players either. They don't have as much to think about.

haha.  agreed. 

The interesting conclusion of such comparisons is that there is not one scale for chess standards, there are several. For example FIDE slowplay and correspondence strengths are only loosely correlated. Similarly, blitz strength is only loosely correlated. Perhaps the weakest correlation is between blitz strength and correspondence chess strength - differences of 1000 points are not unknown, but other players have similar numbers. Perhaps it's a bit like 100m and marathons. There are people who are bad at both, but the people who are very good at one are not necessarily much good at the other.

Some weak players might have a lot more to think about, especially if their minds are less cluttered with chess. Barack Obama, for example, is a chess player, but not a particularly strong one.

Yesterday, I was 1909 CC.  I played live chess last year consistently before playing CC.  I was roughly 1400 long rated.  Even though that is 500 points difference, there were factors that play in live chess.  One, I drink at night, and tend to play live chess during this time.  Second, I take CC chess more seriously than live chess.  Therefore, different people put more importance to the different types of chess being rated.  Also, I like to think out my moves with relatively no time constraint, which is why my online rating is that much higher.

You guys could spend a lifetime trying to figure out the inflation, but you will find yourself going in circles, much like the threads here.

Yeah, the comparison between blitz and cc is difficult to make. I'm terrible at ONLINE blitz because I only play it when i'm feeling antsy and not when i want to play good chess :). So I blunder and Blunder and BLUNDER!

Regarding accurate live and USCF ratings, the ratings should be about equal up to a certain point (Say 1900, the live chess pool is way too shallow after that mark so the ratings can't be compared).

As for CC, anything seems to go. The general level of "inflation" (to use a very incorrect term) seems to be around 300-550 points.

So since you're a 2000 rated CC player you could expect to be rated 1600-1800 USCF, I would suspect, depending on your mentality (some people are only capable of playing CC time control chess it seems).

Amongst those few ppl who's USCF ratings i've seen from CC since I started this string, I've found it to be more in the range of 200pts. But I'm sure it varies based on how much some people rely on an opening database or the multiple day time controls

I have played in Live Chess for over a year, recently started playing in turn-based. Some impressions. One, I don't think that any of the opponents I have played so far used opening databases, since most of them didn't play the opening well at all. Two, the standard of play of a 1600-1900 player in turn-based with 2 or 3 days per move is NOT higher than the standard of play of a player with the same rating in Live in a 15-20 minutes game, and actually it's probably lower. Three, I also doubt that any of my opponents really spent two or three days thinking on a critical move - if they were taking time it was probably for other reasons- and neither did I as the matter of fact.

My turn-based rating here runs about 400 higher than my live rating. I played a few 5 0 games with a national master earlier this week; his live rating was mid-1600s. I think his turn based is close to his USCF: ~2200.