Another Look at the Chess.com vs. USCF Ratings Debate

I saw two players nearly come to blows in Florida many years ago. They both made mistakes.

One fell into a trap in the first half-dozen moves. Then the second player laughed. Pushing and swearing commenced.

My chess.com blitz rating is 1345. My estimated USCF rating is 1535. My chess.com online is 1505 and rising to what I expect to be 1525-1550. Is there any correlation between online ratings and USCF ratings?

Nope Maximus.  Different pool of players, different activity level.  There shouldn't be a high correlation.  There is even a disconnect between national federation ratings and FIDE ratings if you ever drop in to watch an international tournament.  You could easily find a 1400 player with a FIDE of 1700 and a 2100 with a fide of 1800...  It doesn't match up at all in my experience.

The (Chess.com blitz rating + 128 = USCF Standard Rating) estimation works pretty well for me.  

I suspect that many people who post their USCF ratings are inflating them, or perhaps posting their highest-ever attained rating, and that's where some of the "underestimation" comes from.

FIDE  1496 (1526 as of July)

Online chess 1680

Blitz 1350 (lol)

Chesscube.com blitz 2100(lol)

Bullet 1300(lol)

FIDE rapid 1531 (even more lol)

FIDE blitz 1450

Just posted random ratings to help you

You can verify my FIDE ratings by searching my name on google.

Chess.com blitz (1702) + 128= 1830. I'm a USCF 1628.

I recently studied linear regression. Could you (Jcbutler) tell me the 'r' value for this graph?

No, we don't claim to be the greatest chess community.

But we have 2 top 10 players in Nakamura and Kamsky. Germany, France, England, and Spain have none (among many other European countries). The only country with more top 10 players is Russia.

America also finished in 5th at the Istanbul chess olympiad. The only European countries to beat us were Ukraine, Russia, and Armenia. Yet you seem to claim that countries like Germany, England, or India play better chess than us.

I am not claiming that America is the best chess country. However, there is plenty of evidence to disprove that European countries are much better at chess than we are.

And in regards to FIDE events, there are very few events that are FIDE rated in the U.S. for class players. Even worse, there are very few FIDE rated players, and only games against FIDE rated players affect your rating.

Great work by OP. I noticed that it seems that blitz ratings of many people on chess.com went down by around 200 points year or two ago. Chess.com pool of players is probably getting stronger. Anyone with the same observation?

duniel, this is true ... the average blitz has been heading downward for some time now ... two possible explanations: a) probably a stronger pool, and b) cheaters who steal points and then get banned. It would be interesting to redo this work today and see whether anything like the same correlation holds. But I haven't had the time, alas.

There would have to be a slew of cheaters to affect the ratings the way you suggest. 

One thing I've noticed is that there are fewer and fewer players rated +2000 to play here. It gets very difficult to gain ratings when many OTB masters are not rated +2000.

Well, there are a lot of people who have been found guilty of cheating: more than 2000 in 5 weeks have had their accounts closed for cheating. See here: http://www.chess.com/cheating. Not sure if that's enough to make a difference but it sounds substantial.

BTW, this is the reason, why I quited playing 15m+10s chess. Out of my 50 recent oponents, 20 were banned. I am not sure if there are any 2100+ FIDE players playing on standard time control anymore.

They are still there, but just rated lower than you'd expect.  If you find somebody rated over 1800 standard chess.com, its probably an FM/IM/GM or computer.

Anyone who can swindle well , very young in age can have great blitz rating (and comparatively very low OTB rating)

Imo such rating compariosn's are kind of loliipop to a site's user.:/

Besides a cheater can easily cheat in blitz.

Say what you want, but, 15 minute games are not a true measurement. Also, the majority of members here (me included) do not have any official rating.

I also find it humorous that anyone would state that blitz is a true rating.

There's a strong correlation between playing strength in standard chess and in rapid chess. Take a look at the FIDE lists. The names may be shuffled slightly, but the usual suspects are at the top of both. So whether it's a "true" measure of something else or not, there's a strong correlation.

Here are links to FIDE's top 50 Rapid vs the top 50 Standard:

http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men

http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men_rapid

Only a few players in the top 50 standard are not in the top 100 in Rapid. Surprisingly, they include younger players, such as David Navara (34th) and Li Chao b (37th) (of China). 

The Blitz list is very similar too. So whether they are "true" ratings or not, if a player is good in one form of chess, he or she is usually good in other forms of chess. 

http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men_blitz

There's a closer correlation between blitz/bullet ratings and OTB ratings than online correspondence and OTB ratings. 

That is, players who are good at blitz/bullet tend to be good at OTB chess. That isn't always the case with players who have high correspondence ratings.