Ratings here vs FIDE ratings

Hey guys, first I want to thank you for the warm welcome I found here. I really like this site, and it's great to share my passion for chess with you. I literally didn't know that there are so many many maniacs like me in the world. You feel better when you are surrounded by people who are as crazy as you are, probably crazier.

My question for today is about ratings. In my good times (a long time ago) I had a FIDE rating of something around 2100. Here my rating increases slowly, I am somewhere around 1600. Well, in the good old times a player with 1600 was a patzer. And it's not only me, I am fighting against players who deserve around 1900 or 2000+, but they have 1600. Now I am wondering, is it me who lost all his skills after, hm,  an intensive life, playing like a patzer without realizing it, or are we all here underrated by a few hundred points?

I hope I am posting in the right forum. Thanks in advance, Tom

Interesting question. I look forward to the responses. 

I always thought the ratings here were, if anything, a little inflated. Maybe I was wrong.

my fide is 1940 and blitz 2300

*If you are truly 2000 FIDE, I don't believe you can be only 1600 here on any of the ratings, unless you're touching a computer for the first time or something, or you just haven't played many games. It's one thing to be bad at bullet or 3 minutes, but your rapid games are not the work of a 2125.

But judging by game quality, I'd estimate you closer to 1500 FIDE: 

https://www.chess.com/live/game/1946595595?username=TGlavinic

This game and others are not remotely the games of a 2000 FIDE player, no offense. A 2000 FIDE player would've won against all these 1500s, and easily achieve an 1800 rapid rating at least, and probably 1900-2000+ with some luck (AKA avoiding engine users). 

*I always think there are 2000s here who should be 2200s, but that's beside the point. I like the fact that chess.com has adjusted their ratings so that live ratings are quite close to FIDE/USCF, for a lot of the players rated in the intermediate range (1500-2200).

*I am a mediocre blitz player, compared to my similarly rated peers, BTW, because I have never played blitz chess seriously, and have only trained on slow chess aspects. Still, my rating is reasonable. 

*I like to think my true rating strength is 2100 (since in the last 5 OTB tournaments, I jumped up from 1600 to 2000+ USCF), but I report my rating as it is currently, and I believe you should too. 

*Don't take this personally - it's just my objective assessment. If you were truly 2125, you should have no trouble getting back up somewhere close to your previous strength, and soon, with practice, you will be doing much better than you are doing right now. 

I experienced this myself - after a long year of schoolwork, my rating was 1900. (even though I knew I was deflated when I achieved this rating),  and it dropped in my first tournament after. But after intense practice, in a month I achieved my former strength again and jumped straight to 2000+. 

So play some more games, study up for a few weeks, and see if you can break 1800 rapid, and forget the fast chess for now.

I dont like 960 because its so confusing 

@myratingis1523

Unfortunately, you're right. I wouldn't say "hang pieces", but instead make basic tactical errors that you can take advantage of rather easily. But you're still not a 1523, just because you never go to any tournaments. It's like if a 500 player never ever played a tournament, studied chess for a few years to be 2000, and then can say "my OTB is 500 but chess.com is 2000 etc."

 BTW, if you take a look at myratingis1523's last 2 won games in blitz, you'll see that his 2000-2100 opponents actually lost the game by hanging material... one guy hung a pawn on move 6 or something. 

As a general rule, which I think most will agree with:

*Daily ratings are highly inflated until you get up to the higher levels, and they're heavily deflated then. GMs have daily ratings of 2200s, while some 1400 can have a daily of 1800. So it's easy to get a decent daily rating, hard to move up after that.

*Blitz ratings depend on how good you are at speed chess - but they have the best correlation with your OTB rating, of all the ratings, and chance are that your true rating is higher than your blitz. There are big outliers, of course, like myratingis1523 and adumbrate. 

*Bullet ratings have poor correlation, and tend to be overrate you at the intermediate level. 

*Rapid ratings are weird because apparently there were "free points" given out a while back, so I won't comment on this. I find the most amount of variation in skill level amongst similarly rated players in the rapid section, which isn't surprising - players having gotten a boost will be much weaker.

*Tactics ratings have the worst correlation, are the worst in terms of accuracy.

I will be the lowest rated in the Kragerø Resort Chess next week, and then I will see if my blitz rating has any colleration to my OTB chess strength.

Well, I did say blitz had the "best" correlation, but I didn't say if any of the correlations were strong at all  (they're actually all not reliable - I'm getting this info from a guy who went around looking at profiles and checking the OTB vs. online ratings). 

And that's a strong tournament @adumbrate - good luck and hopefully you can score against some of the masters. 

You are absolutely right - I have always been a horrible blitz player. But nevertheless I played blitz also against FM and IM and sometimes I won (luckily), and I lost almost never games against 1500- players. What I tried to say was: Did I lose all my skills or are the ratings here lower than deserved? (I do hope 2nd is the truth  )

Cherub ups I also lost my skills in posting quotes  here is the proof, once upon a time I had the 2100 rating! - at the age of 15 I had solid 2000, then I quit playing for years. I repeat, I do know my games here are no 2100 games, but my blitz games in those days weren't better... Nevertheless players with 1600, 1700, 1800 won very rarely against me. That was the reason for my question. Don't get me wrong, I just wanted to know how serious the ratings here are. Thanks for your kind answer anyway.

Thank you! I will try. But time will still be my strongest opponent.

I really suck at blitz, but I am around 1600 in OTB 90+30.

 Good luck.  Time is definitely my strongest opponent.  My record in blitz games decided by the clock is currently 71-227.  A couple of decades ago I had a 2000 USCF rating, but I'm nowhere near that here.  I can barely break 1600 here in blitz, but I'm addicted to it.  Haven't gotten around to trying 960 yet, but it won't make any difference in my mousing or phone-tapping speed.

The other day I was watching some blitz games and I recognized a titled player I had played OTB a couple of times back in the 90s.  He was an FM with a 2300+ rating.  His blitz rating here is 1900.