Unrated players getting initial 2000 ratings

Yea, that's kinda messed up. A 2000 rating is rare enough that there doesn't need to be an option for it. It's just a strange thing to have.

Arguably, it's abusive. But then, this is supposed to be a fun site so we ignore it.

Chess.com made a misstep in not realizing that people taking rating points seriously drives a lot of the interest in the game. Sort of like earning loot in other sorts of games. In other games it is a purposeful bit of psychological manipulate to hook players. In chess it is sort of just there. 

They probably never looked at it that way or they'd have realized that this 2000 thing was a bad idea. 

This topic seems strange.  In Daily, a player with a rating of 2016 is in the top 0.7% of all active Daily players.  It is not logical that Chess.com would let just any player start at that level.

Ten years ago, everyone started at 1200.  Titled players complained about this, and Chess.com introduced a starting rating of 2000 for titled players.

Since then, Chess.com introduced  "select your skill level" for the starting rating.  The lowest level starts at 800.  I don't know what the other levels are, but a logical progression might be 800, 1000, 1200, 1400 (maybe 1600).  Again, I can't see Chess.com starting non-titled players at 2000, a level exceeded by about 1% of the active players.

There is a starting level of 400. That's where I started.

But this site really should use whatever fide or USCF is using for unrated players 

When you joined Chess.com, what skill level did you check?

The USCF provides a provisional rating for the first 25 games.  I think that it uses a different formula than the one used for established ratings.  Your first rating is dependent on your performance and the rating of your opponents in your first tournament.  When the dust settles, I don't think the results are much different than providing an arbitrary rating to begin with.

When I look at the Daily ratings of two members who recently joined, I see some strange things.

Both players are listed as unrated, but in one place their highest rating is listed as 2000.  In another it's listed as N/A.  One has played 3 games, the other 16 games.  Although their stats show them as unrated, their game historys show a rating of 2000.

In Rapid, it looks like one started at 1800 and quickly dropped to 1500.  The other started at 1500 and quickly dropped to 800.

I think that Chess.com needs to get its act together, because the data they are publishing is inconsistent.  How can an unrated player have a highest rating of 2000?

I didn't pay too much attention to all I was clicking when I joined. I can't remember which site, but one has a question mark next to the ratings at first letting everyone know it isn't based on many games, kind of like provisional ratings for uscf. This site should have every player listed as unrated until they've played 10 games against established ratings.

You can be unrated at one format (eg: Blitz) while having an established rating at a different format (eg: Daily).

Just to add fuel to the fire.  These strange stats occur with players whose games, for the most part, lasted less than four moves.  I found some players rated 2000 who recently joined and have what I would call consistent stats.  Their starting rating was 1200.  Just looking at their game history, they were obviously strong players.  What level did they check, new to chess, beginner?  Doesn't seem likely, but, who knows?

But, in this case, their Daily rating is unrated and their Daily highest rating is 2000.

I haven't read all seven pages so please forgive any repeats of points somebody else may have made.  I don't remember what I checked but it was not the top level.  My US Chess rating is 19xx but my first chess.com rating was 1593 (after one win).  I have other things to take care of so my playing time is sporadic but I now have an 18xx blitz after I've started to become somewhat comfortable with an on-line interface (I have a touchpad, not a mouse).  If I'd started at 1200 then a number of additional players would have been donating points.  US Chess does not publish an official rating until there are four games and ratings assigned for pairing purposes are not used in the rating calculation.  Because of the ratings limitation on who players are willing to play games against the site would not be able to readily handle truly unrated players and has to give them some starting rating.  If it was not considered official until a number of games (4? 10?) then some of the concerns would go away.  US Chess handles unrateds by calculating a rating based on their results against who they played (one tournament at a time, not one game at a time) and then using that calculation for all of their opponents (if two unrateds play each other in an event then it requires multiple passes to first get an interim rating based on the rated players they played and finally get a rating that is calculated while including the interim ratings of any unrateds they faced).

As far as gaining zero points for a win goes, US Chess used to round rating gains to the whole number further from zero (beating five players 1500 points below would still gain one point - not five points because the rating change was tournament-based instead of single-game based).  Then US Chess went to fractional ratings and just displayed the nearest whole number, and now beating those five low rated players might gain just 0.08 points with a half dozen to a dozen such events needed to gain even a single rating point.

I remember when I joined chess.com... back in the Late Bronze Age... we didn't get to pick a rating. They gave you 1200 and said "Here! Take this and shut up!".

We had to work our way up from there, fighting for every point. You kids nowadays have it easy.

Problem I had when joining is "beginner, expert, advanced, etc." are so arbitrary. They don't mean anything unless you're comparing yourself to someone else. For example, if someone in real life asks me if I'm good at chess, I always reply "I know how to move the pieces." That is a fact. Beyond that, it's all meaningless. 

That's why I don't think that it's that important.  If you overrate or underrate yourself, it will soon catch up with you.  I'm just curious about what starting levels are associated with each category.  I've had no luck finding out.

A potential fix would be to require confirmed FIDE identification before the 'Expert' option can be selected, just like the lifetime membership for titled players. Not sure how one would go about this though.

+1.  People at my school would consider me expert since I know more than just how to move the pieces and basic tactics.  However, if I, a lowly 1400, were to walk into the U.S. Open, there’s a fair chance I would be called a beginner, or at best, novice.

I've always thought that the attitude toward 1400 players was strange.  A 1400 USCF rating puts you in the top 20% of active players.  You're a long way from being a top player, but you're no beginner.

I just don't know why chess.com doesn't simply count new players as Unrated, and then assigns them a provisional rating based on the rated games that they play. It seems fairer and more straightforward to me.

Isn't that effectively what happens?  I started at 1200, won most of my games and my rating quickly increased.  If Chess.com used a provisional system similar to the USCF's, I would have reached the same rating.  It just might have been a bit quicker.