ELO Ratings for matching players.. Heads up for newbies.

I don’t think the rating system and match ups are fair.. When you start a match with someone you assume they’re the same sort of rating as you.. This is not strictly true. Just because someone is only 400 on Rapid doesn’t mean they’re not 1200 on other categories as I’ve discovered.. How is that fair? I don’t know how the system works with matching players but give us less capable players a bit of a chance at least.. I’m tired of losing to 350 players and then discovering from their profile that some of em are well over 1000 or more.. It’s soul destroying..

Rant over.

Does seem somewhat unfair. But hey, that's the way it is.

I think the ELO should be the average of all the game categories.. That way higher rated players aren’t hidden as lower ratings in categories that they don’t usually play in.. Just my opinion.

"only 400"?? I'm trying to be proud of my 180 elo

Ratings are specific to the game mode you are playing. Averaging doesn’t work because game modes can and do affect ratings and some people are truly better at certain time controls than others- for example there are truly people who are very bad at speed chess and yet can play much better given more time. They shouldn’t have to play others who are better at speed chess because their overall average is higher.

Maybe its the rating variance that is the issue. Sure it makes good sense that someone could be, maybe, +200 on rapid compared to blitz, but +800 seems unfair.

Not that I can think of a way to make the system more accurate and equitable.

I agree. It's a bit unfair but i Like the Solution that Elo is Just the Same in every category.

I have been b*tch*ng about this for months now. It makes zero sense to get paired with someone who has a 1200 rating but is only 200 in bullet. I don’t poses the same understanding of the game, shouldn’t matter if someone plays worse in faster games, in that case they should stay away and let people like me actually have fun playing. Elo makes zero sense this way.

The one issue on rating is how stable the rating is. If Eric Rosen is using his OhNoMyRosen speedrun account and is rated 850, he's still playing at a 2400 level, which is evident because he's winning every single game up to the 850 level. His rating is in a high state of flux.
My bullet rating is presently 300 and I've been losing most of my games. There's no concern about me being under-rated at 300, even though my daily rating, where I have time to think about my moves, is 1360. It would be silly to match me up with 830 level players in bullet or in daily. So using an average ELO wouldn't make sense.
The key thing is if players are on a winning streak then they're likely under-rated. If they're on a losing streak they're probably over-rated.

Ok fine don’t use the average then. Just have one ELO rating across all of the categories which moves up or down regardless of what game you play. That way your ELO is always an accurate representation of your skill level and lower rated players aren’t matched up with 1200s masquerading as novices…

That wouldn't work either, because bullet and rapid and daily are too different. Not to mention sll the time controls bundled together under each setting.

Maybe they should have a different arrangement of time controls in bundles, give each bundle a separate rating,but in match making not allow a match with someone more than 400 rating above you in any category.

Ratt809, your ratings have the issue you are talking about too. You have a 400 rapid and a 100 bullet. Your ratings are suggestive of your play in that game mode for this websites rating pool. How would it be fair to have you complete with higher bullet players because your rapid is higher?

Game modes matter. You can be an equal challenge against a 100 bullet and an equal challenge against a 400 in rapid. We know because your ratings suggest that, just as others ratings suggest theirs. Is it possible for rating abuse to occur? Absolutely, but your solution makes zero sense and instead of worry about rating abusers just report them and move on to the next game.

I agree. My rating should be what my highest number is regardless.. So I should be (In my mind) a 400 across the board. It is extremely unlikely I’d be higher than this in any category because by my own admission I suck at this game. Likewise it’s unlikely that someone 1200 in daily or rapid would stay at 300 if they played the same number of games in a different category.. The categories of games are irrelevant. Chess is still chess.

No, game modes impact ratings a lot. Daily is almost already higher than Rapid, which is almost always higher than Blitz, which is often higher than Bullet. The less time you have the less you can use your chess skills because you have less time to calculate and evaluate positions. You have to rely more on pattern recognition and intuition. The only caveat to rating abnormalities are time played in a specific game mode and utilizing the time in a game mode. For example if you play Daily like you do a Blitz game your rating in Daily is going to suffer, similarly if you played Rapid like a Blitz game.

Chess is chess, but chess performance is very dependent on game mode, and they do differ. If you were 400 rated skill in bullet then playing enough games, your rating should be around there. It’s in the 100’s. Unless you improved your ability to think quickly and more accurately your rating will not rise to that level no matter how many bullet games you play.

haha for me my bullet is highest, blitz is second, rapid is third, and daily is my lowest

For me.. I can't even top 700 blitz.. buncha 700 rated GMs down here.

@ChessBot12345

As I mentioned in the post you quoted abnormalities to this would be time played in that game mode (you primarily play Bullet/Blitz- you’ve 3 games in Daily or something?). If you only play Speed chess then naturally your ratings in those game modes wills be higher. If you played all game modes equally and used the allotted time appropriately (I.e. not playing Rapid and Daily like speed chess) those ratings will likely be higher than your speed ratings.