Why 600 on Chess.com Feels off? A Data-Driven Look at the Rating Landscape

Hey everyone,

A while ago I posted here when I was struggling to reach 500. Then I posted again when I finally hit 600 but couldn’t maintain it.

Now, I’m hovering consistently between 600 and 660. So I decided to analyze a sample of 47 games I played recently, all rated, and share the numbers behind what I believe is some ELO discrepancies and a shift in what the 600 ELO really means today.

1. No, It's Not Cheaters

Out of 47 games, with 47 different opponents rated in the 600–650 range, only 1 was later banned for cheating. This is not a cheater problem.

2. Winrate by Color

• White: 50% win rate

• Black: 39% win rate

I mostly play Petroff Defense as Black (often transposing into Four Knights), and e4 / Scotch Game as White.

So petroff is not working for me hahaha, I think I will start to get sicilian defense against e4.

3. Overall Record

• Wins: 21

• Draws: 4

• Losses: 22

Slightly negative overall.

4. Precision Scores

• My precision: 69.9%

• Opponent precision: 71.1%

26% of my games had precision below 60%. For my opponents, it was just 17%.

Games above 75% precision made up 38% of the sample for me and 40% for my opponents. That’s high for a rating group often labeled as "beginners who blunder every move."

5. Move Quality Breakdown

This is not the chaos people think of when imagining "600 ELO chess." The games are relatively calculated.

6. Chess.com Game Ratings

Each game is assigned an internal rating score based on how well it was played.

• My average game performance: 897

• Opponent average: 887

Yet we’re both rated around 623. Something’s off.

7. Rating Buckets

Despite my and my opponents' official ELO being ~620:

• 53% of these games are marked from chess.com review played at a level above 1000

• Only 21% were below 500

This suggests we are constantly matched against under-rated accounts.

8. Account Age

• < 1 year old: 38%

• 1–3 years: 32%

• 3+ years: 30%

It's not just new smurfs. A large share of my opponents have well-established accounts.

9. Opponent Game Count

Average number of games played by my 47 opponents: 1,900

• < 1,000 games: 55%

• 1,000–3,000 games: 32%

• > 3,000 games: 13%

• Some had over 10,000, and one even 55,000 games

We're not playing against complete beginners.

10. "But You Don’t Castle..."

Every time I post an analysis, someone digs into my last games and says things like:

"You didn’t castle."
"You didn’t develop fast enough."
"You hung a piece on move 12."

Yes. Of course. I'm rated 600.

I try to follow principles: develop my pieces, control the center, look for checks, captures, and attacks. But I make mistakes. That’s part of this level.

My point is not that I play perfect chess. My point is that the games — mine and my opponents' — are being evaluated by the platform itself as high 800s or even 900+.

On these sample there are games rated 1300 or 1400 by Chess.com’s engine. Those ratings are capped by your actual ELO, meaning if you were higher rated, some games would be scored even higher.

So while people critique individual errors, they often ignore the bigger picture. The data shows that many games in the 600 pool are not being played like traditional 600-level chess.

💡 Conclusion

Chess.com’s 600 today is not what it was five years ago.

• Many opponents have thousands of games

• Precision is often above 70%

• Games are cleaner and more disciplined

• Over half of the games are played at a level above 1000

Climbing the ladder is harder when everyone is underrated. You might need to play like a 1200 to become 1000, because your pool includes a lot of hidden strength.

If you’re stuck, maybe it’s not just you. Maybe it’s that 600 today is actually 900.

Thoughts?

A certain skill level is required for a particular rating range. From your perspective a group might be underrated, due to a comparison with the past. For now it might be the new normal.

The estimated rating of a game is nothing more than a sales tool (just as the puzzle rating). The platform wsnts to sell something and keep the buyer buying it.

I have had students going from 600 to 1150 in less than 6 months just by putting in some work. If you want to improve the key is to focus on required skill sets. You need tactics and calculation.

Was this written by ChatGPT? That's my first thought.

lmfao

Your analysis shows what many of us have said anecdotally for a long time - the chess.com game review "ratings" are not accurate. Actually, it's not anecdotal. If you play a game and it says you played like a 1000, and I played that exact same game (being a 1250 elo player), the review would tell me I played like an 1800. This feature is there to boost your ego instead of give you something factual that you can use to help your game. So any conclusions you are drawing based on this are incorrect.

The other point I'd like to make is that your conclusion that people are playing thousands of games does not take into account the quality of those games. If your opponents play lots of blitz and bullet, they can rack up that number pretty quickly while learning nothing at all from the experiences that would make them a better chess player.

Aside from those two points, I really enjoyed your analysis. You could probably break down your accuracy even further to include openings, middlegames, and endgames. Maybe you have and you chose to combine everything for an overall average for this forum post. If not, I'd definitely recommend doing that since it will help you identify which parts of your game needs work.

One thing about the game ratings is that it is a “gimmick” to tease you to engage you more, analyze more, to get you to play more. As you say it is “capped”, or it depends on the players’ rating. I would be more surprised if you found the average to be lower than your rating. If you check 1200 rated players I bet the average is more than 1200.

Not written, organized and translated by.
All the data and thoughts was made by me.

Thanks, 
I don't know if my insights tab are available to other users, but my problem is middle game since I started
https://www.chess.com/insights/rodrigo-moraes?type=2&timeClass=rapid&dateRange=last7I'm trying to solve and understand as many puzzles that I can, to improve my tactics and reduce blunders and and miss taking free-pieces

#12 " the chess.com game review "ratings" are not accurate" That's very true. The rest of your analysis is quite interesting, but you should definitely ignore the game review "rating."

I cannot stress this enough. Openings don't matter as much as people make them out to be. I have taken a look at a lot of your games with the black pieces and you don't lose because of your opening. You get a good position out of the opening and then blunder. Stick with the openings you know! As you get better at not blundering that black win rate will increase, trust me!

About 7 months ago when I was 600 I had the same thoughts that you had. I thought that the caro-kann was a bad opening and I should change it because I had a negative win rate with it. I stuck with it and whenever I got better at chess my black win rate shot up to the 52%.

👏

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What an awesome thread! It made me not to worry about ratings. A really well-structured way to search for answers and with great comment section.

Studying openings turns out to work the most for me as a beginner: you get to a better middle game by consequence, while getting used to an ever growing level of complexity. It's also a trick not to get overwhelmed by the world of possibilities of chess, keeping the fun and interest instead.
Openings + pawn problems, structure and breaks.

Thank you all for helping me declutter my mind of needless worries by sharing your data and experience.
Following the discussion.