Why is everyone low rated so ridiculously good?

Thanks for all the responses.  Perhaps  tournaments might work better for me, but I don't want to let the team down when I lose games.

You can have a rating less than zero. Mathematically the formula works fine with negative numbers, and also conceptually it makes sense since ratings are a relative measure. A rating of -200 would mean that based on your past games you're expected to score about 1 out of 4 against players rated zero and 3 out of 4 against players rated -400.

It's just that organizations that use the rating system (such as chess.com) can set artificial limits (such as not letting players go below 100, which is what chess.com has done). They'll also set the average high enough that ratings as low as zero would essentially never show up in any case.

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Daily chess ratings are higher for new players, so a completely new player would do better... but I'm not sure you realize I'm not saying a "beginner" as in someone who has played chess for a few months. I'm saying you teach someone how the pieces move and let them start playing, a day 1 beginner.

I've taught kids chess before. If you've never seen someone play on day 1 of learning chess it's hard to imagine how bad they are. We take a lot of knowledge for granted.

What team? 

It’s not that they’re good, it’s because you’re bad. (Responding to op)

@ELBOW

Aren't you part of a team when you play in a tournament?

If you play in like a team tournament yes, but just a regular tournament like chess.com tournaments... no

Nope. I think there may be club matches and such but the live tournaments under the tab are solo events. 

When I started here about 10 years ago. I was given a rating a starting rating of 1200 even though my USCF rating was 1800.  I've heard that you can choose your beginning rating.  In OTB chess when I started (1970s) you started at 0 and gained points as you play.  If you lost to an 1800 in your first game your new rating  became1400/1 if you won, your new rating became 2200/1.  After 24 games your rating became established and a different calculation used.

They later clarified that zero meant no rating, not a zero rating.  There are a number of changes since then.  Now a player that finished a tournament with a 1800/3 three rating does not lose rating points by beating a 1000 (used to average in that 1000+400=1400 to reach a 1700/4 rating).  The special formula is only used until you get to eight games.  Provisional still holds through 24 games and even continues to hold after that if you've either won all of your games or lost all of your games.

If the 100 floor didn't exist then there would be US Chess ratings negative by multiple hundreds of points. (as stated above a rating is not a measure of specific strength, but rather a measure of relative strength, and a two-point difference means that the higher rated player normally will take about 75% of the games (such as three wins and a loss or two wins and two draws).  A raw, learning how the pieces move, beginner is several two hundred point differentials weaker than a 500-rated kindergartener.

When I started playing chess, teenagers were considered "the little kids".  Because of that if someone didn't have the knack to play chess, he/she did not keep playing.  They just found something else to play.  Because of this a rating of 1000 would be the lowest rating you would see.  Since the youngest players were around the age of 14 or 15, parents were not involved.  In my second tournament, me and a friend drove 300 miles to play in a weekend tournament.

This site has a clear problem that they are very old chess players with low rankings. They probably play on other sites or rarely come to play and when they are matched they crush us. I already faced a 1200 Rating player with 99.3% accuracy (and it was not an engine !!!), Then I went to look at his account, I was almost 8 years old at chess.com and I had already played more than 20,000 games. I don't understand why someone who plays 20,000 matches can get such a low rating. I always imagine that Chess.com lowers our Rating if we don't log in for a long time, it would be a plausible explanation!

Speaking as an older player (61), you have to realize we didn't grow up playing online chess.  Also older players lose their dexterity as a result of aging.  There's nothing sinister about it.

1600 is a normal rating to get "stuck" on for an adult. In fact it's a pretty good rating for a hobby player. It means they've actually studied, analyzed their games, etc.

Hi there. There's quite a lot going on but when you start you're at a disadvantage just in terms of learning the app, the app set up and controls. I think in my case it was maybe 300 to 500 points difference between day 1 and day 30. Anyway my suggestion is to play longer games not 10 minutes like you're doing now. And use the time we'll, not rush. This will remove all or most of the disadvantage from being less familiar with the app, app set-up and the rules. Also use the analysis fully each game with all the tools that are available to learn what you did great and what was not so great. Sometimes other people will be on it, have a good game and that's life. The platform is pretty good, at spotting cheating, so do t worry about tgt for now.

Well you can easily analyze the games for accuracy. For every game, if it isn't above 90% on average, then I do not think they are cheating. Also, it is common for someone to be able to beat bots higher than their rating, because the rating isn't as accurate and a bot 1800 is weaker than an actual 1800 human player. This is not saying that they couldn't be cheaters, but I know many other people have had similar suspicions and been wrong about them

The rated bots also do some strange things to have low ratings.  Occasionally they make really wierd moves that are obviously bad on purpose to keep the bot's rating down.  Humans always have a reason for their moves, so even if the move is bad, there is motive to it and you have to be careful.  It's one of the reasons I much prefer playing against a human.

Are you trying to make a point?

Wow, I really started a great conversation when I posted my question.  What a good group of people you are.  Just think I should say that I started learning to play chess by reading Chess for Dummies at the age of 72, and I am now 82.  I shall never be very good at it, but I do have a good time trying.  Thanks everyone for  all your comments.

Welcome to the club!  It's never too late to start.

I do find it amazing (as an amateur hovering around 1050 or so) that at this rank at a blitz game, I can do about 150 rating better at rapid - sure I get more time to move, but so does my opponent. I would expect at the amateur levels that the ratings wouldn't be so different.