Chess rating system

1200 is the rating floor. 1200 seems sensible to me because anybody (even a novice) can join chess.com, for whom assigning a higher initial rating won't be appropriate. But in tournaments meant for stronger players, higher rating may be assigned to start with. Read the wikipedia article on Elo rating system to get a better idea about it.

1200 isn't the rating floor.

The lowest rating FIDE will give, is 1000. Players playing below that level don't get a rating.

USCF lowest rating is 100.

Here it might be 100, but I'm not sure. 

@Martin_stahl: thanks for the correction. 

what is the lowest possible rating?

Chess rating is a scam wholeheartedly propagated by the owners of this site who wants you to get hooked on it and play constantly. That is why they give you artificially low rating (close to 1200) where you may think that you are average and you work desperately to improve it. It is not possible however because the pyramid is crafted so skillfully and artificially (top 1% comprise 50% of the rating curve, non-Gaussian distribution). Even some of the smartest people out there with which I had honour and pleasure to play will never improve their mediocre rating. It is ridiculous scam that best players have twice as much points as you. Are they so much smarter? I don't think so! Again, it is all scam. Stop playing it, you will never improve your rating, you will just waste time here to the pleasure of the site owners.

Floor Rating ?

USCF floor rules really aren't that complex. Absolute lowest floor of 100. Lowest rating based floor of 1200, highest rating based floor of 2100. Floors are at 100 point intervals and are gained by reaching a rating 200 points higher than the floor. 

There is a 2200 floor for players that have 300+ games at or above 2200 and there is a personal absolute rating floor, that is more complex to calculate but the highest it can be is 150.

Bluepear, I know you're being facetious, but people really do believe in rating inflation. It's an article of faith for them.

If there were rating inflation, what would that make your current rating in terms of 1972?

I love the idea of rating inflation! I could claim to be a strong master based on that non-existent rating inflation. But of course, I believe in statistics mroe than I do idolization. And Kenneth Regan, a noted statistician and chess professional, has shown there's been no such inflation.

There are plenty of elite GMs who are obsessed with their ratings. 

Here's how I think it works. The more games you win at any time constraint, the more solid your rating.

The more games you play (and recently) in any rating pool, the more solid your rating. That is the whole idea behind RD values. 

Hi All,

Am I the only one whose rating goes down when I win?

This is really counter intuitive and somewhat demoralizing.

Anyone have an explanation?

It doesn't.  I just looked at your most recent games and your rating has went up for your won games.

My guess is that you are on the app and it is just a display bug, if it actually shows you losing points.

There is a special case where a rating will go down after a win:

When you are just starting out, the rating is provisional. So, let's say your first game was a draw against a 2000 rated player. (For these purposes, I'll ignore the initial rating)

After one game, your rating would be 2000. (2000 + 0 rating differential for the draw)

Then you beat a 1200 rated player. Your performance would be 1600 (1200 +400 rating differential for the win)

Your new rating would be the average of 2000 and 1600, which is 1800. 

This is only true when the rating is provisional. After 20 games (I think), the rating is no longer provisional and it becomes impossible to lose rating points by winning games.

In the late 1970s, the USCF determined that there was a significant amount of deflation in their members's ratings.  I think the reason had something to do with the large amount of lower rated players/novices that began rated play since Fischer, particularly with the dramatic increase in scholastic players.  Before the Fischer boom, a complete novice was very unlikely to even know about the USCF, let alone enter a tournament, so anyone "new" to rated play, had probably been playing for years.

Before 1979, the lowest rating was "1."  A new tournament player could lose all his games to players rated under 350 and end up just above zero.  But then he/she could get some help from a parent, friend, or coach and in his next tournament play at 500 strength, but deflate all his defeated opponents who had just lost to a 1-player,

The USCF put in a floor of 100 and also other adjustments to account for the rapid improvement of brand new players.  They also made and adustment to existing players' ratings.  I went from a 1770 to an 1863 rating overnight.  Not a very satisfying ratings gain.  I was still the same crappy player, and, in fact, I had a harder time than usual in maintaining that rating gain.

Good question.

There is no such thing as a good question.

OK.