Chess.com ratings

I recently started playing on chess.com, and im not ranked in the USCF or anything--how realistic of a rating can I expect?

Play 10 games at 2 hours+ time controls and then go enter the unrated section at an over the board tournament.

I've heard that the chess.com ratings are about 300 points above USCF rating, but I don't really have anything to back up this claim.

USCF Correspondence or USCF Chess960 or USCF Scrabble?

My experience is that they(the Chess.com ratings) are lower than the Chessmaster computer characters. In other words if you are a 1400 on Chessmaster, you are 1250 to 1300 on Chess.com. I haven't played any rated players at a chess club in person, though I want to start sometime soon. I would love to know the difference between the three to better assess my own play.

Actually it varies depending on where you live. Some people have the same USCF rating that they have on chess.com. Some have a higher chess.com rating than OTB rating. It's all a reflection of the pool you are in.

Which of the five different chess.com games are you talking about online, or chess960, or live blitz, or live bullet or live standard?

Part of the quirk to all of this I didn't mention is, Chessmaster doesn't distinguish between game types, to derive a seperate rating for each. All results count as if they are equal in orientation. I only play 30 minute games here and on Chessmaster. The difference I spoke of was for that senario.

Chess.com ratings have nothing to do with a USCF rating.  For the longest time, a USCF C player was the highest rated US player on chess.com at 2698.  Im not implying anything but do the math.

Not all of us have the time or resources to do that. The other issue with that suggestion I find is, what happens when you get bounced after one game in a single elimination tourney? Also, what if you have to play a total of ten games, will this truly be your rating? I would say you would probably have to play 50 games, some tourney, some rated non-tourney, to have a better idea of what your rating would actually be.

Elo is a relative system, and so you can't compare across systems.

That's why Chess960 ratings are generally lower here than Online chess ratings, for example: both start at 1200, but the Chess960 pool has fewer weak players.

The whole purpose of ratings on this site is so you can tell who might be interesting to play.

I also play on another site that starts you at 1400, not 1200. Guess what? My rating is over 100 points higher over there.

Do single elimination tourneys exist in chess? I've never seen one (for amateurs, I know there are a few for GMs).

You have no "true" rating, but of course after 50 games in a short period it will be more accurate than after 10. But since your "true" level already varies a lot from day to day (how well did you sleep), that shouldn't matter too much.

Some people take chess.com much more seriously than others, whereas over the board most players take a rated tournament game pretty seriously. Especially with turn based chess, where some people play only a few games at a time and analyze rigourously with board and pieces and others play 100 games and move within seconds, treating it as a giant blitz simul. Also, OTB rated chess is usually with long time controls, while that is the rarest type of chess online.

It's already pretty hard to compare chess.com's live and online ratings (some people have one way higher than the other, others the other way around) so comparing it to over the board ratings is going to be so inaccurate as to be completely useless.

You lack the time and resources to play in OTB tournaments but still find it useful to speculate about what your OTB rating might be based on your on-line play?  #uselesspondering #nonsequitur

The problem is not the rating but the understanding.Improve your understanding and forget the rating for now.The rating is just a number , does really matters if it reflects or not your playing strength?

Actually, it has some merit, as most learning resources (books especially) are often reccommended for certain categories of USCF- or FIDE-ranked players. That doens't have to stop you from using those resources if you're outside those rating, but there are certainly plausible reasons the OP may want to know.

tl;dr: If you have nothing constructinve to add...

Since it would appear that maybe some might think I waste more time pondering what my true rating is than trying to get better, wouldn't it be a fruitful effort to try and match the level of material I study and the people I play to what my rating is , not what it might be?

No pun intended, I see the points you are trying to make, but consider the first time a GM becomes one, do you think they sit and go gee I made it to the top rung, I don't need to see where I am compared to the greats, my rating and title put me close enough, by the estimates of the rating system, does it matter?....no they try to see where they really stand.(they go play, I don't have the time or resources)

I'll refrain from further comment

Chess.com apparently uses the same "Glicko system" as USCF.

You can read about it on the USCF webpage (and on Chess.com).  There's a couple of papers (by Professor Glickman, on the USCF site) that you can download.

"Mark Glickman" (I believe) is a Statistics Professor in Boston, and "oversees" the USCF rating committee.

So given all the usual caveats, your "live rating" for "standard chess," (roughly G/10 up to G/60) on Chess.com should (eventually) approximate your USCF quick rating.  Assuming no engines.

But of course, "it all depends on the postion," and all the engines running in the background.   

More info in the two threads below.

http://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-ratings---how-they-work

http://www.glicko.net/glicko.html

Definitely not. The rating system doesn't have an "anchor", it's all relative. If we added 10,000 to everybody's rating today and let new players start at 11,200 from now on, the ratings would still be as Glicko as they are today and exactly as valid.

Consider this: let a group of 10 grandmasters without chess.com play a round robin tournament, and 10 beginners another chess.com tournament. The average rating of the group of grandmasters will be 1200 afterwards, the same as the average rating of the beginners, and they're all completely valid. The problem is the different player pools that make it impossible to compare a rating of 1160 among the grandmasters to the 1160 rating among the beginners.

Similarly, USCF and chess.com are two different player pools and their ratings are incomparible, even if they both happen to use Glicko.

jhbchess should do the world a favor and  ****.  YOU want to talk about trolling?  Redneck loser

[Such abuse isn't allowed--Mod]