Does ELO lower with inactivity?

Hello everybody! I recently made an account on chess.com because I noticed the helpful and friendly atmosphere. This is my first time posting on the forums, but if these are like any other websites that I've logged on to, I should get a relatively fast and accurate reply. Thank you, and hope to see you around!

Hi there - welcome! There's a stickied post in the General Discussion category discussing the rating system used here at Chess.com, which is the Glicko system: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/chess-rating-system

That's actually a bit different to the Elo rating system, and is explained at https://www.chess.com/blog/kurtgodden/elo-to-glicko-your-rating-explained

In summary though, no, your Elo rating does not change with inactivity: nor does your Glicko rating. What does happen with your Glicko rating is that with more inactivity, your Rating Deviation goes up so that when you DO play next play a rated game, it will have a greater effect on your rating than it would have if you had been playing games more recently.

Hope that helps!

Hey, Caedrel!

Thank you for clearing up my misconceptions about chess scores. However, I neglected to mention chess.com ratings for other activities such as tactics. I'm not sure if the same rules apply, but I just want to know if I have to continue to solve lessons/tactics/etc. to keep them at the same level. At one point, I could've sworn that my tactics rating went down from the standard 400 to 392 by doing nothing. I must of been mistaken.

But either way, do non-multiplayer battle ratings go down?

Oh, sorry - yeah, the Glicko ratings are just for rated games here on Chess.com and don't apply to the Tactics Trainer score - I'm afraid I have no idea how that's calculated.

Google's pretty useful: here's one of the recent threads it found on here about it: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/tactics-rating-related-to-other-rating