Forums

Good at chess?

Sort:
jonnie303

At what rating can you be considered "good" at chess?

Lorgish

420.

mgx9600

You are already ranked against chess.com players (it shows what percentile you're at).  So...

 

Against friends and family, a chess.com rating of 1200 is almost invincible.

Against coworkers, a chess.com rating of 1300 will make you the office chess god.

Against a strong chess computer, any rating less than chess.com 2500 is considered weak.

There you go!

Homsar
Being ‘good’ is all relative, but I’d say in general if someone can get to 1600 that’s pretty solid
Monie49
17
llama

No matter how high the rating, players 200 to 400 points above you will consider your knowledge / skill incomplete, or just downright bad.

Top 10 players have talked condescendingly about lesser GMs, so you basically have no hope of being considered "good" by everyone happy.png

 

But sure, my list is like @mgx9600

If they're 1200-1300 I respect that they're actually interested in the game. They've probably played at least a few 100 games, and read or watched some instructional stuff.

Dan Heisman claims a person can't be above 1600 if they play hope chess (no, not what you're thinking, this is Heisman's version of hope chess), so I tend to think of 1600 as proof that a player has basic analysis skills i.e. they're going to blunder check almost 100% of moves in almost 100% of their games to avoid playing anything completely ridiculous.

 

Since chess.com's daily, rapid, and tactics ratings are so inflated compared to OTB you'd probably have to add 200-500 points to all these estimates if that's what you're going by... but blitz and bullet are pretty accurate, so I also agree with @homsar that e.g. 1600 blitz or bullet on chess.com is "solid."