How does a chess.com rating compare to a USCF?

To be honest, you can't really compare the two rating systems. They have two entirely different sets of players and the time controls and what not are very different. I will say that, in almost all cases, a person's chess.com rating will be significantly higher than their USCF rating.

the KNSB,  the Royal Dutch Chess Federation , handles a policy of 6 games before you get a rating.  this is related to your TPR ( tournament performance rating) and a dynamic calculation factor. this factor is very high in the beginning

so in the start of your registered chess career,  you can gain and lose lots of rating points.  as time progresses you play more games,  and your dynamic calculation factor decreases, so the influence of any won or lost game will become lower.

you can play i.e 30 registerd federation games a season ,  in which at the start of the next season and so on,  your dymanic factor wil become lower and lower.

it makes actually sense, that you when you see GM's win or lose a match against their peers,  it changes 3 points.  when this is related to Class B or C for instance  than this difference is much higher.

exception to thi is if you are already 10 years on the same level   ,  then also here the factor would be smaller, as per the amount of games you have played.

 

 

OK, so I am old AF. I quit playing chess in 1989, with, apparently, a 1920 rating. There was only OTB. I peaked above 2000 and my blitz (usually 5/0 then, though the "Fischer clock" with added-on minutes was beginning to come into vogue) rating was probably a bit higher than my OTB rating. I occasionally was able to beat a master in both OTB and Blitz. 
Now, I am really really slow and am like 12 or 1300 blitz and in rapid I am a bit above 1600. I am trying to figure out if there is a way to map this roughly, so I know how much worse I am now! It sounds like, maybe, I am 300 points weaker, if I understand that people think chess.com is a pretty good proxy of USCF ratings. Is this correct? I am slower, and I do not convert my endings fast, but my opponents seem to me to play much better than class C, both positionally and tactically, and there is also the rating inflation factor... I don't even know if the formula is the same, or if rating inflation is a thing. Any input on this would be awesome.

“OK, so I am old AF. I quit playing chess in 1989, with, apparently, a 1920 rating. There was only OTB. I peaked above 2000 and my blitz (usually 5/0 then, though the "Fischer clock" with added-on minutes was beginning to come into vogue) rating was probably a bit higher than my OTB rating. I occasionally was able to beat a master in both OTB and Blitz.
Now, I am really really slow and am like 12 or 1300 blitz and in rapid I am a bit above 1600. I am trying to figure out if there is a way to map this roughly, so I know how much worse I am now! It sounds like, maybe, I am 300 points weaker, if I understand that people think chess.com is a pretty good proxy of USCF ratings. Is this correct? I am slower, and I do not convert my endings fast, but my opponents seem to me to play much better than class C, both positionally and tactically, and there is also the rating inflation factor... I don't even know if the formula is the same, or if rating inflation is a thing. Any input on this would be awesome.”

Me too. Last UCSF was 1562. As far as I can tell, for Chess.com Rapid, add 100-150 pts to get *very* rough UCSF equivalency (with all caveats on player pools). Interestingly, I found a few of my games from when I played OTB and put them through the analysis tool. The chess.com analysis (for those few games) suggests similar peak performance to my better games today. I’m now on a scavenger hunt for my binder of OTB games - I want to see how yesterday’s lemons compare to the lemons I play today!

@slugman92, so you are saying that you stopped playing OTB during a similar time period? For me, I completely stopped playing chess entirely. I have definitely slowed, and now that I have been playing on chess.com for a few months, I feel like this 1600ish rating is where I am going to be. In blitz, I am 12 or 1300. I just can't think that fast anymore, but I do wonder to what degree my playing strength as a whole has deteriorated and to what degree it is just that everyone has gotten stronger? I feel like my game is about at the crappy level it was when I quit for OTB. I used to be better at blitz than OTB and was an expert at my peak in OTB. Now I can't get through a game without flagging. But the 15/10 is working nicely for me. I used to be too bored to want to even play 10 minute. Back in the day, adding on time rarely happened. +150 seems about right to me. I feel like the general quality of my opponents is 1800+ and I have probably lost that much in strength. 

@the_potmo - I last played OTB 06/1998, and am just started playing again (online only) this past October. In comparing my best games now with the few score sheets from my last 2 tournaments from 1998, I think that they are comparable. However, I feel that I am much more inconsistent today, definitely much slower, and not as tactically sharp. But, to be honest, even at my best, I did not consider myself to be an overly tactical, attacking player.

I think I am currently ~150-200pts weaker than my UCSF OTB peak (1598). Regardless, I am having fun again and definitely enjoying playing!

Ye

!

Official ratings are way over rated.

Bro

Are you dead??