Inflated Rating

Does anyone feel there rating is inflated, Although i've only completed 9 games. I feel as though my rating is inflated.

my rating is inflated!!! (online games)  i don't believe it reflect my chess skills. over the actual board games.

Give it time and it should level out. It's nearly always inflated in the early stages but levels out after a while. Just be patient with it.

Thanx. I was also considering maybe the compeition is a little easier here compared to other cc websites. No compeitions but ratings reflecting different, Unless i've just improved somewhere lol.

Maybe you've improved as you say, but yes your initial observation is also correct, its a high rd thing. One player of note reached the top of the turn based tree at 2800 after only twenty games. My suggestion to remedy is lower the rds and publish ratings rather less frequently than after each game.

>:)

Sorry for my ignorance, but what is rd?

My suggestion to remedy is lower the rds and publish ratings rather less frequently than after each game

And what do you mean by that?

Yes thanks Dj my post is something of a lobbying attempt the means to remedy is outside our direct control as site users. I think the ACF uses a modified version so if you are active at club level some members may be able to advise. For rd read ratings deviation which is a factor used in calculating grades on numerous dot.com sites, my argument is that the rds are set too high generally, newcomers yourself & others are I believe awarded the same starting grade & as their actual playing strength is perhaps unknown receive a high rating deviation which upon completion of games will give large rating variations for you and other new starters, though after the same game your opponents rating will vary less so because of a converse factor applied. If you continue to be active playing games your rd will reduce, though don't take a vacation as it will increase. Hope this gives a few pointers.

>:)

a free site like this will tend to have a lower average strength than a pay site like ICC, but higher than the 'everything' sites like yahoo. I think that there is a good balance of skill levels, sort of like a leisurely chess club where everyone is not hard core. As far as rating is concerned, you have to consider that it is not a standardized rating over all sites. If you compare 1300 USCF, 1300 chess.com, and maybe a 1300 ICC rating, numerically they are the same, but it is relevant only to the system in which it exsists.

Chess.com is easyer than others, redhotpawn.com is a tough site with many good players.

Thanx alot you've been very helpful, I ended up finding an article regarding Rds not a very fun read, but i think i understand it a little better now then i did previous to posting my question.

Daryl.

Are chess.com ratings even meant to be comparable to OTB ones? It's a different rating pool, plus you can choose your own opponents. The rating gives an indication of how good you are compared to other chess.com members, it's not supposed to be comparable to a real one.

Puckiko, I've found the chess.com ratings to be higher than the USCF ratings. There is probably about a 200 point gap from what I can tell. A 1500 player on here is about what I'd expect from a 1300 rated USCF player.

RD is a measure of how accurate your rating is. Higher RD's make ratings change faster.

redhotpawn.com maybe a memorable tag but for me annoying, another example on this theme the rag shop french connection united kingdom, & there's more ... oops ranting off topic here sorry.

>:)

Inflation is a much misused term. Inflation describes increasing ratings for players whose ability has not increased. It occurs over a period of years. Inflation is occurring but you will only be able to tell by comparing the average rating on the site now (1381) with the average rating in the future.

Whether you are overrated is another question. At any point half of the players on the site are underrated and half are overrated.

A rating is applicable within the same pool of players. Your 1800 rating is for the pool of players on the site. You use it to find opponents of comparable strength on this site.

TadDude - surely everyone could potentially be at precisely the correct rating? Why must everyone be under/overrated?

Here is an explanation of Glicko and RD.  http://math.bu.edu/people/mg/glicko/glicko.doc/glicko.html

Relevant excerpt "Because a player in the Glicko system has both a rating and an RD, it is usually more informative to summarize a player's strength in the form of an interval (rather than merely report a rating). One way to do this is to report a 95% confidence interval. The lowest value in the interval is the player's rating minus twice the RD, and the highest value is the player's rating plus twice the RD. So, for example, if a player's rating is 1850 and the RD is 50, the interval would go from 1750 to 1950. We would then say that we're 95% confident that the player's actual strength is between 1750 and 1950. When a player has a low RD, the interval would be narrow, so that we would be 95% confident about a player's strength being in a small interval of values."

Currently your rating is 2382 and RD is 92. So you can be 95% confident that your actual strength on the site is between 2198 and 2566.

My impression is that, on average, the turn-based ratings are very inflated, but the long live chess  ratings are pretty comparable to USCF and the live blitz are lower than USCF by around 100pts.

Yes yes yes, I'm well aware how Glicko works. I can be 95% confident it's in that range, but I may in fact genuinely be 2382 ;)