Those values are based on rating compared to the ratings of other members
"Puzzle" global rank, percentile meaning?
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I guess I jumped to conclusions too quickly. What you said seems right. It seems that when I had solved fewer than 100 puzzles, the percentile and rating were simply converging. That’s probably why the percentile kept increasing easily while my rating fluctuated up and down. Now, the percentile doesn’t rise as quickly as it did in the beginning.
Dec 31, 2025
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#4
shreyansh_091 wrote:
How can we see our global ranking in puzzles?
That's not listed anywhere in the website. Depending on your rating you might be able to find it on the leaderboards.
Or if you have one if the apps, you might see it on there. Android has a value. Yours shows 3528836 on my app, for All Time
Dec 31, 2025
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#5
Percentiles are NOT percentage of problems correct.
It is like a standardized test in school. Let's say you have 1000 test questions, or 1000 problems here. 300 people take the test. Let's say you got 769 problems right out of 1000. Let's say that your score outperforms that of 248 of the other 299 players.
Your percent correct would be 76.9%
You Percentile is calculated by Number of people you outperform over total people including yourself, always rounded down. So you can only outperform 299 of the 300, so you cannot outperform yourself, and 299/300 is 99.66, which is the 99th Percentile. There is no such thing as the 100th Percentile.
So 248/300 is 82.66, or this would mean you were in the 82nd Percentile, despite the 76.9% score.
Dec 31, 2025
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#6
There's percentiles in American schools? Do you compete against other students then?
ThrillerFan wrote:
Percentiles are NOT percentage of problems correct.
It is like a standardized test in school. Let's say you have 1000 test questions, or 1000 problems here. 300 people take the test. Let's say you got 769 problems right out of 1000. Let's say that your score outperforms that of 248 of the other 299 players.
Your percent correct would be 76.9%
You Percentile is calculated by Number of people you outperform over total people including yourself, always rounded down. So you can only outperform 299 of the 300, so you cannot outperform yourself, and 299/300 is 99.66, which is the 99th Percentile. There is no such thing as the 100th Percentile.
So 248/300 is 82.66, or this would mean you were in the 82nd Percentile, despite the 76.9% score.
Why can't you outperform yourself? I have been playing golf for a long time. For years and years I played about the same level, until one day I shot the best round of my life. I outperformed myself. Why wouldn't that apply to chess performance? I understand the idea that if I did it, I can't be outperforming myself, but it's still a performance (whether it's me or someone else) that's better than anything I've done before.
100th percentile seems like it would be the category where you are better than everyone else, including yourself. A one-time accomplishment. Like maybe Carlsens one time rating of 2880whatever it was. He did it, but it's better than what he is.
chesssblackbelt wrote:
Because chess isn't a game you can play by yourself unlike golf
But the ratings and comparisons are done with competitors. The rankings are based on how you compare with others. Whether it's golf, or chess.
Dec 31, 2025
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#10
Hmm I get what you mean but I still think it's different. I do bouldering as well and see that as similar to golf because you can tell when you've improved when playing it by yourself
But with chess you don't know if you've improved until you compete with others. If there was no rating system to compare myself with others I wouldn't know how good or bad I am
In the Chess.com Android app, you can check your "Puzzle" percentile and global rank. I’m trying to understand exactly what these numbers mean.
Currently, my puzzle rating is 1664, with a global rank of 8,504,981 and a percentile of 79.2%. I’m a beginner, and I take a lot of time thinking through each puzzle. After solving over 100 standard-difficulty puzzles, I maintain about an 80% accuracy rate.
Because I lose a lot of points when I fail and gain only a small amount when I succeed, my rating tends to stay between 1600 and 1700. However, even when my rating stays in that range, my percentile and global rank keep rising. They do drop slightly when I miss puzzles, but they go up again when I solve some correctly. Unlike the rating, these numbers don’t seem to stabilize — they just keep increasing.
It also feels like the changes in percentile and rank are roughly the same whether I get puzzles right or wrong, which makes them much easier to raise. So as long as I keep a high accuracy rate, it seems I can keep improving my percentile and rank just by doing more puzzles, regardless of actual skill.
At first, I thought these metrics reflected my relative skill compared to other users, but now I’m starting to doubt that, because they’re increasing too easily. I’m no longer sure if these numbers have any real value as indicators of relative ability.
Of course, without insider information, no one can know exactly how Chess.com calculates these, but I’m curious — how do you think "Puzzle" percentile and global rank are determined, and do you think they have any real meaning in terms of skill comparison?