Rating Question

Hello all,

I am curious about how a player's rating increases or decreases after a win or loss according to their opponent's rating. In my mind, it should be 6 points for an equally rated opponent then 2 points for each 50 point difference in the opponent's rating, but I'm no pro, so don't know how elo works or whatever. Does anyone know what numbers chess.com use?

Thanks.

It's a little more complicated because the reliability of each rating is also taken into consideration.  Chess.com uses the Glicko rating system which attempts to very quickly find your approximate rating.  Key to this is your Glicko RD (rating deviation).  If it's still over 100, your rating isn't yet reliable and you will gain or lose more points than if your RD were significantly under 100.  Haven't had my coffee yet so maybe one of these threads will have a better explanation...

https://www.chess.com/forum/search?keyword=Glicko+RD

Thanks for the info, baddogno. I hadn't taken into consideration the reliability of a player's rating. So, the inconsistencies in the reward or penalty to a player's rating after a game are due to variances in the amount of data that supports both players' ratings. That makes sense.