Rating

Did anyone ever have a rating of 2900 and over?

No,not yet.Here is the list of top 50 players according to their rating:

http://www.chess.com/echess/players.html

How are these players not titled though?

Right, the more accurate question is "why do these players not have chess.com titles?" and I guess that Erik and his team can work on that one.

I think that the more titled players on here, the better.

I am pretty sure there was a postal player who was 2900+ at one point.

Kepler: the same reason people like to play in tournaments with titled players. They just like interacting with titled players. They like it when their website has a bunch of titled players. For that matter, I like it too. It gives some additional context around a discussion.

No matter how good I get, even if I start getting titles from USCF or even FIDE, I would never advertise it here. Why? because along with a title comes my real name.

And anonymity is the whole attraction of playing on the internet for me.

It might help to understand what a rating is.  It's a mathematical location on a curve.  The number doesn't have any significance outside of the population it exists in.  So a player's rating on Chess.com, although it is a relative indicator of strength, can't be directly compared to their rating via FIDE, USCF, or on another website.

Think of each arena where the person plays as a mountain or hill.  Their rating is their location on the hill.  In order to have a higher rating, you have to either move higher on the hill (once you reach the highest point though, it's hard to increase your rating), or get a larger hill (add more players to the population).  This is part of the reason why Kasparov's rating has yet to be exceeded, and why its my personal conviction that his rating won't be beaten soon.

In order for someone to have a rating of 2900 on Chess.com, many factors would have to come into play.  They would need to beat all available players that increase their rating, the rating would have to survive any attempt to control inflation (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system), and the population of players would need to be large enough to support the size of the curve necessary to have this location exist.  That said, it's completely possible, just highly unlikely.

Is there not somebody on live chess blitz on chess.com with a 3200 rating or something. I go have a look and see if I can post a link. I'll be back in a minute.

*edit*  here we go:

http://www.chess.com/livechess/players.html?type=Quick

 totally

NO the highest achieved so far i believe was Garry Kasparov 2851

As for here u cant take them to seriously i mean nobody here deserves a 2700+ rating but we have some, they are great players but no where near 2700+ let alone higher from an OTB rating anyway. On here its just a matter of time before we get 2900+ and higher ratings remember chess.com is still very young so it will take a little while for the inflation to up more. Look at mine for eg; no way am i actually 2000+ not if u count by OTB I'm more like 1600-1700+ and i know of 1100+ otb players with 1800+ ratings so clearly not to be taken to seriously hahaha....

Whoa, that's crazy!

On live chess: => http://www.chess.com/livechess/profile/ChessNetwork

ADK

Note: Quick chess only

Yes, Penquite was pretty amazing in Chess. And a mathematician by trade, which seems to have bothered someone at USCF a bit, for he had some difficulty with the Chess federation at one point. Apparently someone could not believe he earned his rating without mathmatical gimickery, is the story I heard, and that the strange arguement was advanced that "since no one has ever scored on you, we cannot vouch for the validity of your rating". Or of that nature.

Thus, shortly after that Penquite accepted his first Draw vs a 2400+ player who's name was Levitt or something close to that. With that occurance and rumours of a potential lawsuit ... I believe the question was resolved, confirming the validity of his rating.

A couple points to note: 1) Penquite accomplished this feat at a time when Chess playing computers & programs could not stand up to a Class-A postal player, let alone a Master level player. And secondly(2), the opponents met by Penquite were not weak by any means, rather consisted of many Masters & some of the best players in the land. And while this achievement may have received some help from a change of rating method in the midst of it, is still much higher than others who might have benefitted from that as well.

While a number of players have put forth impressive winning records, such as Reynolds I believe twas one, I have never seen anyone approach Penquite's Elo rating in postal Chess. (Tho some ONLINE sites have boasted players over 3000, but I suspect there might have been a little bit of Inflation involved in those, or use of non-standard Elo sytem :)

A last point of interest; Penquite hails from my own home state of Iowa, USA.

i saw some guy in this turnament with 3400. he must be something of a grand master with a monstrouse rating like that

It'd be nice if chess.com would highlight more of its high-profile players. It'd be interesting to see some games by the 2500+ players and have them annotate some of their thoughts.

Give chessnetwork his 15 minutes. And have some ongoing debates by all the NMs at this site. Give the really high rated players like Gonnosuke and stuff some interviews. All in all, I think it'd be really interesting for the members here, and a great learning experience as well. 

That live chess is unreal or should I say amazing. The problem with ratings and comparing them in different situation is that they are relative and mathematically dependent on the environment. I am much more comfortable playing chess online. The reason is simple: I have no distractions and total control of my playing environment. I sit on the bed with coffee, donuts (and my pain medication and pajamas- just joking, sort of) and can completely concentrate. However, I love playing people face to face. My rating would drop if my face to face games were compared. Even though I concentrate my mind gets distracted by people walking by, my opponents finger taping due to OCD or his mumbling to himself (I attract all the brilliant players who have peculiar personalities and can beat me easily). So I would say ratings are relative to environment.

 yeah I could use some pointers on my game