Ratings

I am a little confused about ratings. Sometimes when I start new online games the person's rating is radically different than when I look at their past games and what they were rated. For example, I started a game against an opponent who supposedly was rated 1280 only to look at his record and find that he was rated several hundred points higher. Does anyone know why that is? Thanks.

I think perhaps you are looking at different time controls. A player has a separate rating for blitz, standard, turn based.

That may be it. It is still confusing, though, since when you look at their record you apparently cannot tell if they  were playing online time-based games(for example, 3 days or 2 days). It is a bit frustrating when you ask for an opponent within a certain rating range only to find out that in reality they are rated much higher than you are comfortable playing against.

Maybe they won same games in between the time they accepted the game and the time you looked at their profile?

New players may gain 50 or even 100s of points per game (for the first few games only).  Had these players played more than 10 games yet?

Wafflemaster: Good thought, but most had an established record of dozens of games. Plus, based on the dates, the games were fairly recent. But thanks for the comment.