Site rating vs real-life rating

Hi all

I have been using chess.com for sometime now with 1400+ rating which looked good. However, recently I played a local tournament with FIDE rated players; and felt a huge difference. 

Even the 1000-1050 FIDE rated players were playing really well without blunders whereas in online sites even the 1400-1500 rated players are makings blunders and losing games.

So I felt that there is a big difference in the online ratings vs FIDE ratings.

Thanks 

Why people try and justify an online rating, and equate it to a legitimate OTB rating still baffles me.

You can't compare ratings like that.  You can compare it like this: person A with higher chess.com rating than B can be expected to also have a higher FIDE rating than B.

For your time for reading that forum post 

Yes, I got it; comparing apples to oranges ...

I played online for years before going to a tournament.

One of my first games I was paired against a little kid rated maybe 1100. Online I was maybe 1300-1400.

But after 12 or so moves, there were no blunders. I was getting really nervous.

But then he blundered a knight and I relaxed

Now that I have more experience, playing players rated this low usually goes like that. They may not blunder for 10, 20, or 30 moves, but it doesn't matter. Just keep making reasonable moves and it will eventually happen. And maybe just a pawn, but it will happen.

 Oh, I see the problem.

Daily ratings are inflated.

Your chess.com daily rating is 1400. This means you're much lower than 1400

When I was new all I had was online chess.

I played on the now defunct Yahoo! chess.

I wanted to know how those ratings compared to "real" ratings because in literature you hear things like class B or grandmaster or you see a local champ is rated 2XXX, or beginners are often rated XXX and you want to know how you compare.

I asked a lot of people... and I NEVER ONCE got an answer, which was very annoying.

(Probably because the crappy players I was playing had never been to a tournament and didn't know what I was talking about hah)

Let me give a true life example using myself, as to why you should NEVER equate online ratings with a real OTB rating. 

Here my tactics rating is something like 2476.  On another chess site it was something like 2200, and in the CT-Art software, its a mind staggering 2700+.  In real life, it is nowhere near that. 

As a newbie to chess, may I ask what makes the difference? I would have thought online and OTB ratings would have been about equal. Why aren't they? (I'm low enough online as it is! )

One of my first posts on chess.com was after finishing this tactics book which also contained (IIRC) 3 test sections... wait, maybe as many as 10 test sections?? Now I don't remember.

Anyway I scored an average of 2300 and I posted asking how much people thought it might be off.

Ratings are relative. It's not like a ruler for someone's height or a stopwatch measuring the speed of a runner. It's just ranking you in relation to the others who play. So, you know, if only GMs played here, even the best player in the world might be only rated 1500

And since it's all relative, websites have a lot of leeway to choose the average. IIRC the guy who made the maths formula recommended 1500, and that's about where the USCF average is today, but it could have been anything, even a negative number, it doesn't matter.

Think of it this way.  I can go buy software, and fly the space shuttle.  I can get software online that will let me fly the space shuttle.  Can i fly a space shuttle in real life?  Of course not....

It makes about as much sense as thinking all 500+ of youre facebooks friends are really "friends" even though you dont know them, never met them, have no idea what they are like, what there likes and dislikes are.

Thanks, Preggo_Basashi and IMBacon. I didn't realize the ratings were relative to the other players. I thought there was a fixed standard or something. Your explanation helps to clear things up; thank you!

One interesting aspect of this that's hotly debated from time to time in the chess world is rating inflation.

The best players 50 years ago were 2600, and there were only a handful. When Fischer was 2700 that was freakishly high. Now 2600 only gets you in the top 100, and the best players are 2800.

So are today's players really that much better? Or have ratings artificially inflated over time? There are arguments for both sides.

I never know what to believe with this.  There are valid agruments for both sides.  So i just let it go.

Yeah, I'm not sure myself.

yeah and Lol to the guy talking about tactics ratings for an example. I mean come on. op your blitz is about 800 so its pretty much comparable to your OTB rating.