What is Consider a Good Chess Rating on this Site?

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Avatar of Ziryab

The club I most actively played for is topped by two masters, followed by two coaches who work hard at correspondence. At least two of the top twenty are OTB B class. Lots of FMs and NMs who underperform.

https://www.chess.com/clubs/members/team-washington?sortType=rating

In one of our team matches I beat a NM who was playing 75 games and was in elementary school. There is no doubt that he was spending far less time on the game than I was. I had six games going and plenty of free time.

 

Avatar of chamo2074

I kind of agree, but I have seen 2000 players make dumb mistakes too.

1800s do dumb mistakes as well, but the chain can keep up therefore I think we cannot objectively say what is a good rating or not.

In fact I think what is a globally good rating is something that we don't need to know. It's pointless. 1800 is a good global rating. So? How does that change your chess? If you want to become CM and end up a 1800, you won't be happy will you? If you want to become a 1500 and you become 1800 you'll be delighted

Avatar of plux

a good rating is ~50 points above wherever you find yourself now, imo.

Avatar of Ziryab
plux wrote:

a good rating is ~50 points above wherever you find yourself now, imo.

 

This is the objective truth.

Avatar of vitorchess3004

ola

 

Avatar of vitorchess3004

alguem aqui e raffael chess

Avatar of Ziryab
chamo2074 wrote:

I kind of agree, but I have seen 2000 players make dumb mistakes too.

1800s do dumb mistakes as well, but the chain can keep up therefore I think we cannot objectively say what is a good rating or not.

In fact I think what is a globally good rating is something that we don't need to know. It's pointless. 1800 is a good global rating. So? How does that change your chess? If you want to become CM and end up a 1800, you won't be happy will you? If you want to become a 1500 and you become 1800 you'll be delighted

 

Yes. “Good” is subjective.

When I first surpassed 1500 OTB, I thought I was getting pretty good. When I started falling back down to 1800 from my peak, I thought I was losing my ability to play a decent game.

Avatar of keep1teasy

As you get better you always look back and see how little about chess you really knew.

Avatar of speedrun_for_fun
Caesar49bc wrote:

I'd say you need to be 2000+ as the bottom to be a decent player. I've seen games on here between 1500 and 1699 rayed players that would ba laughabe for a USCF player above 1200.

Part of the issue is there are quite a few players that will keep bumping up thier rating by just playing weaker players.

There is little chance of doing that all the way to 2000. I'm undecided about the 1700 to 1999 crowd, but those players do have know some decent knowlege to stay in that range. Over 2000 and your going to know some chess theory and apply it against similar rated players, not to mention  a good amount tactical and pattern knowlege.

 

Most people here say that 1600 on this site is approximately 1500 USCF and 1500 FIDE.

People online mostly play 3 minute games and 5 minute games. Of course the level of play will be way lower compared to over the board tournaments which are played in slow time control. If you are comparing the games of people who play 90+30 over the board with people who play 3+2 online, you are comparing apples to oranges.

Avatar of speedrun_for_fun
ChristReignsAsKing wrote:

Ziryab is right.  There is a global chart showing percentiles.  Although not alway true, the CM level (2000) is better than 90-95 percent of all players in the world.  I'm at 2300 level (Don't look at my rapid: I was at 2300 and then lost a lot of rating points trying to play chess and do school at the same time).  But anyway 2300 level is in 99.9 %.  

I would say that almost anybody who knows the rules and a few tricks and tactics can be 1300-1500.  A person doesn't really start to understand the game until he reaches 1800-2000.  Anybody above that rating just plays at better accuracy and blunders a lot less.  People 2500+ are able to catch their opponent's mistakes a lot quicker and demonstrate in the games why certain moves are bad.

So "good" is probably 1800-2000

People 1200-1800 are probably standard club players

People less than 1200 are not all that good and don't understand the game too well or fall for forks, pins, etc quite often.

"Expert" is probably 2200

"Master" is probably 2200-2600

2600+ is amazing and probably about GM level to superGM level.

Although that's not set in stone, it's probably a good category for evaluating one's own playing level.

Just by watching various GMs do blitz speedruns on youtube I came to the same conclusion that around 1800 level players can hold their ground and not be destroyed immediately. Below 1800 GMs crush players quickly. I remember watching that as an 800 player, GMs making 1600s look like absolute patzers.

Avatar of Ziryab
speedrun_for_fun wrote:
Caesar49bc wrote:

I'd say you need to be 2000+ as the bottom to be a decent player. I've seen games on here between 1500 and 1699 rayed players that would ba laughabe for a USCF player above 1200.

Part of the issue is there are quite a few players that will keep bumping up thier rating by just playing weaker players.

There is little chance of doing that all the way to 2000. I'm undecided about the 1700 to 1999 crowd, but those players do have know some decent knowlege to stay in that range. Over 2000 and your going to know some chess theory and apply it against similar rated players, not to mention  a good amount tactical and pattern knowlege.

 

Most people here say that 1600 on this site is approximately 1500 USCF and 1500 FIDE.

People online mostly play 3 minute games and 5 minute games. Of course the level of play will be way lower compared to over the board tournaments which are played in slow time control. If you are comparing the games of people who play 90+30 over the board with people who play 3+2 online, you are comparing apples to oranges.

 

Most people are wrong.

There have been many threads devoted to comparing ratings across platforms. Lots of data has been gathered. No conversion formula exists.

Avatar of speedrun_for_fun
Carter040404 wrote:
TonightOnly wrote:
I know I would at least call myself good relative to the general population. But this is unfair, seeing as many don't even know the rules of the game, and I, on the other hand, have spent years of my life achieving this rating. 

Yeah, I mean even 1000s and possibly 600-800s on this site could still easily beat most people they encounter, but are considered beginners or lower by official ranking

600-800 rated players are people who have just learned the rules of chess. They are the average among people who have played less then 100 chess games in their lives. 

Avatar of speedrun_for_fun

The only explanation is that people play blitz and rapid online, while they play slow time controls over the board and that's why there is no correlation. It is impossible that there is no conversion between online blitz and OTB blitz, or online rapid and OTB rapid, unless either chess.com ratings or USCF and FIDE ratings are unreliable. I would bet on the second option being true, because there is limited amount of rated tournaments and also OTB rating can create bubbles where players in some areas have inflated ratings compared to other areas. 

Avatar of Ziryab
speedrun_for_fun wrote:

The only explanation is that people play blitz and rapid online, while they play slow time controls over the board and that's why there is no correlation. It is impossible that there is no conversion between online blitz and OTB blitz, or online rapid and OTB rapid, unless either chess.com ratings or USCF and FIDE ratings are unreliable. I would bet on the second option being true, because there is limited amount of rated tournaments and also OTB rating can create bubbles where players in some areas have inflated ratings compared to other areas. 

 

That is not the only explanation. Rather, it is a weak one. The core difference is the nature of the competition, as in who you are playing. Individual factors of whether you play well or sloppy because of the setting or time control increases the standard deviation, but not whether it would be generally higher or lower.

The median rating in all categories on this site is well below the median for all OTB rating schemes. Yet, the majority of posters here have online blitz ratings that are higher than their OTB.

Avatar of Ziryab

One explanation for the low median might be the unusually large number of casual players and rank beginners who are active on a free website, while those willing to pay membership fees, tournament entry fees, and devote a full weekend to chess are all pretty serious about the game.

Avatar of SmyslovFan

I stand by my original answer from years ago:

A good rating is 200 above your best rating.

Avatar of Ziryab
SmyslovFan wrote:

I stand by my original answer from years ago:

A good rating is 200 above your best rating.

 

I agree

Avatar of SmyslovFan

@Ziryab, you're precisely correct but generally wrong when you say that no conversion formula exists. What I mean is that there is indeed a conversion formula for the general trend. But it is not meant to be used as a guaranteed predictor of a person's rating in another setting. It's a guide. 
There does exist a conversion table, and it's fairly accurate.
Here is a link to the conversion table that  National Master @smarterchess, a statistician, has created:

https://chessgoals.com/rating-comparison/




Avatar of juan3758

to B honest 800 is a good rating because you can get an 100  so 1,000 is also good beside I am 14 and my rating is in lichess 2,300 I am a FM

Avatar of keep1teasy

I am a 2300 here that does not make me an FM, sorry