Why is the elo on chess.com so bad?

I get this as well every now and again but not consistently, most recently I lost a 5 min blitz to someone half my rating. My guess would be it boils down to the strength of the natural looking moves in the position as when I looked at the other games that person played they where definitely rated around the 600 mark accurately 

Sure, people's skill varies from day to day. Plus or minus 100 points is common, and even more for people who sometimes choose to play while very tired or distracted.

Beating a single 1400 doesn't make you 1400. Scoring roughly 50% against many 1400s makes you 1400.

When you lose to someone rated a lot lower, check their stats. What's their highest rating? Maybe they were in bad shape yesterday (or for the last week) and now they're rested and focused and winning their rating back.

Also be honest with yourself. Were you generally ahead all game then at the end blundered your queen, or checkmate? It happens to all of us. It doesn't mean the 1100 was better than you, and it doesn't mean the rating system is flawed.

I disagree with multiple things, but I thought letting you know is at least better than ignoring your post. You're quoting yourself for visibility after all.

Blitz is quite special. 3|0 blitzers don't play the same way 5|0 blitzers do. It's completely different.

They should all play for checkmate, play good games, but the strategies are different.

One would assume that a 1300 3|0 Blitzer would do better with the looser constraints of a five minute game, but it doesn't happen that way, unless a players changes time-controls often.

This is true of all time controls, they all require adjustment. But blitz is on the extreme end, and so is the adjustment process involved. So there'll be rating imbalances there as well.

3|0 and 5|0 are pretty similar, even if the pools aren't and therefore the ratings aren't.

Adding a few seconds of increment to them changes a few of the skills, and barely the strategy.

Blitz is all about finding practical moves quickly. Trying to find the best move is often a mistake. Allowing your opponent the initiative is often a mistake.

i am always honest with myself. It is a rule of mine. I am usually ahead from the start, and its not just one game. To be honest with you i made this post because i made a new account to see how higher rank feels like and if i would be able to keep up and my score at the end was like 6 wins 7 loses so i got a bit angry at the system because it made no sense to me . Anyways, maybe i am not in a position to criticize the rating system yet... i need more evidence and more games on that acc to see whats happening.

Time management and strategy are inseparable elements of the game. They share a causal relationship.

Getting to your "correct" rating can take a lot of games, especially if you're playing unusually well or poorly for your first 10 or 20.

Sure you can make a new account and get an uncharacteristically high or low rating at first, but only play when you're rested and focused, and play 200 games, and you should end up at the same place every time regardless of your initial rating.

how about my friends who all of them have way different ratings in chess.com than irl. They are similar elo not that far off from each other.

@cole677
It doesn't require 200 games, but I'm saying if you want to make an experiment you have to be rigorous. After making an account with a high start and a low start, try to make the conditions of playing the same. Playing as many as 200 helps balance the days where we're playing better or worse for reasons we're often not aware of.

Ratings aren't an absolute measure like how fast or tall a person is. They only measure you relative to others in the population. It's common for online ratings to be higher than OTB ratings, particularly online time controls like rapid and daily which can be regularly 600 or more points higher than OTB.

But maybe that's not what you're saying. Maybe you're saying you have 3 friends who are (for example) all rated 1400 OTB and who have 3 different online ratings. Maybe one guy is 1200, another 1400, another 1600.

In that case, first of all, I'd want to check if all 3 are active in both OTB and online play. There's no sense in comparing someone's inactive OTB rating (maybe they've only played 6 games in the last year) to their online rating where they play every day.

Secondly they're not the same time control. Some people are bad at blitz relative to their OTB. Generally you can overcome this by practicing more blitz games, but also people who are serious about blitz can, for example, use a different opening repertoire than they do for OTB classical games.

How many games do you have to play till you can say your rating is a good reflection of your strength and not inflated by being a new account?

When your RD is low enough that you're gaining (or losing) about 10 points for a win (or loss) against a similarly rated opponent, it means the system considers your rating reliable. Off the top of my head this is around 20 games.

However, you can easily play 20 games on a bad day, and even though the rating system thinks your rating is correct you will know it's not. Or, for example, lets say you got lucky and some people resigned on move 5, or other strange things.

So in general I'd say around 20 games, but take it with a grain of salt. More reliable is to play a few games a day and look back over a month or two.

They're all excuses, my fellow members. Play earnestly, play a limited amount of games a day, and your rating will reach just where it should.

I was 1400 rapid just the other day, now I'm 1500+. You know why? I'm ready to move up. 

*Chokes on my lemonade.*

I love that plan!

Also, to add my actual two cents, these posts sum up how things work, and are a lot more logical than anything the OP has suggested.

I totally agree that is very unbalanced, I'm novice but I mostly match with chess teachers, real competitor etc just practicing here smashing very easily ppl like me, and they all with similar rank to me :/ ....  we never face someone similar our level so rank is rubbish, I use this app to improve my game but had to learn to dont look at rank, is not well done at all. I see that many ppl get frustrated due to that, so is just an app for mostly pro players, no place for players like me. 

I don't get what's this guys problem with the elo? I got 800 mmr at the start, I played it from time to time and now I am 1364. I literally grinded 500+ mmr points without even realizing it. I started getting harder match up just recently in 1300+, so I guess my ability only ranging from 1200-1400.