A question to understand the rating system of chess.com

Hi everyone,

In my latest Daily game (https://www.chess.com/game/daily/515221025), I played against a 1411 player. I was 1298 before the game and had about 25 points to earn if I won the game. I lost, which made me lose 13 points. So far, no problem. But after the game, my opponent's rating rose to 1444, which means he earned 33 points with his victory whereas I had only 25 points to earn if I had won.

So my question is: how can a game earn more points to the higher player?

There must be something in the rating system I have not understood so thanks in advance for sharing knowledge.

The site uses the Glicko rating system which includes a measure of rating uncertainty called the rating deviation (RD) value. Players with higher RD values will see larger rating swings after games. As more games are played, the RD value drops and the magnitude of rating changes decrease.

https://support.chess.com/article/210-how-do-ratings-work-on-chess-com

Hi Martin and thanks for your answer.

My opponent had had more Daily games than me in the past few weeks (20 vs 16) so his RD should have been at least equal or even lower than mine according to the article. The only noticeable thing is that he played most of his 20 games against the same person, does it matter for the RD?

Ratings don't take into account who gets played.

Your opponent has an RD of 138 and yours is 89

Ok, thanks for checking, Martin. So, since he's played more Daily games than I (be it all time or recently), how come he has an higher RD than I ?

All time doesn't really matter. Gaps in time with no games can raise the RD higher, so it's possible that the member had a large gap in game play at some point.

For example, I have an RD of 151 since I haven't played a rated daily game for a while.

He hadn't played Daily between January 2020 and March 2023. So that means someone having not played Daily for a long time can have a higher RD than someone who's just registered? That's weird.

If you don't play long enough, you can eventually get back to the starting RD I think.

Three years of training can raise someone more than 1000 ELO. That's why the RD is much higher than someone who's just registered, since it is considering the possibility of improvement.