chess.com ratings are deflated against USCF

Exactly what I do.

You know, if stronger players avoid standard and play blitz, this might 'deflate' the blitz ratings... which was my original point.

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http://www.chess.com/echess/players

Look at the graph for bullet... does anybody else feel like its about to fall over to the left? I guess its an optical illusion?

Skewness.

Game in 15/0 doesn't strike me as particularly slow.  Game in 10, up to Game in 60 is "Quick Chess" in the USCF.  In my mind, these are decent practice speeds, for improving your OTB play.

The most common Live Standard Chess times on this site are Game in 15/5 and 15/10, with the occasional Game in 20 or 30 minutes.

Still, the Live Standard Chess distribution is rather thin above 2050 ratings.

I recall a thread about a year ago, where NM Reb complained he didn't like playing "online" anymore, largely because of so much engine use.  I assume (now) he was referring to Live Standard Chess.

I also find it annoying that when I put a seek for 45 45 I wait one hour and do something else and the circle for my seek dissappears, even though it says "matching". And no one has accepted it yet.

Apparently things move slower in Vatican City?

Not a lot of willing players at Game in 45/5, unfortunately.

Often times I wait 2-3 minutes (sometimes longer) for an Open Seek of Game in 15/5.

If you are willing to accept other folks' time controls, you can get games relatively quickly.

Nice Profile @Abhishek2, so few people actually have one.  

More power to you.

I know that, but slow games help me more.

Not to belabor the obvious, but I looked at the profile and noticed the following, "I know my ratings here on chess.com stink, but I play WAY better OTB than online, maybe I'm more distracted or something." Is that correct? Are you more distracted online? Do you really play better OTB? Or is it just that the ratings at chess.com are deflated with respect to OTB ratings?

I couldn't help but notice that you mentioned having a rating of 1950. I assume this is a USCF rating, since you mention being from "the bay", as in San Francisco? Meanwhile, your blitz rating is 1700. So, you can do the math for yourself:

1950 - 1700 = 250

Perhaps, your OTB rating is FIDE. I don't know, I couldn't find your name in any of the ratings lists. Regardless, when so many people have lower ratings at chess.com, it seems reasonable to conclude that you aren't playing worse at chess.com, but rather that the ratings system is deflated here.

It's a USCF rating, I should probably change it.

Yeah I am from the bay but I put my country as Vatican City, because people say I look like a pope in my profile picture 

what about my profile? My about me is a SUPER COMPRESSED version of my chess bio, people won't bother to read the whole thing.

Do you think that I should make a super long chess bio?

This thread's funny.

Incidentally, I know that I'm from the U.K. and we don't use Fide grades (ratings) in our domestic competitions. We use E.C.F./B.C.F. (British Chess Federation). The conversion from E.C.F to Fide is Gx8 + 600 and I have an idea that Fide ratings are slightly stronger than their equivalents in the USCF.

The bone of contention I have with the way that ratings are calculated here is that the penalty seems to be way too high for losing to a weak player. There are always going to be instances when this happens "by accident", often not under a player's control and the ECF system is geared to producing a more accurate assessment of playing strength so penalties for losing to weak players are limited. Now, I get the feeling that it's easy to lose to weak players (or to any player) here not through your fault. The system crashes or there are distractions that are capable of causing losses. If these are more common on this site than on others, for any reason, then ratings at the higher than average end of the spectum should be deflated. That's one factor that can do it. Next, I seem to have noticed a bit of a culture of "hit and run". It's very hard for me to get my rating up partly because there seem to be a lot of players who will play one game only and if they lose they don't have the courtesy to accept a return game. Things like this can probably lead to not taking chess.com blitz games seriously.

Apart form all this, the thesis of this thread holds in my case. My Fide rating is somewhat over 1900 and my chess.com blitz is about 1550. If I try hard I can get it to 1750 without too much difficulty, but no higher.

Incidentally, significant comparisions merely involve positive (or negative) correlations. For example there would be a negative correlation between survival and a propensity for walking off cliffs. There would be bound to be some sort of positive correlation between Chess.com blitz ratings and longplay ratings. The larger the sample group the firmer such a correlation is, statistically speaking. A group of 20, provided they've been chosen fairly randomly, should be enough to see a pattern. 

Yah, I don't even know why people choose to argue with me about this, the numbers are patently obvious. The people who say you can't compare ratings systems are just being absurdist, that's like saying you can't compare traffic speeds in two different countries. As you observed, there is an approximate equation between ECF and FIDE, and there is likewise one between FIDE and USCF, and obviously there is going to be one between Chess.com and USCF.

Obviously these are nothing more than estimated averages, and I never claimed otherwise. However, I have not seen one person who has a higher Chess.com blitz rating than their established USCF rating, and I have now seen dozens and dozens who have a blitz rating which is several hundred points lower. The pattern is fairly obvious. Of course, a couple of people have claimed that they are exceptions, but not only are such exceptions statistically inevitable (and therefore inconsequential), but they are thus far unconfirmed.

The real mystery to me is why people choose to troll threads like this, where the original 'thesis' was simple, clear, and fairly uncontroversial. If someone doesn't agree, there really have no reason to come and express their disagreement... and yet, they do so with an almost obsessive vigor! I find that's the more interesting issue here, as it appears to be a cultural phenomenon across the entire internet. There seems to be a personality type which just is drawn toward vitrolic argument.

I suppose its ultimately a self-esteem issue. I read a book recently which touched upon this, Fail-Safe (1962). One of the characters in the book talks about how some people build their careers upon negativity, trying to shoot other's ideas down, with the idea being that doing so proves that you are 'smarter' than the person whose idea you 'refuted'. Of course, such people rarely have any productive concrete ideas of their own. You can see this issue in politics, when politicians focus upon what's wrong with their opponent, instead of promoting their own original ideas.

Ultimately, all of these people criticizing my statistical methods are just being morons. That's like criticizing someone's construction of a bridge, whilst you sit lazily doing nothing. Even if the bridge collapses, at least the other person tried to be productive. I guess there is a valuable life lesson in all this, which is that if you don't like the way someone is doing something, then do it for yourself, or at least help. There is really nothing to be gained from sitting around throwing out criticism at others. I suppose that's what the "judge not" parable from the Bible was talking about.

The only time that you need to speak up in argument is when what someone is doing is somehow threatening or impeding you. However, in an internet forum, if you don't agree with a thread... is there any rational reason whatsoever to come and express your disagreement? I clearly waste my time in my own threads, defending against incessant trolls, but I have better things to do than go to other threads and try to debate there. I truly fail to understand people who do so.

I think the real problem with such behavior is it spams up the thread. I guess, where I'm ultimately going with this, is that someone should devise a message board system where the creator of a thread can ban anyone from it, or delete any comment. That way, the thread can be kept on topic, with relevant discussion. Unfortunately, most threads tend to be hijacked by argument.

You can ban people from your own threads by blocking them. Can't delete their comments, though.

@everyone, chess.com ratings and USCF ratings are waaay different. Don't take it personal if your rating here is much lower. You have to consider the cheaters.  I have a 1766 USCF rating for over the board. Here...? barely over 1400...I have ran into a few cheaters in my time here, more so then not. So to me, it doesn't matter what your rating is here, it matters OTB, bring your A** and leave the engine at home!! LOL Hope that doesn't offend anyone, but if it does, you're probably one of them cheaters...

well for one, my blitz games, when I played, I won, expect for maybe a few. Most of my games were lost due to internet connection. My computer at work froze up on me a few times. Can't really tell when it happens, but when it does, it kills my games and I forfit, not by choice. Then my rating goes down.

I occasionally have the same problem. This is one of the two reasons I was always amazed at ChessNetwork's high rating. That guy never has a technical hiccup!

Maybe you have bad memory, but I mentioned this earlier...I am 2150 blitz and low 1900 uscf and fide.  There are others like me like Elysium who has blitz ratings higher than uscf.  The thing is...all those 1700 uscf people complaining about their 1400 blitz...the fact is you guys are just bad at blitz its plain and simple.  There are so many people here with 1800 blitz and they definitely do not play like 2050's like your rating correlation suggests.  

Windbags abound.  Try compressing your prose.  You'll be a better man for it.

I don't read posts that long. I know it's a little ridiculous (i.e. I'm lazy) but there are very few posters here where I'll read through an entire post if it is that long.