chess.com ratings are deflated against USCF

*yawn*

These are the same people who would say you can't compare speed limits in Europe and the USA, because one is miles and the other is kilometers.

OK compare it to the USTA tennis 0-7 scale, in .5 increments with most good players topping at 3.5-4.0. It actually has objective standards like your control of the ball, ability to serve, how often you make mistakes. It is fuzzy and not perfect but generally you go to a coach and they rate you on the scale. Here's the details:http://www.usta.com/Adult-Tennis/USTA-League/Information/1655_General_Characteristics_of_Various_NTRP_Playing_Levels/

(+1) And in some of those countries, people drive on the wrong side of the road.

How could we possibly compare that ??  

You are comparing a simple mathematical ratio ( MPH to KPH ) with complex algorithms, as they would affect one another if one tried to make an equating summary, of comparing things that use them, for credibility in accurately comparing them....

Let me take a stab at it. You can correct the specifics. In a 15 min game, on USCF scale, 1000-1200 will occasionally drop a piece. 1200-1400 sees 2-3 move tactics. 1400-1600 begins to understand positional theory. 1600-1800 has thorough understanding of game and advanced tactics. 1800-2000 employs tactics not seen by 97% of chess players. We give titles to 2000, Expert. 2200 Master. These titles connote a skill level.

1000-1200 - "Tell me how the horsie moves again?"

1200-1400 - "Check! No wait...thats checkmate!"

1400-1600 - "Ok, tell me one more time how the little horsie moves?"

1600-1800 - "What do you think about Watson's critique of Nimzovitch?"

1800-2000 - "I just found out what en passant means!"

2000-2200 - "Yes, I won. I used triangulation to gain the opposition and force a trebuchet"

2200 - 2400 "I am thinking of giving up chess for poker"

2400-2600 " You mean you can castle while your rook is attacked?" *

* Yes, this actually happened. See Korchnoi.

None of those comments by peterb are relavent when comparing chess played on the internet and that over the board.... My thought is if you cant be honest about acknowledging the cheating problem here and how time control settings that aren't alike do affect this comparison causing error, it is a clear indication that you are either easily deceived or want comparisons that shouldn't be relevant, to have merit for some deceptive purpose....

You're obsessed dude. Cheaters aren't playing bums like us often enough to notice. The ops reckoning ain't dead, but it's close enough.

I dont think cheating is as prevalent as you think it is. Anyway, any cheater's rating will soon zoom uo to the stratosphere.

*yawn*.... I am trying to figure out what is more tiring, reading endless pages of banned accounts for cheating, trying to figured out a way to prove some uses an analysis board in 10 min blitz, or to read the stream of supposition, like diarhea from the mouths of fools, only wanting to be heard because, they have all of the answers and no one else could possibly interject somethings they overlooked....oh well...time for bed anyway....

As Peter B notes, tournament players do have a rough sense of how a USCF rating translates into actual OTB play.

Jeremy Silman, the well-known chess coach/writer, arranged his classic "Silman's Complete Endgame Course: From Beginner To Master" according to rating levels, so the reader could study endgame technique appropriate to his playing skill.

Mark Glickman, creator of the Glicko rating system, is currently chairman of the USCF ratings committee. He has tweaked the USCF rating system to raise ratings back to the levels before the rating deflation in the late nineties.

One can argue precision, but there is little question chess skill *roughly* corresponds to rating numbers.

Therefore, once you bracket the rough skill levels of chess ratings in one rating system, you can compare them to the numbers in another rating system. QED.

However, that would be between comparable play scenarios -- I wouldn't lump blitz, bullet, turn-based and standard together.

I don't believe internet play versus OTB play is incomparable.

There's not that much difference between playing blitz on chess.com versus playing blitz in a chess club. Nor between playing OTB tournament versus a slow time control online.

As long as the time controls are close, you can compare online apples with OTB apples, and online oranges with OTB oranges.

What stops someone from using a board at home while playing 10 minute blitz... ? absolutely nothing...

I am not simply directing this to you but, every other shorted sighted knucklehead...

Well you can compare a mercedes and a yugo but, that doesn't make them the same...

you are still failing to account for things in the internet based blitz like lag, freezing, mouse slips, disconnections, players usings bots, engines and analysis boards.

I am willing to bet that those that play regularly in online blitz but, never play otb board blitz, would find the change from one to the other awkward and it would affect their performance. I am even willing to bet that depending on the individual who plays both, they are better at one or the other, simply as a matter of the mechanics involved in playing the two respective games. After all, you can premove here in blitz and cant do that shit otb and you dont have to change a timer here. It isn't even the same F--k!ng game....

...it is still apples and oranges, no matter how you try to slice em

If someone never plays otb, they don't have a uscf rating to compare to cc blitz, so it's a moot point.

The trolling must not be going well when Adam resorts to saying this is the same thing as translating MPH to KPH.  That's so ridiculous that any reasonable person can see he's just trying to troll.

I am left to wonder how much my rating would suffer if, instead of concentrating on the game during a 10 minute blitz, I set up a board and tried to keep up with both the board and the online game, and then start fumbling around moving pieces in variations. Sounds like a pretty big handicap to me.

I find in ten minute games in particular, I don't usually have to rush at the end. I tend to move fast and think on my opponent's time anyway...

I don't know why some people don't believe you can get a pretty accurate estimate of your OTB strength from your chess.com ratings.

Yes some people might be better at certain time controls than others, some people have better connection speeds or some players play with more distractions than others. But once you've got a large enough sample of ratings for players that play both OTB and at chess.com, as Adam and various others have provided, you can get an average difference.

From there you can even tailor more to you specifically, do you think your better at fast or slow chess? How is your connection speed? Are you fully focussed when playing online? And adjust your estimate accordingly, its not going to be far off.