chess.com ratings are deflated against USCF

And here I dont even know which side you would take.

This certainly holds true if we compare the US with eastern Europe. I don't think chess is the cause of this, but rather a consequence. It is a relatively cheap game to play, and so has remained popular in relatively impoverished countries. Unfortunately, in the United States, it has been replaced by video games, television, etc. However, I would argue that chess is the better use of one's time, because it does teach decision-making skills.

A similar analogy could be made about the popularity of football, baseball, and basketball in the US, which require relatively large amounts of money to play properly, and soccer or rugby which can be played in a dirt field with nothing more than a ball. Once again, I would suggest that the cheaper game is better, but there seems to be a tendency to desire "more", even though the added features add expense and reduce quality. We could likewise compare folk music, using a mere fiddle or harmonica, with a modern rock concert. The latter is far more expensive, but less satisfying. Perhaps less is more.

+1 to Adam's post

Down here in the Bible Belt most of my friends at least know the rules :)

You knock video games but some of them are pretty good for brains. My kids  build with Little Big Planet and Minecraft, and all kinds of crazy little builing puzzle games on the ipad. These are all every bit as good as chess for young minds. And old ones.

Compared to my generation, kids today are kind of like the generation from that movie...what was the name? With Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone? I am too lazy to google. But you know what I mean. Anyway, kids are like that today.

I doubt that.

What? you think minecraft is better?

While I think minecraft is good for the childs imagination, it also has become an obession to my 5 yr old, that I never had...well, until I was much older...

Minecraft is awesome. My kids have built entire cities with it.

One problem I run into is that my son wants me to build him cities with it... ....so he can enjoy playing afterwards...

Nicely played sir. First paragraph refuses to believe anecdotal evidence, then second one is some.

Please show statistics that are vaguely related to the claim that "US players are under the international average" in chess, otherwise it's just "I think that...".

Players or GM per capita is a wrong measure because of Andorra and stuff (and btw, the GMs from those countries are not home-grown, obviously). Average Elo is dubious too because many people will only play federation events. Titled players per player could do the trick, but then US is above average.

Note : this post is directed to Adam, not to the sockpuppet.

If your computer can handle it and they are old enough (early teens) you should get them portal and portal 2. Portal 2 was the greatest game i've ever played and it's all about physics and puzzles.

Oh yes, both my kids and I were Portal fanatics, its an incredible mind bending game. My seven year old was so into it, when we did the two-player version he spotted a few solutions even before I did.

We also built and published a few puzzle levels - the editor is a lot of fun.

AdamR: I agree chess.com ratings are deflated compared to USCF. That's my experience playing in the Slow Chess League. This is also borne out, for instance, by an international master rated at all time controls 2300+, but can't manage a chess.com rating at blitz or standard higher than 1830. He might be slacking off when he plays here but not 400+ points worth.

However, I make no claim why this may be so. Maybe "the chess.com blitz pool is stronger the USCF standard pool" as you say. But I doubt that is the only possibility. By your reasoning, FIDE ratings should be similarly deflated in comparison to USCF ratings but they are not.

I took a pass at implementing a Glicko-2 rating system based on the Slow Chess League archives and was impressed at how much the results varied according to the Glicko-2 setup. (The ratings administrator has a certain amount of latitude in setting things up.)

Furthermore the chess.com rating system violates Glickman's recommendation that a player's rating will be updated on the basis of 10-15 games, not updated every single game as at chess.com

Chess ratings -- USCF, FIDE or chess.com -- are tricky within their own domains, much less compared against each other. I don't think it's impossible to compare X rating with Y rating, but it's more difficult than I assumed before looking into it more carefully, though not for the reasons most commenters have stated.

My USCF peak rating is around 150 points above my peak chess.com blitz (10 mins per side only games) rating.

At the same time, my chess.com tactics training peak rating is around 300 points above my USCF peak rating.  Go figure.

Yah, the tactics ratings are inflated.

Mathematically it's true that one's rating is a relative approximation of one's strength within a particular rating pool with respect to a particular rating method. The more games you and your opponents play, the more accurate that rating is in terms of relative strength.

Nonetheless, this observation ignores all the massaging and tweaking that goes on within every rating system so the ratings are within shouting distance of the naive sense the chess community has of 1200, 1600, 2000, 2400, etc. players.

Otherwise, there would be no problem if the chess.com rating system was based on 14,000 for an average player instead of 1400.

Indeed the Glicko-2 system uses a massively different rating scale (1.0 is equivalent to 1674) from Glicko-1. Before executing the Glicko-2 algorithms, the Glicko-1 rating is converted to Glicko-2, then reconverted back to Glicko-1 afterward.

Which is to say, there is much mathematical magic going on behind the scenes. The rating folks are dancing as fast as they can to deliver systems both workable in practice and satisfying to their communities, but it's as much of an art as a science.

How exactly is this supportive of anything?  You find a single 55-year old IM whose 1800 blitz rating is 2 years old and that proves Adam's theory? 

Now look at all the untitled/NM/CM/FM players here with a blitz rating 2300+.  Are they all deflated 200 points and actually GMs?

SilentKnight your question has already been answered at least three times.