Rapid score

A search on this subject was all over the place.

About what rapid rating does a guy have to achieve to be in the top 50%?

Thanks that was helpful.  I'm a old guy (65)  and have always been competitive.   I was curious as to where I stood when compared to everyone else.

I'm better than I thought.

That means I'm better in the top 41%? Or 69 percent of guys are better than me?

This is intresting- Never thought about the numbers behind all of this.

>I just checked in on the website's stats, and apparently the average Rapid rating is 846!

Yeah. I've been looking at the average rapid rating each day for several months now. I started just after 10|0 was reclassified as rapid. At that time, it was about 1025. It's been decreasing every day since then, and now, as you've noticed, it's about 864.

I've tried to figure out what's going on, and the conclusion that I've arrived at is that it has to do with the starting rating on the site. In the past, I hear that everyone started at 1200. However, now people can indirectly choose their own starting rating during account creation based on how they answer the "what is your level of chess experience?" question. The answer "new to chess" gives a starting rating of 400, "beginner" gives 800, "intermediate" gives 1200, and so on.

My understanding of rating system math is that, assuming that every new player has the same starting rating, the rating distribution will be stable and look like a bell curve centered on that starting rating. In reality, there are some other factors such as rating being capped on the lower end at 100 and people leaving the pool after having given/taken points from others, so it won't be exact, but starting rating is the predominant factor. 

Thanks to the pandemic, the Twitch/PogChamps boom, and The Queen's Gambit, millions upon millions of new players have joined the pool over the past year. I don't know for sure, but I strongly suspect that many of them said that they were "new to chess" or "beginner" and thus entered the pool with initial ratings of 400 or 800, both of which are less than the average rating would have been at the time that they joined.

Given this massive influx of new users with starting rating < average rating, we've seen the average rating drop, and I expect that it will continue to do so until it reaches the average starting rating. Since different people choose different answers, we'd need to know the proportion of each to be able to predict where this point will be. I'm going to make up some numbers to give an example, but only chess.com knows the real numbers here. 

Let's say that 30% of people say that they're "new to chess", 45% say that they're "beginner", 15% say "intermediate", 8% say "advanced", and 2% say "expert". Then the average starting rating for new players would be 0.30 * 400 + 0.45 * 800 + 0.15 * 1200 + 0.08 * 1600 + 0.02 * 2000 = 120 + 360 + 180 + 128 + 40 = 828.

As I said, I have no idea how realistic these numbers are. However, hopefully the example illustrates what I'm talking about. The more inexperienced that people say that they are when signing up, the lower we can expect the average rating to drop.

One point that I'd like to make is that adjustments such as adding a fixed amount to everyone's rating are only temporary measures as long as new people are joining with low starting ratings. We can see this by taking a look at the current average bullet rating (~924 despite the +150 adjustment in Sept). I think that the only permanent solution is for the site to choose what they want the average rating to be, adjust all current accounts accordingly, and to then start every new account with that desired average as a starting rating.

Intresting

I play against players of all ranges beginning from a rating of 100 (mostly unrated games). Most time I get randomly matched against players in the 800-1100 range so I guess that this is the range in which most of the players in chess.com are. 1200 players and above are quite rare. 

Edwin, you seem to understand stats and numbers.   Chess.com has some kind of algorithm they tweak as needed?

I joined last Nov.  I answered "intermediate' and started at 1500?  Even though I hadn't played Chess in 50 years (no kidding I'm 65) I remembered the basic tenants of the game (development pieces, control center etc)  I took some beatdowns before stabilizing in the 800s.  From there over the next few months, climbed back over 1000, even broke into the low 11s a time or two but can't hold it once I get there.

I asked these questions because I'm a fella that needs something to shoot for.  Currently I'd like to be a 1200 guy, so I play to get better,  and for a retired guy like me, I find it fun and helps keep me mentally sharp.  At my age I think kind of important to exercise your brain like the rest of the body, but if we want to discuss the merits of chess on seniors, that's another thread.

Thanks for your work on this Edwin, the info was helpful and helps me understand what's going on.

Can someone tell me how to see the points (all types,not only daily)I have got?

Go to your own profile. Click on your picture next to your comment and it should open your profile. You will find your ratings there.

Very, very easy to find.

Not ratings ,points.

what depends on how many points I get for winning , or defeat?

0 points for defeat,3 points for win.so,winning is better