I don´t agree with these observations. My FIDE rating is approximately 260 points higher than my chess.com rating.
FIDE vs Chess.com ratings explained
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KvicalaM wrote:
I don´t agree with these observations. My FIDE rating is approximately 260 points higher than my chess.com rating.
So you are 1755 blitz/chess.com and ca 2015 fide. That makes sense. Both those strenghts looks very very strong from my perspective. (1150blits/1660online/1422fide).
I have my highest score in online, which is natural, because I have spent most time in online.
Which activity is the largest does make a difference. I think a player is typically better in the categories he do the most.
So KvicalaM, I guess you have spent more time in chessclub and otb than you have on blitz/chess.com, but made a huge effort on both arenas.
GagarinGambit wrote:
Seeing that there's much talk over how Chess.com ratings correspond to FIDE ratings, I got curious and, as I happen to have a few skills in statistics, I decided to look into it.
Thus I spent a few hours getting a random sample of 121 cases, the vast majority found by googling
site:http://www.chess.com/members/ "fide rating"
which brings numerous profiles of players who have posted their FIDE rating. Most of them tend to be titled players, so I was careful not to include too many 2000+ rated players, as then the results would be biased due to the lack of average rated players. Then, I recorded the FIDE ratings alongside the chess.com bullet, blitz, standard, online and tactics ratings; I did not record ratings when there were not enough games present (at least 20), because they'd be unreliable.
Obviously, not all players were rated in all five chess.com indicators; among the 121 profiles explored, 86 were bullet rated, 113 were blitz rated, 79 standard rated, 95 online rated, and 88 tactics rated; in total, only 42 of them were rated in all five aspects.
Granted, 121 players is not a sample big enough for a proper investigation, but it's enough to get the basic idea, and I didn't intend to spend days getting my sample. But that's enough preliminary, let's get to the results, starting with the means.
ELO Means
Mean Std. Deviation
FIDE rating 1769 287
Chess.com: Bullet 1628 313
Chess.com: Blitz 1685 273
Chess.com: Standard 1615 195
Chess.com: Online 1804 301
Chess.com: Tactics 2036 404
Although these are not directly comparable, we can make a few observations.
But it's more complex than this. For starters, just by looking at the data, it's obvious that different players perform different at the various ratings. It's quite common for players to perform better under long time controls (online>standard>blitz>bullet), and other players are at their best at fast time controls (bullet>blitz>standard).
So let's have a look at the correlations.
ELO Correlations
Bullet Blitz Standard Online Tactics
FIDE rating 0.563 0.738 0.573 0.675 0.640
Bullet - 0.786 0.167 0.205 0.671
Blitz - 0.647 0.531 0.737
Standard - 0.541 0.521
Online - 0.534
(pearson correlations, cases excluded pairwise, almost all correlations are significant at the 0.001 level)
If you're not familiar with correlation, it's sufficient to know that it's a number ranging from 0 to 1 showing the degree two variables are related; 0 means no relation at all, and 1 means that the two variables are identical.
FIDE rating is, as expected, highly correlated with all chess.com ratings; obviously, your chess.com rating is not independent of you OTB rating. The highest correlation is found among the FIDE and Chess.com blitz rating, meaning that the blitz rating is the one that tends to follow more closely the FIDE rating (although, as we shall see, it tends to be lower). In particular, the 0.738 correlation means that 54% of the chess.com blitz variance can be explained by the FIDE rating (and the rest 46% needs to be explained by other factors, such as your performance at different time controls, the different nature of OTB and internet chess, or your level of activity).
In my opinion, the most important factor in explaining the deviations between FIDE and chess.com ratings is the time controls. This is made obvious by the chess.com bullet ratings which are NOT correlated with the longer time standard and online ratings, while all the other ratings are highly correlated.
In plain words: some people need time to think, and thus they perform better when they have enough time (FIDE, standard, online); others are quite fast and don't gain much by having extra time and are at their best when playing bullet and blitz games.
Finally, I'll present the linear regressions, treating FIDE as a depended variable (estimating your FIDE rating from your chess.com ratings). Although it's not quite "proper", I'll present them as equations, where you can enter a chess.com rating and get an estimated FIDE rating.
Regression
996 + 0.474 * Bullet = FIDE rating (+-219)
483 + 0.769 * Blitz = FIDE rating (+-193)
594 + 0.702 * Standard = FIDE rating (+-197)
737 + 0.571 * Online = FIDE rating (+-189)
902 + 0.438 * Tactics = FIDE rating (+-214)
A couple of warnings. First, don't bother inputting your ratings if your chess.com ratings are lower than 1200, since almost all players of the sample were rated higher (that's because low rated chess.com players tend not to have FIDE ratings, of course). Second, the number in parenthesis is the standard deviation; thus, your estimated FIDE rating is within the range of plus/minus the standard deviation. The deviations are too high (especially when it comes to bullet and tactics, as I mentioned fast time controls are the least reliable), but if you do this for all your ratings you can get an idea. More data would give more accurate results, but I simply don't want to spend days on this.
An example.
At the moment, my standard chess.com rating is 1452. According to the formula given by the regression, this translates to 594 + 0.702 * 1452 = 594 + 1019 = 1613 FIDE, plus/minus 197 (thus, at the range of 1416 to 1810). My tactics trainer rating is 1461, and thus 902 + 0.438 * 1461 = 902 + 640 = 1542 FIDE plus/minus 214 (1328-1756). Indeed, my real FIDE rating is 1504, which is quite close to these estimates.
But the regression outcome is not useful only in estimating FIDE ratings, but it also explains how they are related at different strength levels, because chess.com elos are overrated at some levels and underrated at others.
So, let's go over the regression estimates, supposing 1500, 1800, 2100, and 2400 ratings (I don't include 1200 rating estimates because they are not quite accurate due to the very small number of the sample players at this range).
Bullet:
1500 chess.com -> 1707 FIDE
1800 chess.com -> 1849 FIDE
2100 chess.com -> 1991 FIDE
2400 chess.com -> 2133 FIDE
Blitz:
1500 chess.com -> 1636 FIDE
1800 chess.com -> 1867 FIDE
2100 chess.com -> 2097 FIDE
2400 chess.com -> 2328 FIDE
Standard:
1500 chess.com -> 1647 FIDE
1800 chess.com -> 1858 FIDE
2100 chess.com -> 2068 FIDE
2400 chess.com -> 2279 FIDE
Thus, all live ELOs tend to be underrated up to the 1800-1900 point; the deviations are particularly large when it comes to bullet ratings.
Online:
1500 chess.com -> 1593 FIDE
1800 chess.com -> 1764 FIDE
2100 chess.com -> 1936 FIDE
2400 chess.com -> 2107 FIDE
On the other hand, online ELOs starting from 1650 or so are overrated.
Tactics trainer:
1500 chess.com -> 1559 FIDE
1800 chess.com -> 1690 FIDE
2100 chess.com -> 1822 FIDE
2400 chess.com -> 1953 FIDE
Tactics trainer ratings are overrated. Highly overrated. Period.
In summary, club level players will tend to have lower live ratings but higher online ratings than their official FIDE ratings; your tactics ratings will almost always be overrated, often by several hundred points. But in practice, this will depend on the player, his/her play strength at different time controls, tactical skills, the way he/she takes internet chess vs OTB chess, the amount of effort put into online chess etc.
Moreover, all rating systems are different rating systems. What I presented are only rough estimates which give us an idea of the particularities of chess.com ratings.
And now I'd better get back to playing chess :)
Thanks. That sounds about correct. My chess.com blitz rating is presently 1587 but my playing level is probably close to 1650 or 1700+. That would make my FIDE rating level approx 1750 which sounds believable.
I also have a grounding in statistics and found it interesting to see the relationships you found. Of course... people who lack brain power will no doubt feel the need to level 'their amazing criticisms' to validate their own misguided sense of intelligence; while the rest of us can muse on the positive and negative aspects of the study- and appreciate it for what it is. Good work! Thank you!
petrip wrote:
Fron those curves one can see that blitz if fine. But Standard? Shape of sidtribution is off, really badly. I hope it is because of this correction on ratings and evens out. Otherwise pool players is very biased in standard
True, the correction implemented a few months ago on the Standard Live Chess rating added around 150 points.
I definitely find it interesting. I think I see a problem with the assessment of these numbers.
While the expectancy for a person with 2400 standard rating is 2279 FIDE, I've seen several people at ~1750 standard with 2200+ FIDE. Of course thiss is like a case study. But I would wager, if you are to predict the other way for FIDE of 2279 I guaruntee would predict a chess.com standard rating below 2200 on the old system. And a 2068 FIDE rating would correspond to well under a 2000 chess.com standard rating.
If you are 3 standard deviations ahead of the rest in one area there is a natural regression to mean IN ANY other comparison. You would naturally expect someone to be closer to 2 standard deviations ahead. If you take a sample of the best jumpers in the world and compared them with the fastest runners in the world, someone that is 3 standard deviations ahead in jumping might be 2 in sprinting. The number of people 3 standard deviations ahead in both is very rare. The best sprinter in the world, is he the best jumber? no. Therefore you have to expect him to be worse at jumping than sprinting. Does that mean sprinting is overrated because the best sprinters are less good jumpers? That would be ridiculous. Doesn't make it harder to be the best jumper in the world than the best sprinter. The further you get from the mean the more rank comparisons have to regress back to the mean IN ANYTHING you use to compare. So be careful when taking the best rated people on chess.com and comparing to FIDE not to say chess.com is overrated. you'd get the opposite if you went from FIDE numbers.
Of course this is ignoring what people already pointed out about sample size differences. It is people who put their FIDE on their chess.com page. Chess.com people have more recent rating representations than FIDE as well in aggregate because people play more blitz games online in a short period of time. FIDE ratings take into a count a significantly longer time horizon so the younger players being generally underrated in FIDE is not the case in chess.com. Etc.
I applaud the effort.
Note however, that since the time this was done chess.com added 150 or 300 standard points to a huge number of players depending on rating and premium status. I believe to bring them closer to FIDE and USCF levels. A chess.com rating of 1600 before this change corresponds closer to 1800 now. Before I never really saw anyone over 2000. This would create a problem with backward comparison if you are to do this backwards comparison now. I will naturally challenge you to do a backward comparison if you have the resources to compare people's FIDE or USCF ratings and ask them their chess.com ratings. Then you can compare these two estimations and not only will you have an estimation for both an appropriate assessment can be made as to whether a 2400 bullet rating or a 2100 FIDE rating is better, rarer, or harder to achieve.
In response to the person saying that the difference between top and bottom in short time controls is bigger than the difference between top and bottom in longer time controls should note that the highest rated blitz players online have significantly lower ratings than the highest bullet players. the highest standard players are lower than either of those numbers. There's elements of clock management, familiarity, etc. And the numbers suggest that the opposite of this may be true. As much as it might makes sense to think that the duration of the game has a correlation to the level of skill or predictability of the outcome, I do not think this is true.
As an example, now my standard rating is over 1900. It was around 1600 last year when talking in this thread. I was a much better standard player then than I am now. Not that the ratings are wrong, the scale has just shifted dramatically upward and I haven't played as much recently (I also got 300 pts for doing nothing)
I suppose this is just a lengthy way of saying: the means suggest that chess.com ratings are underinflated. not. overinflated as you later say. Your predictions are biased and the analysis of them is wrong. I can't attest to whether the predictions are appropriate/accurate or not as I have not seen the data, but, they do appear as accurate as a linear estimation is likely to be.
Question , if there are 100 inactive players, does that mean 100 rating spots are going to be taken? say the 1200 to 1300 is all inactive people who played 1 or 2 games and dont have an accurate rating does it bump other players down?does that mean the more people that are in the pool the smaller(or larger) the avg rating will be? This would make sense because from what i know people mostly play "online chess" and blitz , and they tend to be the most inflated and deflated of the ratings . Sorry if this doesnt make any sense lol.
Great post. Thanks.
Interesting! Good job! Thank you for sharing.
Equiv, no. The way elo ratings work (including USCF, chess.com and FIDE), rating changes have a weight associated to them. Rating changes have a weight associated to them not a rank. If someone new plays a game on chess.com they start at 1200. they lose 4 games against poor opponents they could be under 900 rating while the other player may have only gained a handful of rating points. Quickly the other person reaches their proper rating range and no longer is inflating or deflating the rating system.
If you go to ratings view all stats, it will take you to a page where you can click on each rating (blitz/bullet, turn-based etc) There will be something called a Glicko RD that determines how much your rating will change when you complete a game. RD stands for Ratings Deviation. The more you play the lower that Glicko RD is. If you have only played a few games or few games in a long time that number will be very high. the more you play and more you play recently the more games you have to win to go up the same number of points.
Richard1979 wrote:
I also have a grounding in statistics and found it interesting to see the relationships you found. Of course... people who lack brain power will no doubt feel the need to level 'their amazing criticisms' to validate their own misguided sense of intelligence; while the rest of us can muse on the positive and negative aspects of the study- and appreciate it for what it is. Good work! Thank you!
+1
Apr 16, 2015
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#74
Azukikuru wrote:
Richard1979 wrote:
I also have a grounding in statistics and found it interesting to see the relationships you found. Of course... people who lack brain power will no doubt feel the need to level 'their amazing criticisms' to validate their own misguided sense of intelligence; while the rest of us can muse on the positive and negative aspects of the study- and appreciate it for what it is. Good work! Thank you!
+1
+1 (or +2, or whatever)
The standard blitz rating on chess.com of a IM that is 2400 fide is ~2200-2300, please explain this?
skotheim2 wrote:
The standard blitz rating on chess.com of a IM that is 2400 fide is ~2200-2300, please explain this?
I shal not explain this,
but I will comment how your rating is , compared to masters. In short timecontrols you are much closer masterlevels than you are in long timecontrols. That means that you are able to play well at very fast
speed. Your blitzrating is definitively masterclass, but your online/correspondence-rating is strong class B(2) or maybe class A (1).
You also have higher numbers here than on Fide, because your chess.com rating is close up to date, but your Fiderating reflects previous results, I guess it describes an average of results which tells where you were ca 8 months ago.
So you have improved a lot the last 8 months and it shows on your chess.com rating, and the current strenght will show on fiderating some months into the Future.
Wonderful article, thanks was a great read :)
i am 1100 fide standard and 1626 on chess.com
The blitz mean is here:
http://www.chess.com/livechess/players?type=Blitz