OTB vs Online Rating

So I’ve heard this repeated so many times that people here take it as gospel: your online rating is X points lower than your OTB rating. That number can vary between a hundred to three hundred.

Well, I played a couple of players who were OTB rated a couple hundred points higher than my online rating and I just mopped the floor with them. I played six games and went 5-0-1. Three of the games were less than 20 moves.

My theory is that online ratings are actually suppressed, not inflated. Why? Well, consider this. Most good players have secondary “training” accounts that they use to practice but not risk their rating. Though technically this violates chess.com rules, I know this happens a lot. Bad players are much less likely to have multiple accounts. Sure some do, but it’s much less likely.

So this means that there are more high rated accounts being averaged into the ratings pool, thus increasing the average, and a lot of these duplicates are real outliers, thus affecting the mean even more significantly. To reach the mean and beyond, you have to do better than you should’ve.

Again, this is just my experience and I may be wrong, but it’s a reason not to believe that your online rating is less than your OTB rating.

Can’t send games. They were played OTB in a coffee shop and I don’t have the memory to reel off the moves.... probably should’ve mentioned that. As white I played a Danish gambit and a Urosov gambit, along with a Ruy. As black I played two Kan Sicilians and a Scandi.

Interesting, I've had the opposite experience where I play OTB games against people half my online rating and get completely outplayed. But maybe my club is just really strong/I am just really bad with longer time controls? A counterpoint to rating suppression is the top players say on chess.com are ~200-300pts overweight relative to their FIDE. Explanation could be club players are somewhat self selecting so the "floor" for weaker players players is actually kind of high?

There are a lot of variables to consider.  That's why my personal recommendation is to not really compare online and OTB.  Rating is determined by the pool of the people playing.  And even within that pool, the pool can fluctuate greatly depending on the time of day.  

Well, the relationship may vary amongst the various tiers, right? Higher rated players do not play against the same pool of players online than they do OTB. Likewise, middling rated players are subject to much more variation in terms of the quality of their rating pool OTB than they are online.

Online we have the law of large numbers coming into play, OTB not so much. All I know is that here in south Florida, I have consistently outplayed my online ranking OTB. I’ve never been officially rated, but I do coffeehouse chess or when sometimes there is an open house.

I don’t presume to make any definitive statements since all of my experiences are anecdotal. I just thought it was interesting that I generally outplay people whose OTB rating is higher than my online rating.

It’s curious.

 

One caveat is that coffeehouse chess isn't really indicative of strength. What and how one plays online and at the coffeehouse doesn't mean that is how they play in long time control rated chess.

 

Online ratings are all over the place. In the rated US Chess club here, there are OTB players that have higher ratings here than their OTB rating, some that are similar and some that are a lot lower rated. Generally speaking, someone in a certain percentile OTB may have a similar percentile here.

 

There are, generally speaking, more games played online though, so maybe the online ratings are more accurate but that is said with a very large grain of salt. Ratings really are just a measure of past performance and that's really it (though it is used as a measure of strength).

That’s fair. They probably would’ve schooled me in a long time control since I have the attention span of a puppy. Frankly, that’s why I’ve never joined a chess club—the games are just too damned long.

This could also explain my struggle; I much prefer shorter games. I don't even know what to think about during a 3+ hour game and end up wasting time so I don't look funny finishing off the game in like 20 min. But then again some people love it and think faster chess is an affront to the game. To each there own I suppose

Some peoples OTB rating are higher than their online rating. But I think the majortity's OTB rating is lower then tan their online rating. It also depends on time control. For ex my rapid sucks but my bullet and blitz are high. My OTB rating (USCF and FIDE) are both higher than my rapid but lower than my blitz and bullet

Yeah. Long time controls definitely favor those with patience and the ability to do deep calculation. Deep calculation is not the friend of those of us with adhd. Now pattern recognition, we’re all good with that, and that’s almost instantaneous.

I think players take their otb games/rating more seriously.