The curious case of 1200: The Expert's rating

I'll try to help with my two cents:

Until FIDE rating requirement dropped to 1000, club players in France had an FFE rating from 1000 to infinite (you could and still can be 2100 FFE and FIDE unrated). And until then, the common knowledge was that the average rating of a club player in France, was about 1600. And when you looked up the stats, the repartition of ratings was not a pyramid shaped figure, but a diamond shaped figure. Which means only few players were around 1200, and were meant to join soon the central (wider) part of the diamond, with all the players rated between 1400-1800 who were the vast majority of rated players. Or maybe resign chess competition.

 And here is one example of how rated club chess players were considered:

• > 1000 : Débutant (enfant) beginner (child)
• > 1200 : Débutant beginner
• > 1400 : Joueur amateur amateur player
• > 1600 : Bon joueur de club good club player
• > 1800 : Très bon joueur de club very good club player
• > 2000 : Niveau national National level
• > 2200 : Maître national National Master (while the title exists not in France)

So, that's copied and pasted from a club's page, and is nothing official. But it is, more or less, so that chess players were considered among club players.

In the past decade, I observed a wide drop of ratings (-100 to -300) among the senior club players rated above 2000, and under 2300 (some resisted, tho). That can be directly linked to several factors, all within the minimal requirement for FIDE rating change, when games against FFE players counted not for the FIDE rated (as the FIDE considered them like unrated players), and many rating losses due to draws or defeats against them, were avoided.

So, possibly, one could argue out of these changes and mutations, the old nomenclature describing the various types of chess players, needs to be re-evaluated. Right.

Still: a 1200 Elo rating, can't be counted as an "expert" level. At best, one could say it's a "confirmed chess player" level. Under 1000, you don't exist anyway, since you're merely a person who is unable to only check if their pieces are en prise...

I began in 1989 with a 1460 rapid rating, and was for sure, not at all any expert of anything, and was just able to avoid most direct blunders, and do some basic calculations without much of a clue for positional play.

So, not meant to ruin your dreams, but no, you did not become an expert in anything by reaching 1200 Good luck tho.

Very interesting information Icare. 

Maybe under the French system I am not an expert, but Chess.com ratings put a 1200 somewhere in the 75th percentile. That seems too high to not be considered expert level. Thanks for your input. 

you are Indeed a "good" player HERE on the net- where there are so MANY casual chess players.  but in the tournaments (OTB)  players that participate over there are generally more serious.

and with your likely OTB skills Neither you Nor I am very good.  we are NOT chess experts.

sorry 

superman; I was not referring to you. though.

I'm sure you are as great as your avatar.

no, I was referring to our cool op.  although he pretends sometimes that he is Mr Lasker; he is in fact a patzer like most of us.  you can tell from his blitz rating-- which I'm not mocking cause it isn't far from my own.

nonetheless; I don't claim titles that don't belong to me -- and an Expert is someone who is OTB 2000 in chess. and nothing else.

1200 is an  advanced beginner

If you read again with better care, you'll see it is nothing about any "French" system nor any other localized system.

I understand you insist on wanting to compare yourself to the so many casual and "know just the basic rules" and "curious about chess" people who registered on here, and never oppened a chess book nor studied the most basic endgame.

In the early 90's, in France (talking about what I know, but you guess it was not different in Germany nor in the UK), there was about 60 million people. The shops sold about 1 million electronic chess games every year. In the same time, depending on wether you count rapid or not with it, you've had something between 20.000-40.000 rated players, plus maybe 8.000-12.000 "inactive" rated players.

Nowadays, people barely buy such devices anymore. Instead, they take a free tour on websites such as Chess.com. And it produces a massive amount of "players" rated somewhere between 0 and 1000, and to you, these people must be counted within the "75%" of players having a lower rating than yours...

And that's nonsense. That manner of counting, is just as good as counting the % of people in the whole world, who can chess at a lower level than you do, including those who can't play at all.

Having read, in the whole, a few books about chess, inculding History of Chess and Chess Champions, masterizing the basic endgames, knowing the rules of a FIDE competition OTB, are, at the very least, included in the "chess expert package". Believing anything else, is only wishfull thinking.

You might take a peek at my blog and get a small idea of important things you have never learned on here, and never will learn, about chess, chess competition and chess players, and maybe it'll help you see what I mean, and humbly accept it as the Universal truth it is.

Being at the 75% percentile of something would in no way, shape, or form make you an expert.  Perhaps being best out of 1000 would be an expert.  

Not even: it'd only qualify you to be counted among the 7.000.000 "best" (rofl) in the world in anything.

Percentile doesn't mean much, when anyone from the Internet can come in and play, even if this is the first game in their lives. My bullet rating puts me at 99.5% percentile, and I am trash.  You should look not at the percentile, but at the objective level of your play.

I'm not sure "expert" is even a term in FIDE or in the French system.  It is a USCF term as far as I know and even then it's less formal of a term than "master."  But what it means is approximately "top 4%."  

That is to say that the cutoff is a rating of 2000, but this number by itself could mean anything.  It so happens that it means in practice about "top 4% of tournament players".  It's my opinion that the rapid ratings at chess.com are decent predictors of USCF rating, while the blitz ratings are low compared to USCF rating.  If you are 1200 at chess.com blitz, I'd expect 1400 at chess.com rapid, and 1400 at USCF OTB.  That's also about the 75th percentile, which seems to track your experience.  But it's three classes below expert.

In your particular case, your rapid rating is quite a bit lower than your blitz, but this is unusual (the statistical averages are the other way by quite a bit) and also you have only ten rapid games so the sample is small.

You should not feel other way. Stupid is your natural state hahahaha

Holy necromancers...

I have around 1275 rating in chess.com. i started my account almost 1 year ago i think where i use to play games at regular intervals whenever i have time.

Initially when i started i was bit nervous where lost many games due to blunders which takes me around 950.

But then after i start to play with some logical way and with result to this my rating is slowly increasing(present Rating - 1281).

Now am very excited to see of how far it is possible for me to take my rating high with my skills.

With my present rating (1281) can any guess what kind of player am? whether a beginner (or) Average (or) good (or) expert?

It is odd, since an actual rating of 1200 would place you ahead of the bell curve in most formats.

Well it's safe to say an expert is ahead of the bell curve. 

They’re just not biting Vlad!

I achieved over 1500 easily. 1200 is a joke

All I have to say is that the original post actually gave me inspiration become a better player and all the comments therefore afterwards are just negative naysaying, typical, responses. So for what it's worth, thank you.

I can tell you that in every time control I play a player dropping a piece isn't that unsual and I'm rated  1400 blitz and would probably have a higher rating in Rapid if I still played it on this site. So no 1200 is not expert at that level you still blunder almost every game and basically all your moves are inaccuracies.