I don't know what 1740 in chess.com's three-minute pool translates to in FIDE. That's why I'm enlisting your help. I don't know if you could extrapolate to classical time controls, but feel free to. I want to know, based on that rating, how many people in the world are better than me at chess. That's the only metric I have for myself—I don't play on any other sites at any other times controls. Please guess my world ranking.

7

With no other information, I'd guess you're probably about 1800 FIDE strength. That's plus or minus about 500 points though, lol.

Do you have a decent sample size of bullet, standard, or correspondence games at chess.com? Or do you only play blitz?

This is the correct answer.

350

I checked a guy who's 1650ish FIDE and he'a about 150000 in the world in ELO ratings. Considering there's a lot of unrated 1800-2000 players I'd think tree fiddy hundred k is in the right ballpark (maybe too high still?)

I think you would definitely not be in the top 100k players, but probably in the top million.

That may not sound like much, but if you were #700k by height, you would be about 6'6" tall and you would stand out everywhere you went.

chess.com rating is meaningless. Only real life tournament chess means anything.

+1 x 1,000,000

Why do you say that?

Real tournaments are totally different from online play. Real life play is much slower and more serious. Online ratings are not worth anything.

That is an exaggero ad absurdum. chess.com ratings clearly aren't as meaningful as real life ratings, but to say that they are "meaningless" is to suggest that there is no, or little, correlation between chess ability and chess.com ratings obtained in earnest--an idea that is false on its face.

Mr. Technicality ITT. There's OBVIOUSLY some correlation, that was never contested. 2500 chess.com is likely to be better than a 1300 USCF, sure, we will obviously give you that. What is being contested is the accuracy of the correlation, i.e. the average deltas between chess.com and real life ratings. We believe that correlation is so poorly known/documented, that there's no point in pondering what a 1700 chess.com rating is IRL other than it's likely highly inflated

I guess that's you.

Your idea of "some" correlation, where a 2500 on chess.com is merely "likely" to be better than a 1300 USCF, OBVIOUSLY is my idea of "little" correlation:

The word "little" was right there. It's not like it was too ^little to see.

If you plan to bring up the subject of online cheating, note that the phrase "obtained in earnest" excludes those cases.

The post you responded to, the post you made, and vanwely's explanatory follow-up amount to three or four empty hyperbolic sentences and some basic arithmetic. That isn't much of a contestation of anything.

You're pointing at a more reasonable argument now, but it wasn't what was being said back then.

Ratings in the blitz pool are likely to be slightly deflated, and ones in the correspondence pool to be highly inflated.

Anyone that says chess.com ratings mean anything needs to have their head examined.

*pouts*

There is some correlation between being trolled on 2+2 and a pout.

Clearly, you are right Rei.

Non-troll question. If you had a friend that never played a tournament before with a 1500 blitz rating on ICC or chess.com, what section would you suggest they enter?

The lowest section allowed. Most tournaments won't let unrated players enter any section they want.

It is to be granted that there are differences between OTB tournament chess and games on chess.com, and these differences affect the degree to which the respective ratings correspond.

That being said, chess.com ratings mean something rather precise about how well one plays relative to other players on chess.com. With my full-time job, several kids, and distance from chess clubs, I don't have much opportunity to play OTB; I do have time to play some on chess.com. So even if the ratings there are "meaningless" as a yard stick for measurement against USCF or FIDE tournament players, it's still plenty "meaningful" as a yard stick for my improvement at the game. I don't really care if my USCF rating would be 200 points lower (which is possible) or 500 points lower (which is probably absurd).

Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but, not absurd

He is very obviously not a 1000 USCF–strength player. Source: his actual games.

There could be someone out there who has a large sample size of both USCF games and chess.com live blitz games, and whose USCF rating is 500 points lower than their chess.com blitz rating. And "absurd" is a subjective enough term that it's not worth arguing. However among people that have large-sample ratings in both of those pools, I guarantee you that more than 50% have a higher USCF rating than chess.com rating (not true in the correspondence pool, but true in the live blitz pool). So anyone whose USCF rating is not only lower, but in fact 500 full points lower, is a shockingly massive statistical outlier.

The idea that online ratings are "meaningless" is the part of this thread that I would save the term "absurd" for. They mean something very specific - how your performance compares to that of other chess players within that same online pool. And since chess ability doesn't magically change when you start playing within a different pool, yes, your rating in one pool (even if it's online) does provide information that can be used to help predict your potential rating in a different pool (even a live one that "matters" like FIDE or USCF). How accurate of a prediction it can offer depends on the two pools in question, but I don't think we really need to get into the fine points of statistical analysis. The margin of error is quite large, but your chess.com blitz rating DOES give SOME insight into what your OTB rating MIGHT be. It's not meaningless.

I don't think anybody cares about blitz ratings since 99% of UCSF tournaments are not blitz. Thank you, come again

I don't get A) the elitist attitude against Chess.com and B) the need to argue in absolutes. That the ratings don't "mean anything", are "meaningless", "not worth anything" and that you don't think "anybody cares".

The top 30 rated Blitz players at Chess.com are all titled, 24 of which are GMs.
The top 10 have an average Chess.com rating of 2643 and and average FIDE Standard rating of 2668, a difference of just 25.

I then looked at two good players I follow on youtube (ChessNetwork and 2p2er curtains), but that are not GMs, and their average FIDE is 2304, with an average Chess.com rating of 2295, a difference of just 5.

I then looked at the only IRL friend I know with a FIDE rating, a more casual player and his Chess.com rating is 1626 with a FIDE of 1721, a difference of 95 (with his FIDE rating being the higher one, mind you).

Obviously there's a clear correlation between a Chess.com blitz rating and a FIDE/USCF standard rating. Of course there will be exceptions, like an older OTB player might have problems reaching the same rating playing 3 minute blitz online, and someone who has exclusively played blitz (especially if it's the 3 minute kind) will surely perform under that rating in a OTB standard game. But for the average player who plays both Standard OTB and Blitz online it's likely to be pretty close.

So, again, saying that they're complete meaningless is an absurd exaggeration. It's also quite rude to imply that another poster is likely to have a "real" rating 500 pts lower than his chess.com rating (excluding "online" correspondence, which is inflated due to time outs).

Oh, and I'm a beginner with a really low rating. Feel free to use that as a reason why my observations are irrelevant.