I played in uscf tournament from ages 8-11, but never really studied the game or improved at all, so my rating when I quit was only around 1050. I didn’t play chess again until my first year of college, where I started playing online a lot (never OTB). My online rating started around 1100, but over the last four years my strength has continued to improve, and am currently at 2000 blitz on chess.com and above 2000 blitz and classical on lichess. I recently renewed my uscf membership and want to start playing again, but I’m not sure how the rating is calculated after such a long absense. My profile says I am still technically 1068 uscf, but based on my online ratings I’m probably at least 1500-1700 strength by now. Will my rating be considered provisional once I start playing OTB again? I would feel bad stealing other player’s rating points by being significantly underrated.
Don’t feel bad. The rating system has built-in bonus, feedback, and multi-pass features, all designed to get an improving player up to his proper rating ASAP, and to avoid punishing his opponents with his low rating.
It makes no difference whether your rating is considered provisional or established. Either way, it will affect your opponents’ ratings. Just play chess and let the ratings geniuses deal with your and your opponents’ ratings.
Bill Smythe
And be prepared to have some players quite unhappy about losing rating points to you.
‘Once Rated - Always Rated’ is so ingrained into US Chess culture and history that I don’t see it changing soon.
Online ratings tend to be on the high side compared to OTB ratings, and the studies we’ve done of them suggest they may not be very reliable.
If your performance in your first upcoming OTB event indicates that you are indeed under-rated, then your opponents will not have lost as many rating points to you as they thought they had, due to the multi-pass method (and other features) designed into the rating system for the precise purpose of combating the rating deflation you have mentioned.
OTOH, if the cruel truth is that your online rating may be giving you an inflated idea of your true playing strength, then those opponents won’t be losing to you and their ratings won’t be going down.
OTB is the gold standard. Play in several OTB events to establish your “real” rating, and let the chips fall where they may.
Bill Smythe
The OP is in a perfect position to win thousands of dollars of class prize money while taking rating points from all and sundry until he reaches his level of incompetence. If he works it right, he can be an excellent sandbagger, keeping his rating below 1200 for years. The “once rated, always rated” rule is a nice tool for using an old rating to cash in. Tournament play is about money, then incidentally about rating points. Sure, everyone who knows will be mad, but as has been said, “let the chips fall where they may.”
If OP had that sort of value system he would never have posted about it.
People have done well enough in a money tournament to end up with a rating floor at the same level as the money floor they would have gotten. One 7-round Chicago Open saw a player 29 points under the section limit gaining 308 rating points in that one tournament (and gaining another 85 points the following year playing two sections higher).
Since 2004 we’ve seen over 110 instances of someone’s established regular rating increasing by 400 or more points in an event, with the largest recorded gain being 698 points.
Thanks for the replies guys.
To the person who suggested that I could win a lot in U1200 tournaments - you’re probably right, but there is no chance I’m going to do that. Especially since U1200s would probably be filled mostly with kids. I’m not interested in winning money right now, just want to play some games.
I do know that online ratings are inflated and not representative of OTB strength, which is why I subtracted 300-500 points from them when estimating my OTB strength. I’m not used to calculating in 3 dimensions, but I know I’m still far better than I was 10 years ago.
Depending on where in California you live, there may be tournaments near you that have an under section (ie, under 1800 or under 1600) where you might get a better idea of your current strength, without playing a lot of little kids or getting thrown in the tank with a bunch of master-level sharks, neither of which is enjoyable.