The Chess.com Theory Disproven

Almost since the Lichess Era began (way after chess.com) people have assumed that the Lichess rating is easier to earn than chess.com.
Theory:- People, chess players, forums and chess websites have stated that the rating you have in Lichess is 100-200 points higher than your chess.com rating due to the inflation in 2021. (I'm sure you have heard that.)
Hypothesis:- Almost with 3 years of experience on Lichess, I decided to create an account on chess.com to disprove this theory.
Conclusion:- After about a month since I created an account on Chess.com (Jan 23) I have reached an established rating of 1500 way from 100 Elo.
Thus, chess.com and Lichess ratings may be the same or slightly higher.

Proof:- (chess.com/member/chessindia2308)

So you are using one example to disprove their statistical observations? (Just to be clear, I am not saying their theory is correct or people making these claims have really collected statistics.)

Also, a few observations I made:

• you have played 260 rapid games there and 42 rapid games here
• your average opponent rating on that site is 1267 while your rating is 1483; what's going on?

200 points. You gartwhad I wand?

Chess.com and Lichess use different rating systems. the systems calculate differently. Ergo chess.com is different.
Chess.com: elo

Lichess: Glicko-2

I've been playing on chess.com and lichess for about a year now. My rapid rating on lichess is 350 points higher than my rapid rating on chess.com. Similarly, my blitz rating on lichess is 300 pts higher than my blitz rating on chess.com. So, does this disprove your disproval of the theory you think you've disproven?

@borninthesixties said in #5:

I've been playing on chess.com and lichess for about a year now. My rapid rating on lichess is 350 points higher than my rapid rating on chess.com. Similarly, my blitz rating on lichess is 300 pts higher than my blitz rating on chess.com. So, does this disprove your disproval of the theory you think you've disproven?

Though you have a higher rating on Lichess do you have a higher percentile on chess.com?

I haven't played much blitz here or there but find I'm in the top 10% at chess.com but only the top 40% on Lichess.

Does this suggest that Lichess has a stronger pool of players?

@InModeration said in #6:

Though you have a higher rating on Lichess do you have a higher percentile on chess.com/?

I haven't played much blitz here or there but find I'm in the top 10% at chess.com but only the top 40% on Lichess.

Does this suggest that Lichess has a stronger pool of players?

The original post was only about ratings, but I looked at the percentages. Lichess says I'm better than 72.6% of rapid players but chess.com says I'm better than 92.9% of their rapid players. I don't know if that is measured against "active" players or everyone in the database?

Chess.com has a LOT of very low rated players, I've definitely noticed that...people with ratings like 100, 200, 300. You see that when you enter their "open" tournaments (those with no rating restriction). Don't see that on lichess.

Was that a theory?
My overall w/l rate back then was very positive, over time got lower, but it is is slightly positive, but not as before. It is skewed just a tad to the winning side, just slightly.
Which means nothing in a singular game, but over 100 games, i get a slight net win of about 10 rating, give or take.
So, when i joined lichess in 2018, i had like 1700 rating. 5000 games later I have been over 2100 and oscillating above and below 2000 most of the time.

You have to understand from that that my rating growth has diminished, but wont stop growing until the w/l ratio even up, which is close to happening. I have reached my peak here, or close to.

I only have 1700 rating on the other site, and I only have 350 games or so accumulated over the years (I joined there before joining lichess). But my w/d/l percentage there is 54-4-42. Meaning that I still have a long climb over there, which I wont do because I dont like the site. But i need to spam a few thousand games there to get my w/l ratio as close as they can be.

I cannot compare a rating in a site where im at my peak to another where Im clearly still climbing and far from reaching an even w/l ratio. Most of the Lichess players say that they have about 200 rating points in difference, but most lichess players rarely play on the other site, and since they barely play, Im positive that they probably still have some climbing to do, which is quite the task, as over time, the amount of games you spam tends to reach the thousands and you need to do the same in the other site to get to the evenish w/l ratio.

In reality, yes, it has to be a difference as both sites uses different algorithm.
But the actual rating difference is not clear, as the players making the comparison play more on one of the sites over the other, regardless of which site they mostly play, so their w-l ratios are not similar at all. So they will give you their peak rating in one site, and a lesser rating that can improve a lot from the other.

The average difference lichess users report is about 200 points. But since they arent maxed out on the other one, is probably a bit less.

Since you have very few games on this account, you are far from even ratios, so its not surprising you can reach a non peak rating on both sides. You need to peak on both sides and then compare.the difference.

I am up to something big: I have different ratings with 2 accounts in the same pool!!