Can we please make the rating more realistic?

So many good replies, so many wasted minutes.

There is no point in adding a new rating system for one reason: lichess playerbase is different from FIDE playerbase. There are many players in lichess that are not in FIDE.

More players means more games can be played, even more so because you can just come any day on lichess and play non-tournament games to gain rating, different from FIDE.

At the end, it becomes more difficult to gain rating at FIDE than Lichess.

Furthermore, the minimum cap of lichess rating is 600, while on FIDE, it is 100. This means that there could be a 150 FIDE rated 600 playing against a 450 FIDE rated 600. This means that the the 450 gets a little "boost" compared to the 100, say to rating 650. The wide area of possible lower-quartile ELOs on lichess means that up to rating 1000-1200, the ratings are above normal FIDE rating. That makes it true for up to even the best player because the same offset would apply.

Furthermore, Magnus Carlsen pretty much beats whoever he plays. So since he is better than everybody else, a sinilar problem of slow rating gain to a ridiculously high rating is possible, as is possible with a limited set of opponents. For Carlsen, however, he still loses games every so often, which balances out the wins because the losses lose more points (makes sense because Carlsen is better than eveyone so if he has a high rating and loses against lower rated players, he would have a larger loss). By the time that happens, however, you would have made it past 2900, into 3100 range.

With Coronavirus, many people have started chess or continued chess after a long time, thereby going into the lower percentile of chess players on lichess. As I told, an expansion of the lower quartile means an expansion of lower quartile ratings, resulting in generally higher ratings, so even Carlsen got to 3300.

So the main problem with the rating system is a high rating cap and a highly changing and large playerbase.

But I don't see how this rating system is not realistic, when it does just fine otherwise...

And trying to fix the two problems above would be confusing on how to do it... and at times would be a risky proposition...

When I said 100 FIDE and 450 FIDE, I mean the equivalents of those in player form...

I call this Lower Quartile Rating Inflation.

Let us look another anchors:

ratings.fide.com/profile/13502956
Sergei Zhigalko FIDE rapid rating 2660
@Zhigalko_Sergei
lichess rapid rating 2760
difference = 100

Giorgi Sibashvili
@Zugzwang_TV
lichess classical rating 2603
ratings.fide.com/profile/13602799
FIDE classical rating 2398

Conclusion:
lichess blitz rating = FIDE blitz rating - 45
lichess rapid rating = FIDE rapid rating + 100
lichess classical rating = FIDE classical rating + 200

@SavageAntarctican thanks at least one of all those people here made a neutral response without insulting and actually saying something useful. I know that Magnus is different, because there are no limits set. I wonder why there is no limit at 3000 but one at 600. But I guess it's just the way it is.

@tpr I can tell you that most players have even more than +200 difference, otherwise I would not have made a thread about it at all. I would not care about +100 difference, but I think +400 difference makes no sense. I even encountered FIDE 1300 players who are rated 2000 here. I think something is not correct, but it seems all want to keep the system that way so may it stay that way. I'll try to reduce my forum activity. Still, thank you for your reactions of high quality, I watched you the last months/years here and I like that you always have something productive and intelligent to say.

@Doofenshmirtz I also think what you said made sense in a way, maybe you are right.

@Toadofsky When did people with money and developers ever get banned? I just wish you that your sleeves get wet when washing your hands. If you would talk to me like that face to face you would regret it very quickly. But I guess anonymity and high positions allows everyone today to be as rude and insulting as they want to be.

Thread can be considered closed.

@SucheSchachfreund In fact, it is not possible to fix this rating cap mininum problem without removing the rating cap entirely, as the same lower quartile will shift from 600 to 100 if we set it to 100.

So: our best solution is to remove the the rating minimum cap entirely. However, that could break the entire Glicko-2 Algorithm (I'm not fully sure how Glicko-2 is affected by low or negative ratings)...

Yep
By the way {YEET}

Edited

#34 If someone insulted me in this way IRL, I would just walk away; but since we are online and the Streisand Effect is a thing, I am trying to continue conversation despite repeated insults (did you see the forum topic about Swiss pairings which went unanswered? I need to answer questions so players have some understanding about Lichess' plans although Lichess seldom does feature planning):

"Btw is there at all someone responsible reading that or are there just other users commenting it? Because just arguing about that without anything being changed is a bit pointless indeed. It seems there are different opinions about the rating."

That "question" came after I had already answered:

" I can't make this decision for the maintainers but based upon many prior conversations with them on this very subject I'm about 99.9999% sure they don't and will never want Lichess ratings to mimic the FIDE rating system anyway."

and I mean that, the entire team had discussed this and every staff member was in agreement that trying to make Lichess ratings mimic FIDE ratings is a fruitless and futile endeavor. Lichess staff are responsible...

#35 Yeah, I'd recommend Lichess lower or removing the rating floor, although I don't have a strong opinion about it.