Unpopoular opinion: Online ratings are more accurate than FIDE ratings.

I also play golf better at home.

@PozabljenKmet said in #12:

@mangomeister123 said in #11:

@PozabljenKmet Firstly, I don't take your answer as an attack on me. It's an unpopular opinion and thus I accept that there is likely a reason for that. However I don't think your argument shows the reason for it.

"They don't. Noone will notice your online rating. People will notice your FIDE rating."

Subjective. If my friend reaches 2400 here, I'd notice it as well as their 2400 FIDE rating (note: at higher rating levels, the ratings on Lichess tend to balance out with FIDE).<

True. It is subjective. But generally you will be more respected with 2400 FIDE than 2400 online rating. But then again, which rating do you mean? Classical?

All that proves is that online ratings are inflated. But I know that and so does everyone else here. What I'm trying to say here is that online ratings are more reflective of a players' skill because the player plays online much more consistently than OTB. 2400 FIDE and 2600 online are roughly the same.

"No it is not. Did you ever ask yourself, what are people doing during online games? They often drink, watch TV, are tired or simply they experiment with different openings. You will almost never see this in real, important games."

Firstly, Tal drank & smoke at the board during highly important tournaments. I know there's probably a flawed comparison here seeing as none of us are anything like Tal nor could we dream to be, but the point stands. People in important tournaments also stop paying attention and start daydreaming sometimes. Or maybe that's just me and my 3-second attention span. Also, there has to come a point where someone experiments with a new opening in a tournament, whether to catch their opponent out of prep or because they simply want to try it out.<

I disagree. Most of the time you will not daydream as you are concentrated on the game.

When I play OTB tournaments, I tend to get distracted very often and very easily, but this is likely due to my 3-second attention span.

"LOL. That is such a bad argument. Of course you are not going to get higher FIDE rating, if you don't even play FIDE tournaments."

Sorry, I'll admit I worded that one poorly. What I meant was that people often don't get a chance to play in FIDE tournaments due to a lack of tournaments anywhere near them. This means they're left to play online, where their rating reflects their current skill because that's where they play.<

I don't know about your country, but in EU, you can always find FIDE tournaments.

I live in Australia. While it's getting better, the FIDE classical tournaments are usually in a different state to mine, or if they're in my state they're hour(s) away.

There was another argument that I forgot to put there, where FIDE ratings progress very slowly. Due to the amount of FIDE tournaments one can reasonably play in & how little rating gain there is from wins, someone could theoretically improve their game by hundreds of points but only get it to show in their rating a couple years later because of the lack of tournaments they are able to play in and the lack of rating gained from each win, as well as the fact they'll inevitable lose a bunch of games and draw a few, too.<

Depends. You can play open OTB tournament, where people are higher rated than you (more than 200 points) and if you are consistently beating them, you can go up to/more than 100 points up. If you are going to open tournaments pretty regularly (3-2 times per year), you will rise pretty quickly.

3-2 times a year of open tournament rating gain can be accomplished in a day of online play.

The problem is that in Lichess there is this thing called rating inflation. I have improved my rating to 2300+ in Bullet and 2280 in Blitz, 2212 in Rapid. But I don't believe if I were to participate in real life tournaments my FIDE rating is on that level.

Maybe I'll be more like a 1800 or 1900, not 2300. Lichess has rating inflation where, unfortunately our ratings are not really a reflection of our quality. We may feel like we are great, but we are not as great as we think we are.

Even though I have beaten IM's, GM's, WGM, WIM, WFM, etc. But that doesn't mean anything. My standard still isn't quite on their level. And it's possible that I have beaten them when they weren't playing at their best level.

Same 2300-2400 players online that I beat with ease, is not the same as 2300 via AI Computer. The AI level is far stronger on the same rating vs human level ratings here on Lichess.

#21 lol

I don’t know whether it’s unpopular or not, but this opinion is certainly (currently) true. After over a year of covid and various lockdowns there are many players, especially juniors, who have got a LOT better, but have not had the chance to bring their FIDE (or even national) ratings anywhere near the ‘correct’ level.

I run OTB tournaments currently and I FIDE rate them. I use lichess ratings to assign players to sections because they are far more accurate than either national or FIDE ratings, as they represent current strength rather than historical strength from 2 years ago. There are several players entering who are 2000-2300 lichess rapid and 1000-1300 FIDE rapid - there’s no magic to this, it is the FIDE rating that is wildly inaccurate here.

And even if an event is FIDE rated, when underrated juniors play underrated juniors it shuffles points around but does not deal with the fundamental problem, which could only be solved by many junior-adult games or a change in the way FIDE ratings are calculated.

@piscatorox thats a pretty big gain for a year and some change.. i think i only gained like 100 points in strength during that time..

@SlowDown_101 what has happened since March 2020 is almost unprecedented in chess history. If juniors play 2000 rapid play games in a year, they are developing praxis at a rate which was previously entirely impossible - yes, each game may not be a serious as slow play OTB, but the volume of games is enormous. Compare this to the number of opportunities to improve their actual OTB rating.

@piscatorox I was thinking this year would be a good year for me to start playing USCF tournaments and see if i can get over 2100 for that candidate master title.. but i'm probably a couple hundred points away in strength and the consistency isn't there yet... but i'd say if i did enter a tournament being unrated i could be a ringer and definitely have some upsets but i still have a ton of stuff to learn.. its never ending really .. one day though