On Yahoo Chess, does the ratings reflect the real life ratings of the USCF?

Question

Whats your opinion on this? If you have a USCF, or FIDE rating, please post it, along with your Yahoo Chess Rating, thanks.

Answer 1

My USCF rating is approximately 2050. My Yahoo rating is approximately 1650. Since on Yahoo, I play primarily speed chess and I freely admit that compared to other people with comparable USCF ratings, I play speed chess poorly, it is not unreasonable that my Yahoo rating should be lower than my USCF rating. However, I estimate that I still play speed chess at least at USCF 1850 strength. So, the other 200 points that I do not have on Yahoo, I attribute to the significant percentage of "progs" on Yahoo.

Just yesterday, I was playing on Yahoo and losing game after game to the same "person" and I was curious as to whether it was a person or a "prog", so I asked him what variation of a particular opening we were playing. Not only would anybody my strength know the answer, but most players who are USCF rated over 1600 would know the answer. His response was "Sicilian Defense" and when I said "yes, but what variation of the Sicilian?" his response was "huh?' (For the record, either Taimanov or Paulsen were correct). Needless to say we did not play anymore after that conversation.

Sorry that I went so far off the original topic. To answer your question: Yes, the two ratings are correlated, but because there are so many progs on Yahoo, the two ratings are only weakly correlated.

Answer 2

Hi,

I am a ELO rated Player with over 2400.
My best Yahoo rating was 2300 and then I ran only into Chess programs. I have 2 friends who are Fide rated Players too, they had similar Problems.

I got anyway accused to be a cheater and i got accused to use Chessprograms when I had streaks of 30-40 games without any lost game. As the USCF 2050 rated Player already said, some people don't know anything about their openings that they play.

Since Yahoo changed the Chess to the new System we don't play here anymore. The problem is that we can use still the old Interface but it is now much slower then before. It is no fun anymore to play on Yahoo Chess.

I am very surprised about the answer of this USCF 2050 rated player that he does not come over 1650. I understand that he jumped into a Cheater but he should realise this normaly very fast. I guess that he should get after a while at least around 1800-1900 Yahoo rating.

Generally USCF are anyway overrated to ELO ratings, the USCF Ratings around 100 Points to high but In the Toplevel is it around the same as ELO.

The Ratings of Yahoo chess have in my opinion not a big value because if you play slow games you will run sooner or later into cheaters who use chessprograms. Other problems are disconnections, lags and some tools that some very unsporty players use to chat you (Leblitzer Tools for example).

Answer 3

The phrase "ELO rating" is often used to mean a player's chess rating as calculated by FIDE. However, this usage is confusing and often misleading, because Élő's general ideas have been adopted by many different organizations, including the USCF (before FIDE), the Internet Chess Club (ICC), Yahoo! Games, and the now defunct Professional Chess Association (PCA). Each organization has a unique implementation, and none of them precisely follows Élő's original suggestions. It would be more accurate to refer to all of the above ratings as ELO ratings, and none of them as the ELO rating.

Instead one may refer to the organization granting the rating, e.g. "As of August 2002, Gregory Kaidanov had a FIDE rating of 2638 and a USCF rating of 2742." It should be noted that the ELO ratings of these various organizations are not always directly comparable. For example, someone with a FIDE rating of 2500 will generally have a USCF rating near 2600 and an ICC rating in the range of 2500 to 3100.

The following analysis of the January 2006 FIDE rating list gives a rough impression of what a given FIDE rating means:

* 19743 players have a rating above 2200, and are usually associated with the Candidate Master title.
* 1868 players have a rating between 2400 and 2499, most of whom have either the IM or the GM title.
* 563 players have a rating between 2500 and 2599, most of whom have the GM title
* 123 players have a rating between 2600 and 2699, all of whom have the GM title
* 18 players have a rating between 2700 and 2799
* Only Garry Kasparov of Russia, Vladimir Kramnik of Russia, Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, and Viswanathan Anand of India have ever had a rating of 2800 or above. As of July 2006, only Topalov (2813) has a rating over 2800, while Kramnik has a rating of 2743 and Anand has a rating of 2779. Although Kasparov's rating is still 2812, he has been inactive for over a year and has been removed from the FIDE list.

The highest ever FIDE rating was 2851, which Garry Kasparov had on the July 1999 and January 2000 lists.

Answer 4

I don't know much about it. I haven't played Yahoo! games for years. If the system is still set up the same, where anyone can join a game with anyone regardless of their skill, I'd imagine that the actual ratings are much lower than they appear because experts used to constantly loaf around in the same rooms as the beginners to bump up their scores. It may have changed since I played, though.

Answer 5

No because on yahoo you can use a seperate program to make your score better.

Answer 6

i think USCF rankings (between the orgs that does rankings) in elementary terms does rankings for good video games, and AFAIK, they don't have video games on line. you will possibly might desire to sign up and play their video games.

Answer 7

(good question, good answers, more please) - If they get bumped lower by the programs it means they had to fight harder and play better for the rating. the more games played on one name the more honest the ratings.