Lockdown and Queen's Gambit have boosted my online rating

[Stephen Taylor]

I wonder if anyone else is experiencing a minor online ratings boost? As a complete wood-pusher, I have always had fairly static ratings on Lichess/Chess24/Chess com and so on. In the last few months, my ratings have been edging up - not by a lot - but consistently so. Certainly higher than ever.

Now... I have been studying more, doing more puzzles, playing more chess. That accounts for some of the progress, or so I'd like to think. However, more than that I think there is a 'happy time' (to use a WW2 U-boat term) at the moment at the lower levels of online chess. More often than not I am playing 'newbs' (sorry, awful word), or just rusty players who have not played for years but have gone back online due to lockdown boredom or Queen's Gambit. They don't see fried liver and stuff like that.

Whenever I check out an opponent's profile, I increasingly see they are either provisional or have very few games. I'm a very poor player myself, but am amazed how they keep falling for basic tricks, and even throw away games when I've blundered my queen. I generally still get at least a draw.

Oh well, long may this 'happy time' last. Can't help thinking my rating is artificially slightly high though.

[MJMcCready]

With more practice you should get better, that will happen to most of us.

[Paul Robert Jackson]

My online rating on PlayChess is higher than my ECF or FIDE ratings.
This maybe because in online chess my approach, is to always to try & win, resulting in a much higher % win rate
.....whilst OTB I am much more cautious, & not happy to risk losing several games in succession.

[Wadih Khoury]

My online rating on PlayChess is higher than my ECF or FIDE ratings.
This maybe because in online chess my approach, is to always to try & win, resulting in a much higher % win rate
.....whilst OTB I am much more cautious, & not happy to risk losing several games in succession.

I am afraid that online ratings are higher than OtB ones, simply because it's a different formula! On chess.com I believe new players start with 1200, and Lichess with 1500. The amount of points injected in the system, the amount exiting it and the bell curve of each community is quite different.