Universal Rating Converter

[John Foley]

From NoseKnowsAll Blog reporting on Lichess.

ECF has reported an easy way to compare ECF and FIDE ratings. Based on my results, I believe their measurement underestimates a player's FIDE rating for the low end and overestimates a player's FIDE rating for the high end. If you want an extremely simple estimator, I think a more accurate estimate is ECF = 1.4 * FIDE - 715 under 1940 FIDE, and ECF = FIDE + 60 for players over 1940 FIDE. If you want to flip the mapping around: FIDE = 1/(1.4) * ECF + 510 for players under 2000 ECF, and FIDE = ECF - 60 for players over 2000 FIDE. Hopefully, this more accurate mapping is clean enough for ECF members to prefer instead.

Who knows? He could be right.

[Nick Burrows]

It works almost exactly for me. 1980 Fide / 2042 ECF

[Keith Arkell]

The USCF ratings used to be much too high. Have they become a bit more aligned in recent times?

[Brian Valentine]

Hi Keith,
If you look at #65 in the discussion, he describes how he fitted the USCF/FIDE curve. It's an interesting way of doing things that would not have been available until quite recently.

[NickFaulks]

The USCF ratings used to be much too high.

Not too high, just different. They can only be too high if you believe there is any reason why the two should be closely related.

[Brian Beattie]

I suspect the USCF will implement minor tweaks here and there such that the USCF 2200 rating will continue to be slightly easier to achieve than FIDE 2200. Simply to motivate more players to keep playing in search of an NM title. And as long as the disparity between the two isn't too great NM players can claim CM equivalency. When I eyeballed the data it appeared that only half the players that reached NM would have actually achieved CM.

[Keith Arkell]

The USCF ratings used to be much too high.

Not too high, just different. They can only be too high if you believe there is any reason why the two should be closely related.

When, for example, a chess engine is assigned a rating, it is presumed that players on both sides of the Atlantic have a shared understanding of the level of play they can expect. I.E. This engine plays at 1700 on level 8’ ought to mean something both in the States and here.

[NickFaulks]

No doubt, but the mechanism to achieve that does not exist.