A few years ago, I used to have a USCF rating of about 1000...my Yahoo rating is about 1450...have I improved?

Question

Uh...I used to play chess at tournaments (a few years ago), and I had a USCF rating of about 1000. I stopped going to the tournaments, and I just played chess with my friends and with the computer programs I have. Now, I feel like I'm a better player...I just started playing Yahoo chess, and I have rating there of about 1450. Now, how does this correlate to the USCF rating? Is a Yahoo 1450 rating equivalent to a 1000 USCF rating? Or, have I really improved over the past few years?

Answer 1

I would say there are lot more factors.  What times are you playing on yahoo?  Are you always playing 1 color?  In general, I would say yahoo is extremely inflated.  I was roughly a 1200 in the uscf, when I in my prime.  Right now, I believe my last yahoo i beat around a 1600.

The problem is, that a yahoo player is a guess.  Is this only their 3rd game?  Do they only play g1 lighting games?  Do they only play people who are a weaker players?  It is extremely hard to guess.  

I would say, if you are really interested in knowing if you have improved, rejoin the uscf and get back in tournaments =)

Answer 2

No,they are not related.Just like the USCF rating have a big difference with FIDE ratings.I would guess about 200-250 points high,but that is still improvement.

Answer 3

My experience is that ratings other than USCF are a bit unreliable.  But, even with that said, a 450 point jump on any fairly respectable scale probably indicates a solid improvement.