What is a good chess rating?
Q: What is a good chess rating?
A: 400 above your current rating
Jokes aside, this answer highlights an important truth: no matter how strong you are, you’re unlikely to consider yourself “good”, as the goalposts shift.
Still, let’s take a look at the different rating levels in chess to try to figure out what constitutes a good chess rating, as best we can. First we’ll need to decide what we mean by chess ratings.
Chess Rating Systems
Our answer is complicated by the fact that there exists several rating systems, which usually don’t agree with each other. These are the most common:
- FIDE (International rating)
- USCF (United States Chess Federation rating)
- Lichess bullet / blitz / rapid
- Chess.com bullet / blitz / rapid
A note on terminology: FIDE and USCF both use the Elo system, which is a mathematical formula for deciding how ratings are updated when you win, draw or lose. Chess.com and Lichess both use the Glicko rating system, which is related to Elo but more complex. Usually when people say “What’s your Elo?” they just refer to your chess rating in general.
Back to our question, the disagreement between the different systems, for the same player, can be 400 rating points or more, making absolute rating numbers meaningless if you leave out what system you’re referring to.
Here are rough comparisons:
| Class | FIDE (classical) | Chess.com (blitz) | Lichess (blitz) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner | - | 400 | 900 |
| Novice | - | 800 | 1200 |
| Intermediate | 1500 | 1200 | 1500 |
| Club Player | 1800 | 1700 | 1900 |
| Expert | 2000 | 2100 | 2200 |
| Master | 2250 | 2400 | 2400 |
| Grandmaster | 2500 | 2800 | 2700 |
| World Elite | 2750 | 3100 | 3100 |
Head over to ChessGoals for more detailed data points.
What is a Good Chess Rating?
As should be evident, there’s no one chess rating that can be considered “good”. Most Grandmasters would claim they’re terribly bad at chess compared to Magnus Carlsen.
Still, you can strive to be a big fish in a small pond. So what chess rating do you need for non-chess players to consider you good? Although at Novice level you’re already better than >95% of the population, people around you might not realize this.
Intermediate
It will probably start to become evident when you reach Intermediate level. This is when everyone around you knows you have chess as a hobby – you probably play a lot online, own one or more books, identify to some extent with being a chess player. This is when people who don’t know chess will say “Oh, I know a guy who plays a lot of chess, I think he’s pretty good at it.”
Chess players will still consider you a complete patzer though. You probably hardly know the names of the openings you play. You’re blundering your queen in every second game online.
Club to Expert Level
The next level of “good” is the Club level to Expert level, approximately 1600–2100 blitz rating on Chess.com. You know now a lot about chess. You know names of specific plans in obscure opening variations. You’ve started to use chess lingo and mannerisms. You speak in algebraic notation and at least think you’re following along when watching chess commentary (you’re still blundering at least a piece every game though).
You’re now good enough to make short work of anyone you’ll ever play against outside of serious chess clubs and communities. To non-chess players you might even start to refer to yourself with terms like “Well, I’m pretty good compared to most people, but really bad compared to actual good people.
But how good are you really? You’re still at a level that almost anyone that has chess as a serious hobby for a long period of time will eventually end up at.
Master
The next level, Master, or about 2400 Chess.com rating, is where we start to have near universal agreement that you’re at least in some sense good. No one gets to this level without serious work and some measure of talent or obsession. When you see someone at this rating level, you know that chess is a big part of their life and something they’ve actively strived to become better at for many years.
You’re good enough to charge money for teaching students. You win most local competitions. You may travel around the country and sometimes win prize money for your performance.
The Bitter Truth
The bad news is, it might now start to be more apparent than ever to you, how little you really know, and how much work you would need to actually become good.
You’re supposed to be a master of chess, but you’re getting crushed by 12-year old super talents who blitz out 20 moves of engine preparation in your favourite opening line.
Super GMs play Bongcloud openings against you online while drunk, checkmating you with knight and bishop with 5 seconds on the clock.
You study chess 3–4 hours per day, but so does everyone else at your level, so you’re not making progress. You realize that for all the effort you’ve put it, you’ll need as much if not more, just to get to the next 100 Elo level.
International Masters seem unbeatable to you, yet they lose consistently against Grandmasters. These Grandmasters sit on streams and claim they have absolutely no clue what’s going on when the actual elite is playing.
It turns out, all that work you put in between being rated 1600 and 2400 was all for naught – you realize that you’re farther away than ever from being good. The average person can’t tell a 1600 and 2400 player apart, they both seem absurdly good at chess!
Conclusion
Anyone can become “good” at chess in the eyes of non-chess players. But whatever standard you currently have for what’s a good chess rating, it’s bound to change before you reach that level. So set a goal to improve your rating from where you are today, and fixate less on whether you are a good player or not.