One of the best parts of chess is that it is relatively easy to track your progress. If you are learning to play an instrument or another sport, it can be tough to know if your efforts are actually paying off. It's not just about placing first, second, or third in a tournament; you are also playing to improve your rating. Even just when you play chess at home on your computer, the chess rating systems help you follow your progress both for online chess and official USCF tournaments. But how exactly does the US Chess Federation rank you, and what does that mean for your improvement?

What is a Chess Rating System?

Your chess rating is just a number that is adjusted every time you play a chess game. When you win a game, your rating will go up, and when you lose a game, your rating will go down. This is how elo works. But what exactly is elo, and why does it work so well for chess?

The Chess Masters Behind the Rating: Arpad Elo

Elo may seem like an acronym, but the rating system used in the chess world is actually named after its creator, Arpad Elo. He was a Hungarian-American chess master who invented the chess rating system, in which players lose or gain rating points based on their performance against opponents. The Elo system was adopted by FIDE in 1970, overtaking the Harkness system.

Rated Vs Casual

By its nature, having a chess rating system means that there are official tournament games that affect your rating, and casual games that do not. Many chess clubs around the country run unofficial chess tournaments just for fun and to have casual meetups, but if you want to play games that affect your USCF rating, you have to play in an official, rated tournament. When you do, the player's rating will be adjusted after their game based on their performance. These rated games give you an official rating that you can track throughout your chess career. 

How to Start Your Chess Career

I often get the question from new chess players, “How do I get a rating?” and the answer is simple: just play. To play in an official USCF tournament, you need to become a USCF member. Once you have your member ID, you will be able to register for a tournament. Here are a few tips for finding rated chess tournaments near you.

Finding Tournaments

1. Find local chess clubs. If you find where chess players gather, they will likely run an official chess tournament at some point, or they will know where to look.
2. Check online for local tournaments. You can find tournaments listed on the USCF website or on other online sources. Some tournaments may be casual. Check before that they are USCF-rated.
3. Travel to a bigger tournament. There are usually bigger tournaments around the country that make for fun occasions to travel. Search up Open tournaments in bigger cities near you with beginner sections, and those could be a good chance to play your first tournament.

After I’ve Played, How do I Get My Chess Rating?

Once you have played just one rated chess game, you will have what’s called a “provisional” rating. After twenty-five games, you have your official USCF rating. During your provisional period, your rating will be slightly more volatile and will fluctuate more than it will after those initial games. This is the same way online ratings work. Your rating fluctuates more drastically during your first games as the system determines where your true rating lies. The best thing to do is to just play without fear of winning or losing, and let the cards and pieces fall as they may.

How do I Improve my USCF Chess Rating?

Once you start playing rated chess games, for that rating, provisional or not, to go up, you will need to win chess games. There are many great ways to study the game of chess. Playing in rated chess tournaments is a great way to force yourself to focus on the game and also record your games for future analysis. By playing in a rated chess game, you will have to notate your game. And that means after the game, you could review the game by yourself or with a coach and learn from your mistakes.

Play More Games!

The most effective way to improve at chess is to play more games. Since finding numerous rated chess games can be challenging, depending on your situation, I recommend taking online chess seriously if you want to improve. And you should! Set goals for your online Rapid or Classical ratings, and play regular online games. You can take those games and analyze them the same way you would play a game in an official USCF tournament. Suppose you are prepping for a USCF tournament, especially your first. In that case, it can be helpful to play a few longer games using a real chessboard. You can set up next to your online game to get used to looking at a 3D board before having to do so during an official tournament. Board blindness can be very real when all you have dealt with before is a 2D board.

The Point of the Rating System

At first, it may seem unnecessary to be rated if you are just a beginner, and it can even be a big source of anxiety for beginner players. Still, I’m going to show you how having a rating will actually make your games easier than just playing casually! If you walk into a chess club and start a random casual match with someone, there is no way to know if that opponent far outclasses you or not. They could be a Master level player! You can learn from playing higher-rated players. But playing in an official USCF-rated tournament once you have your rating means you will get paired with opponents that are around your rating, giving you games that are more fair and more fun. If you win your games, you will continue to gain rating, and you can play better and better players.

The Ups and Downs

In the ELO system, if you win a game against a lower-rated player, you earn fewer points than if you beat a higher-rated player. But if you are a lower-rated player who bests a higher-rated player, you will earn more rating points than if you had played an equally rated player. This means that a higher-rated player can’t just play a hundred beginners and become a grandmaster.

Becoming a Master and Beyond

The USCF chess rating system, along with the FIDE system, is designed to encourage players to strive for specific rating goals to earn titles. Because the USCF is a national system, it can award the national title of National Master (NM) to any player who reaches a rating of 2200. A title that a player can hold for the rest of their life. However, if they wish to become a Grandmaster, the highest tier of success in chess, then they will have to complete the process laid out bout the international chess federation, FIDE.

Other Levels of Achievement in USCF Ratings

You may also hear references to different levels of chess players at the club level, known as Class E to Class A. These levels don’t mean too much. Besides helping to categorize players. You can use the following levels as motivation to strive for improvement.

Here is a breakdown of the class levels: 

• Class E: Under 1200.

• Class D: 1200–1399.

• Class C: 1400–1599.

• Class B: 1600–1799.

• Class A: 1800–1999.

• Expert: 2000–2199.

National Master (NM): 2200 and above

Class E players should not be discouraged. If you are an Expert or above, don’t look down on players who are still learning and improving. Even Magnus Carlsen still treats beginners with respect, and so should you!

Rating Disparity

Many beginner players are confused by the various types of ratings, ranging from online ratings on websites like Chess.com and Lichess to those administered by the USCF and FIDE. There is a lot to keep track of, and not all the ratings align. Lichess might seem higher than a beginner's rating in something like the USCF, so don’t be discouraged if your 1000 online rating doesn’t quite carry over to your new official rating. FIDE rating is not something that most beginners, and even Experts, in the US need to worry about. A FIDE rating would be your international rating for players who are playing abroad in international tournaments and trying to earn their titles after NM.

The Glickco Rating System

Online chess sites, such as chess.com, also utilize the Glicko Rating System, an enhanced version of ELO that takes into account periods of inactivity on user accounts. When a player has not played a game recently, their rating behaves more like a provisional rating, being adjusted more prominently. The Glicko rating system was developed by Mark Glickman in 1995 as an enhancement of the Elo rating system.