FICS rating vs FIDE Elo

Question

I know that is hard to establish an exact equivalent, but I was wondering what is the factor P in this equation: FICS_BLITZ_ELO * P = FIDE_ELO following personal experience. I mean, if you use to play FICS blitz games and have FIDE ELO, what is your P? I suppose that with a full hand of replies we can get an idea of P value.

Answer 1

The SurveyBot in FICS perform statistical analysis on the relation between users' FICS Standard ratings to their reported FIDE ratings. It gives the following:

A list of the estimated FIDE ratings has been displayed above. The 234 submitted FIDE ratings fit the best exponential curve given by formula FIDE=a*e^(b*FICS), a>0, where a=996.91895981, b=0.00035345 and coefficient of determination r^2=0.390.

However, no estimate of accuracy is given, and I'd say 234 users does not sound very much for it to be very reliable. And of course, this does not say much about the correlation between FICS Blitz ratings and FIDE standard ratings.

Answer 2

In this case, I will have to quote from the FICS FAQ (http://www.freechess.org/Help/HelpFiles/fics_faq.html):

39.My rating is over/under inflated.

Don't worry! Ratings are all relative anyway, not absolute. Compare your FICS rating only to other FICS players, not to ratings from other groups. Comparing your rating on FICS to a person's rating on another server or in a chess federation is not a valid comparison. FICS has a different rating system and a different player community than other organizations. Therefore your rating here is unlikely to match your rating somewhere else.

40.I have a rating on FICS. What would my rating from in-person tournaments be?

Ratings on FICS are not comparable to those gained from real life tournaments because they measure play against a different group of people under different playing conditions. Some users have higher ratings in real life, some have lower ratings.

In your question, you say FICS Elo rating, but the Elo rating system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system) is a system of its own and FICS might not even be using it for its ratings. FIDE does, for sure! Also, comparing two rating systems is dubious since the opponents you meet, the time controls you use and the initial rating you get and the rating system you use will differ! But comparing the FIDE blitz rating with the FICS rating might be more valid. In this case, my guess would be that the FICS rating will be higher than the FIDE blitz rating. And I base this on absolutely nothing!

Answer 3

Ratings from different pools of players and with different rating methods cannot be compared with any reasonable accuracy.