Comparing FIDE ELO vs national ELO

This page explains the differences between the international FIDE rating system and our own national ELO calculation system. It also looks at our neighbouring countries, and summarizes information about their systems and way of working.

ELO rating systems introduction

The national rating system is available here. The national rating system principle currently works as follows:

• Tournament directors report their tournament through the various reporting tools available. For this purpose, (mostly) the software pairing program SWAR is used.
• The national rating office collects all the submitted reports and presents them (using CalcElo) in an rating verification list. Here, all tournament leaders and players can verify if all games have been processed. 
• Every 3 months, an updated rating list is made available based on these games. Also here, CalcELO is used.

The FIDE rating system is available here. The first official FIDE rating lists in the early 1970’s included only players having a rating above 2200. This restriction stayed in place for twenty years, while the rating list grew twenty times bigger, from 600 players in the early 1970’s up to 12 000 players in the early 1990’s.

With the lowering of the minimum rating to 2000 Elo in January of 1993, FIDE began a new twenty-year phase of allowing progressively lower-rated players onto the rating lists.

The minimum was dropped again to 1800 Elo in October 2001 and then incrementally to 1600, 1400, 1200, 1000, until the current minimum of 1400 Elo was established in March 2024 after a one-time rating adjustment.

As the FIDE system becomes more mainstream, most active players have an active FIDE ID in the meantime:

• 31 142 player records in players_202401^*, of which 11 117 have a FIDE ID (35%)
• 6 096 active (played an official game last year) player records, of which 4 305 have a FIDE ID (70%)

In players_202401, 17 410 players have an ELO assigned, of which 1 995 players are rated at the minimum rating of 1 150 (11.4%). When selecting only active players, this ratio drops to 4%.

^*players_period is the RBCF official database containing all player records for the given period.

ELO distribution differences

The below graphs show the rating distribution based on the 2024-01 national rating list, and 2023-12 FIDE rating list. Note that, for the national rating system, players with a minimum rating of 1 150 are excluded.

The graphs below are generated before the one-time rating adjustment of FIDE March 1^st 2024 and the subsequent national ELO rating changes April 1^st 2024. Given there are some transient effects, we wil update the graphs accordingly in a couple of months.

6 116 players have both national ELO and FIDE ELO. When we compare their ratings, we arrive at a difference graph come below.

We can then also map the ELO differences on the national ELO categories. We notice that our national ELOs in the range [1150, 1550] tends to be lower then FIDE ELO. This can be explained by the fact that FIDE has a higher K-factor (40 vs 32) for new players (< 30 games), making them faster in tracking player progress. Our national ELOs in the range [1600, 2300] tend to be slightly above FIDE ELO. The average differences are all within an acceptable range of [-35, +20].

ELO calculation differences

Here is a short summary of the most important differences between the national rating system and the FIDE rating system.

• Calculation details for the national ELO system can be found in the tournament regulations
• Calculation details for the FIDE ELO system can be found in the FIDE rating regulations

	National rating system	FIDE rating system
Geographical	Belgium	World
Pool size *Active: played tournament last 12 months	~ 6 000 active ~31 000 total	~ 172 000 active ~ 436 000 total
Rating types	Standard	Standard, Rapid & Blitz
Minimum rating	1400	1400
Publication rate	3 months	1 month
# games 1st rating*	5	5
Max rating delta	400	400
K-factor	see section below	see section below
Cost	Included in KBSB membership	€ 1 per player, per tournament
Process	Integrated in SWAR, submission after tournament	Announce in advance, Fixed templates, Strict deadlines

K-factor differences

The K-factor influences how quickly a player’s rating changes in response to their performance in games. A higher K-factor means ratings will change more rapidly, reflecting recent performance more heavily. Conversely, a lower K-factor results in more stable ratings, with less influence from individual game outcomes.

Impact of FIDE ELO on national ELO system

The Belgian Chess Player database keeps track of player information, including national ID number, FIDE ID number and national rating. By means of the FIDE database, it also links the player’s FIDE ID to its FIDE rating.

Whereas the national rating system and the FIDE rating system have their own administration and calculation, the FIDE rating system does impact the national rating system through various calculations:

• Foreign players (except border players^* ) with an active affiliation with the Belgian Chess Federation, have their national rating synced with their FIDE rating. This means, with each publication of national rating, we take their current FIDE rating, and use it as their official national rating in Belgium.

The idea behind this rule is that foreign players play the majority of their games outside of Belgium, and hence their FIDE rating will be the more representative rating. 

• Results from Belgian players in tournaments abroad, are recovered through monthly FIDE reports, and taken into account for national rating calculation. Games in which they play foreign players, will have the FIDE rating of those players used in our national rating calculation.

^*Border players are foreign players that have requested the status of ‘border player’, meaning they testify they play the majority of their chess games in Belgium. Hence, we track their ELO rating in our own system, and do not synchronize with FIDE ELO.

This means that any change in the global rating level of FIDE, will impact (in the longer term) the national rating system as well.

Country ELO system comparison

What are our neighbouring countries doing? Are they also using their own national rating system? If so, why?

The table below lists the most neighboring European countries, together with the rating system and the tournament manager they are using.

Netherlands

The Dutch Chess Federation uses a cloud solution for their national rating system. It requires tournament organizers to login online and announce their tournament in advance. Afterwards, tournament reports can be uploaded.

National rating system also processes games played by NL players abroad, by using the FIDE report file. This is the same as the current way of working of our own national rating system.

A general deflation of the ratings is visible in their rating system. It is compensated by giving a ‘bonus’ to youth players. A small difference in ratings between NL ratings and FIDE ratings is visible. Before, NL ratings used to be +/- 30 points less, nowadays they are +/- 20 points higher than FIDE.

Currently, two rating systems are in use: seniors and juniors. Motivation for seniors was before 

• the lack of an accessible FIDE rating (which is no longer the case). 
• the cost of the FIDE processing

Juniors currently have no FIDE alternative. The junior ratings can go really low (~ 100 ELO), and the ratings are rather dynamic to take into account the progress young players typically make in their first year(s). KNSB actually investigates the possibility to replace the youth rating system by the FIDE Rapid ratings. The increase of lower limit makes them reluctant to proceed with this thought. 

Germany

The German Chess Federation is currently looking into ways to deal with the FIDE rating change, with respect to their own DWZ rating system. With the change, they will no longer be able to use the FIDE ELO when the player has no DWZ rating (because they are no longer comparable). FIDE rating in general right now is already ‘higher’ then DWZ rating. Also here, there are expectations that people will start questioning the use of the local DWZ rating system. Plans are there to ‘upgrade’ the DWZ system, so that it complies more with the FIDE ELO level, and this together with the development of a new software implementation.

Main arguments in Germany to keep a local rating system:

1. lower limit of first rating. Problem here is that a lot of new players cannot break through the circle of always playing against other non-rated players. Thereby not accumulating games to obtain a first rating. 
2. FIDE-fees
3. rigid requests for tournaments (timetable, pairing system, arbiters)
4. better ‘special’ rules for e.g. rating acceleration for young players

France

The FFE has abandoned its own national rating system for years already, and is now only using the FIDE rating system.

Spain

The Spanish Chess Federation, together with FIDE, converted their national rating system to the FIDE rating system as from January 1^st, 2024. In Spain, several regions are still using their own, local rating systems that are still continuing as separate systems.

Main motivation to convert the national rating system to FIDE rating was the double work done for reporting. Only 2% of Spanish players did not have a FIDE ID. Most of the tournaments were reported twice: for the national rating, and for the FIDE rating. This was a waste of time and resources for them.

Contact & questions

Do you have questions or remarks? Please get in touch with our national rating officer:

Steven Bellens
steven.bellens@frbe-kbsb-ksb.be