Total Chess Rating Sparking Discussion
By Douglas C. · Thu, 15 Oct 2026
Total Chess has opened a draft multi-format rating system for public feedback, combining a player's FIDE Classical, Rapid and Blitz ratings into a single Elo-compatible number. In its post on X, the company says the pilot is not meant to replace the FIDE ratings, and that the research was prepared by Dr Mehmet Mars Seven of King's College London.
Total Chess has opened a draft multi-format rating system for public feedback, combining a player's FIDE Classical, Rapid and Blitz ratings into a single Elo-compatible number. In its post on X, the company says the pilot is not meant to replace the FIDE ratings, and that the research was prepared by Dr Mehmet Mars Seven of King's College London. Feedback is being collected until the company's Budapest pilot event.
How the rating works
According to the Total Chess page, the rating takes the three FIDE ratings and weights each at one-third, approximating the expected score a player would have if one of the three formats were chosen at random and the usual Elo formula applied. A player rated 2700 in all three formats therefore has a Total Chess Rating of 2700, and a 100-point gap means an expected score of about 64%, as in Elo.
Because the formula averages expected scores rather than the ratings themselves, a strength in one format counts for more than in a simple average. By the page's formula, a player rated 2800, 2600 and 2600 in the three formats works out to about 2694, against 2667 for the plain average. The page says it takes this route because averaging format-by-format predictions can produce cycles, where X beats Y, Y beats Z and Z beats X, which no single rating can reproduce.
Why it is appearing now
The rating is tied to the Total Chess World Championship Tour, a Norway Chess concept approved by FIDE that combines fast classical, rapid and blitz into one championship and is meant to crown a FIDE World Combined Champion. The Budapest pilot is scheduled for November 10 to 21, according to FIDE. The Total Chess page says FIDE will observe the rating during the pilot, following discussions with Norway Chess in a working group, and does not say whether it would be used for seeding.
Early reaction
Vlad Ghita (@vlad_chess) wrote on X that the rating is a simplified version of the Universal Rating System that takes only the current FIDE Standard, Rapid and Blitz ratings as inputs. He called it a great metric for transparency, said he supports it for seeding in Total Chess, and asked whether a public dataset is available. Seven replied that the aim was a clearly interpretable, open-source rating, and that only the top 100 are published along with the formula, so other players' ratings can be calculated.
Ghita agreed the formula is simple enough to compute from the monthly FIDE lists. His one concern was that it assumes each of the three ratings is equally reliable, though he called it a good approximation. Seven answered that ratings are only as reliable as the number of games played, which he said is separate from the aggregation method the Total Chess Rating addresses, and that they should become more reliable as players play more games in each format during the Tour.
International Arbiter Chris Bird (@ChrisBirdIA), asked whether this is like the Universal Rating System the Grand Chess Tour started "many moons ago" and which he said still runs today. That system was introduced to seed the 2017 Grand Chess Tour and also combines the three formats, but according to a 2017 ChessBase report it is built from game results, with rapid and blitz counting for less than classical, not from FIDE ratings. Whether it is still updated was not checked here.
An Overdue Challenge
FIDE has controlled the chess rating system for a long time, and even if most chess fans don't even have a rating, it is long overdue that someone challenges the way we calculate playing strength in the chess world. This is a welcome change, from an organisation who's been looking to commercialise chess for many years, and challenge the status quo. Since they reintroduced the armageddon tiebreaker in 2019, its become a staple in the chess world for deciding the outcome of a drawn match. Will the Total Chess Rating make the same impact, or even become the new standard for chess?
Sources
- Total Chess, Total Chess Rating
- Total Chess (@TotalChess), announcement post on X
- ChessBase, “Grand Chess Tour makes new moves” (Universal Rating System, Jan 2017)
- Wikipedia, Universal Rating System
- FIDE, “Chess Superstars Set for Total Chess World Championship Tour Pilot in Budapest”
- Norway Chess and Armageddon
