If you learned chess in Lagos, or Medellín, or a small town four hours from the nearest rated tournament, you already know how this works. You can be genuinely strong — strong enough to compete in rated events — and never get to prove it. The tournament is too far. The entry fee is a week's wages. You work weekdays, and a five-round Swiss doesn't care. Fewer than 1 percent of the world's players hold a FIDE rating, and for most of the rest, the problem was never talent. It was geography and money.
In June, FIDE and World Chess started discussions to test a way through: the First Rating Experiment, which would let players earn their first official rating — in rapid and blitz — through online play on worldchess.com. When it was announced, we said the design would be built with the community. Today we're publishing the white paper that shows how it could work. To be clear about what this document is: a draft of the method, still being worked on, shared now precisely because it isn't finished.
The summary, without the tables: we compared thousands of players who hold both an online and an over-the-board rating, and built a conversion that errs on the side of caution — deliberately. A converted rating comes in lower than what the player has shown online, and nothing converts above 1800. Every conversion passes fair-play review first. We built it this way because the rating list belongs to everyone who ever earned a number at the board, and this program only works if it takes nothing from them.
The thresholds, the ceiling, the pace of conversion — these are our current best answers, not final ones. The people best placed to judge them are players, coaches, arbiters, and federations. If something in the paper looks wrong to you, it might be. Please tell us. The document will change because of what we hear; that's what it's for.
We're also holding open hours on Zoom — Wednesday, August 19, 16:00 CEST (15:00 London, 10:00 New York, 19:30 Delhi) to answer any questions and discuss specifics. Please join here.