How good is a 400 chess rating and how to get better quickly

400 chess rating monkey

How good is 400 chess rating? It’s a rating for a total beginner. But don’t worry! Everybody starts at a beginner rating. And in this article I will tell you exactly where you stand right now as a 400. And I’ll tell you how to double your rating super quickly.

How good is a 400 chess rating?

A chess rating of 400 is still considered to be the new player level. At this level, you learned the rules of chess recently. And you might even still be confused about some of the rules sometimes, such as castling and en passant.

Chess rating (elo)LevelHow you play
< 800NoviceYou hang your queen 4 times per game
800 – 1099BeginnerYou play pretty well and then you blunder your queen. You know only 2 openings.
1100 – 1399IntermediateYou can play all the common openings, but you blunder forks when you get tired.
1400 – 1699Advanced intermediateYou donโ€™t blunder pieces away anymore. If you lose itโ€™s because you played inaccurately and you lost a pawn.
1700 – 1999AdvancedPeople need to come at you with very challenging positions if they want you to make an inaccuracy.
2000 – 2299ExpertYou hold your own in almost any position. Your biggest enemies are stress and fatigue.
Table: what your chess elo rating really means (based on ratings on Chess.com)

Is 400 elo a good chess rating?

400 is a perfectly fine chess rating for a beginner playing rapid on Chess.com. At the beginner level, there are no good and bad ratings anyway. You should only focus on enjoying the game and slowly getting better.

Also read: Chess rating converter: Chess.com to Lichess to FIDE

What does a 400 elo chess rating mean?

The math behind the elo rating system works out in such a way that every difference of 100 elo points corresponds to a 65% chance to win. So for example if a 400 elo player plays against a 300 elo player, the 400 elo player has a 65% chance to win.

You can read what this means for you if youโ€™re an 400 elo rated player.

Elo player 1 vs elo player 2Win chance for the 400 rated player
400 vs 10085%
400 vs 20075%
400 vs 30065%
400 vs 40050%
400 vs 50035%
400 vs 60025%
400 vs 70015%
Table: What the math behind your elo chess rating says about how good you are at 400

How many people have a 400 chess rating?

Approximately 55 millions people in the world have a chess rating of 400 or more on Chess.com. Thatโ€™s about 95% of all chess players, and about 0.9% of all people on earth.

In the table below you can read what percentile of people have 400 elo on Chess.com, Lichess, FIDE and USFC.

Chess rating (elo)Chess.com percentileFIDE percentileLichess percentileUSFC percentile
2000 to 209998%90%99%96%
1900 to 199996%84%99%94%
1800 to 189994%77%98%91%
1700 to 179990%70%96%87%
1600 to 169984%61%94%82%
1500 to 159977%52%90%77%
1400 to 149970%47%84%72%
1300 to 139961%42%77%67%
1200 to 129952%37%70%62%
1100 to 119947%25%61%57%
1000 to 109942%15%52%52%
900 to 99937%7%47%48%
800 to 89930%3%42%43%
700 to 79922%1%37%37%
600 to 69915%1%25%31%
Table: Chess rating percentiles distribution shows what’s a good chess rating on Chess.com, Lichess, FIDE and USFC

Also read: What is a Good Chess Rating? (with Percentile Calculator)

How long does it take to get to 400 chess rating?

Most people get a chess rating of 400 immediately when they fully understand the rules of chess. In the table below you can see a natural chess rating progression.

Chess ratingHow long to get this rating (with Chess.com Diamond)How long to get this rating (without learning resources)
10001 week2 months
11002 weeks3 months
12004 weeks6 months
13006 weeks9 months
14002 months1 year
15002.5 months2 years
16003 monthsProbably never
Table: How long it takes to get to 1000 – 1600 chess rating with and without learning resources

Also read: Chess.com Diamond Review: Is Chess.com Diamond worth it?

How to easily get past 400 chess rating

To get past 400 chess rating is very easy. All you have to do is play chess frequently and try to improve.

And if you want to get better even quicker you can join the Chess.com Diamond club. This gives you access to puzzles, lessons and game review software with which you can improve super quickly.

In fact, I bet that if you’re an 400 or below you can for sure gain 300 rating in 2 weeks if you sign up for a Chess.com Diamond membership.

Chess.com membershipRating increase (within 2 weeks)
Basic (free)+0
Gold+50
Platinum+100
Diamond+300
Table: How many elo points you will gain in 1 or 2 weeks with which chess.com membership

Why can you improve so much when you join the Diamond club?

Because you get a bunch of great study tools: game reviews, coach explanations, insights, lessons and puzzles.

Chess study toolRating increase (within 2 weeks)
Playing games like normal+0
Chess puzzles+25
Chess lessons+25
Game review+50
Coach explanations+100
Insights+100
Table: How many elo points you can gain when you use the different features of Chess.com

These tools use artificial intelligence to analyze your chess games. They tell you for every move how good it was and what the best move would have been. And they even recommend lessons based on your common mistakes and playing patterns.

10 years ago only guys like Magnus Carlsen had access to this kind of technology. Now you can get it too. I’m confident this will have a huge impact on you and your chess rating. And you can even try it out for free for 7 days with the link below.

Get the Chess.com Diamond membership here (7 day free trial)

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