Your rating, explained.
Without the math.
A FIDE rating tells you how many points you won or lost. The NCR tells you why — and what it means for the next event. Six things every coach looks at when they sit down to review a tournament. We measure all six.
FIDE built the gold standard for the rating number itself. We add the five other things a coach asks about — colour balance, who you beat, did you stretch yourself, did you handle pressure — so a parent reading the report knows what to celebrate and what to work on next.
⚙ The six measurements
Six things we look at every tournament you play.
No spreadsheets, no jargon. Every parameter is shown visually on your report so you can point at it.
Result
Did you win, draw, or lose each game? The foundation every rating starts with.
⊕ Same as FIDE
Opponent strength
Beating a higher-rated player matters more than beating a lower-rated one. The rating gap decides how much you gain or lose.
−200 rated win ⇒ small gain
⊕ Same as FIDE — the Elo idea
Colour balance
How you do with White vs Black. Most juniors are White-only — they freeze with the black pieces. Resilience with Black is one of the biggest jumps you'll ever make.
Closing the gap = climbing
✦ Beyond FIDE · We add this
Age of your opponents
Who you actually played — younger kids, kids your age, or older kids. Beating an older child counts double in our eyes, because the gap is closing fast.
vs younger ⇒ games you should win
✦ Beyond FIDE · We add this
Seeding · upsets
Players seeded above and below you — and what you did about them. Upsets earn the biggest jumps. Holding form against lower seeds is the other half of the discipline.
✦ Beyond FIDE · We add this
Mental game
How calm were you in Round 1? Did you bounce back after a loss? Did you finish the last round strong? Coachable traits, all of them — and they predict whether your rating climbs.
= rating-climb signal
✦ Beyond FIDE · We add this
How NCR fits with FIDE
Not against FIDE — on top of FIDE.
FIDE is the world standard for the rating number. We don't try to replace it. We pick up alongside it — counting the OTB events that come before, between, and after a player's FIDE-rated tournaments.
| What you want to know | FIDE | 8by8verse · NCR |
|---|---|---|
| Rating number after the event | ||
| Rating from your very first game | — | |
| Counted in non-rated rapid / blitz events | — | |
| How you played with White vs Black | — | |
| How you did against older / younger kids | — | |
| Upset wins highlighted | — | |
| Mental-game indicators (calm · bounce · finish) | — | |
| Coach's note in plain English | — | |
| Career view across every event you ever play | — | |
| WhatsApp PDF within a day or two | — |
A FIDE rating lives next to your NCR. Whichever event you play, the right one updates. When your NCR climbs past 1500, we explicitly point you toward FIDE-rated play to grow your FIDE rating.
Grow your FIDE rating
Every tournament your child plays
counts on the way to FIDE.
School events. Sunday rapids. Club blitz nights. The qualifier for the state under-9. These are the games your child actually plays in the early years — but they don't show up on a FIDE rating yet. Until NCR, you walked home from these events with a trophy or nothing.
We rate them. Every one. So a kid who scores 5/7 in a local rapid sees their rating move, sees what they did well, and sees what the next event should focus on.
FIDE-rated
1/100
of the tournaments your child plays in the early years
NCR rates
100%
of every event on 8by8verse · classical, rapid, blitz
Every one of the other 99 events now counts on the way to FIDE.
For parents · the questions you actually ask
We measured the things you wanted to know all along.
A rating number on its own can't answer these. NCR can.
"Did my child play well — even though they didn't win?"
Look at Performance Rating, not just Score. If a 1180 played at 1318, that's a great event regardless of the trophy.
"Are they getting better than last month?"
The career trend line shows it across every event in chronological order. One event is a snapshot — six is a trajectory.
"Are they tough enough to play with both colours?"
The colour-balance chart shows White vs Black side by side. Closing that gap is one of the surest signs of growth at junior level.
"Should I move them to a higher age category?"
The age breakdown shows how they did against older kids, kids their age, and younger kids. If they're beating older kids more than half the time, the move up is overdue.
"What does the coach actually want to work on next?"
Every report ends with a two-line coach note — auto-generated from the data above, arbiter-reviewed before it sends.
"Is this just a hobby or is there a real future here?"
Look at performance against the field strength they're facing. A kid who consistently outperforms a 1500-average field has a real ceiling.
The method, in one minute
A proven idea — with the engine kept private, on purpose.
NCR is built on the same principle every serious chess rating has used for decades: before a game, the strength gap sets what each result is worth; after it, your rating moves by how far reality beat that expectation. Beat someone much stronger and it jumps; win the games you were expected to win and it barely moves.
🎯
Expectation
The rating gap decides what each result was worth before a move is played.
⚖
Surprise
The bigger the upset, the bigger the move — up or down.
➕
The five extras
Colour, opponent age, upsets, seeding and temperament shape the final read.
We keep the exact weightings and the engine itself private — deliberately. A rating only stays fair if it can't be reverse-engineered or gamed. You don't need the equations to trust it; you get something more useful — a clear report that tells you exactly what to work on next.
Now you know what we measure
See what the report actually looks like.
One real sample. Two pages. The same PDF that lands on a parent's WhatsApp within a day or two of the event.
🎟 Plans built around this rating
You've seen what we measure. Now pick a plan.
Start free. Upgrade only when you see the value. Cancel any time — no auto-renewal traps.
free
Free NCR
Start here. No risk.
- Permanent country-branded Player ID (BCR / USA / FRA …)
- Play any 8by8verse tournament
- First 2 tournament reports on us
- One free book chapter, one daily puzzle
bundle
NCR Pro
Your rating, coach, and analysis all year
Billed €84 / year
- Full NCR from every tournament on record
- Unlimited Stockfish-18 game analysis
- Adaptive puzzles and personal library
- Coach-in-pocket daily task
♥ Our promise — 8by8verse keeps this free wherever we can; the small fee only covers servers, APIs and the team. When impact funding comes through, we'll make it free for all over-the-board players.
Two more plans — Magazine and Learn Pro — and a school/club bulk option on the full pricing page.