> So there is definitely inflation at lichess

I don't think it's inflation. Lichess simply uses a different formula (Glicko-2) than either chess.com or FIDE.

Glicko is just ELO with an uncertainty factor that speeds up down how quickly your rating changes if you've played fewer games. Actually, FIDE's implementation of ELO also has an approximate version of this, increasing its "k" value for new players and decreasing it for some thresholds of games played, ratings, and player age. Both these adjustments just affect how quickly your rating would change if your win rate changes. They do not your equilibrium rating at a particular skill level.

Lichess ratings are inflated not because of Glicko but because of the player pool. New players start at 1500 ELO in both Lichess and FIDE, but Lichess's pool of "new players" is a lot wider and has a lot more amateurs than FIDE's new players. The amateurs' points ultimately get spread around the player pool while they descend from 1500 to a more realistic rating, inflating the ratings of other players on the way.

> New players start at 1500 ELO in both Lichess and FIDE

I've never played otb, but on the FIDE website, they have a initial rating calculator (https://ratings.fide.com/calc.phtml?page=initial) which seems to depend on your opponents' ratings and your performance, but not on the number 1500

chess.com ratings are much less inflated than lichess ratings (partially because its new users start at 1200 ELO, not 1500). Not sure if there's a more exact conversion to FIDE ratings, especially because it looks like he's playing exclusively 3+0 blitz games, which play out much differently online than they do over the board.

Why would new users start at 1200? Aren't most beginners below 900?

Not all new users are beginners

Good point. I reached a similar outcome at about 31 but the obsession was getting so much in my way of life that I stopped. I was basically opening the now instant defunct instantchess.com at any idle moment I had. At this point was more like an addiction

I also found with lichess that blitz players are a lot stronger than rapid - I'm 200 points higher on rapid than blitz and it seems that's pretty common, which has always confused me (and not hugely different time controls - 5+3 vs. 10+0)

I remember seeing stats where someone took the ratings of different times vs FIDE rating so had to look it up again.

It's a bit old so not sure if this is exactly true anymore or even if their analytics were correct.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/fide-ratings-vs-che....

My lichess rating is 300 better than my chess.com rating.