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Classical vs blitz rating difference

Seems many people's classical ratings are +200-300 rating points higher than their blitz rating. Active classical players (~55K) vs blitz (~50K) is roughly comparable. The rating distributions look roughly similar except there are fewer higher rated 2000+ classical players.

Anyone looked at why there are big classical/blitz rating differences?
Take longer = fewer mistakes

or

Longer games = more cheating

???
I'd say its probably that people make more mistakes in blitz, so the top level blitz players have more to capitalize on, so they can achieve a higher difference in elo than the average player. Also, even when the very strong players make small mistakes, their opponents are more likely to be too rushed to capitalize.
There's an element of more cheating but I don't think its widespread enough to account for such big differences. Of my last 18 games, I've reported one player.

There are fewer mistakes made by both sides in a longer game so it doesn't feel like one player would benefit more.

Could it be that fewer top level players play classical so it causes rating inflation?
yes, i'm pretty sure that your last sentence nails it. it's no secret that, in average, stronger players mostly favor faster games when playing over the internet (of course there are exceptions)

the irony is that since pretty much no one at the top really plays classical very often, the classical ratings of the highest percentile of players are pretty much all over the place. i'd also assume that cheaters take points out of that part of the pool with a reasonable frequency, so all that put together we probably won't be seeing 2600 classical very soon.

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