Elo rating

noun

A metric indicating the relative skill level of a player in zero-sum games such as chess.

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Meanings

nounElo rating (plural Elo ratings)

plural Elo ratings

  1. A metric indicating the relative skill level of a player in zero-sum games such as chess.

    In layman’s terms, any player with a higher Elo rating will have a better chance of winning a game of chess against an opponent with a lower Elo rating.

    2022 August 10, “Chess Ranking System: A Complete Guide”, in Square Off, archived from the original on 24 Nov 2022
    2 more examples

    Thus, for analyses such as Elo rating, where the order in which contests occurs matters, one must resort to creating a set of randomly shuffled contest sequences to be able to assess the effects of temporal order.

    2015, Jens Krause, Richard James, et al., editors, Animal Social Networks, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 65

    “You're pretty good at this game,” Lee said.¶ “Got an Elo rating over twenty-six hundred.”¶ “Elo? What's that?”¶ “The FIDE uses it to rank players.”¶ “FIDE?”¶ “Fédération Internationale des Échecs,” Cam said, speaking in an exaggerated French accent.

    2018, Michael Palmer, Daniel Palmer, The First Family, St. Martin's Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 32

    Synonyms: Elo

Synonyms & antonyms

nounA metric indicating the relative skill level of a player in zero-sum games such as chess.

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Origin

Named after Hungarian-American physics professor Arpad Elo (1903–1992), who invented the metric.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

Elo rating. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Elo%20rating

MLA

“Elo rating.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Elo%20rating. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Elo rating,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Elo%20rating.

Source: Elo rating on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.