what is the difference between quick rating and regular rating. looks like people have a higher regular rating than quick, thanks
Short answer: Quick ratings apply to games with shorter time controls. Regular ratings apply to games with longer time controls.
Long answer: Regular-rated chess is defined as any sanctioned game with a total time control (base time plus delay/increment time converted from seconds to minutes) of 30 minutes or longer. Quick chess, by the USCF’s definition, has a total time control of at least 5 minutes but less than 30 minutes (and may not include an increment of more than 15 seconds). However, the results of games with a total time control of between 30 and 60 minutes are applied to both regular and quick ratings (“dual-rated”).
There are a couple of reasons why quick ratings tend to be lower than regular ratings. One is that some people can play quickly as well as they can play slowly, but most people can’t, and so they are legitimately not as strong under a shorter time control as they are under a longer one. The other is a quirk of the way ratings are calculated and of how often they’re calculated, which others can explain better than I can.
This part is incorrect.
Alex Relyea
As Alex noted, the time control rules (ie, what separates quick-only, dual-rated and regular-only events), were changed for 2012 events.
See uschess.org/docs/gov/reports … hanges.pdf for the current rules.
Contrary to popular belief, nobody really knows why most players wound up with a quick rating lower than their regular rating, though several theories and ‘solutions’ have been proposed.
Some of the differences may be due to differences in playing strength at fast and slow time controls.
A large part of the differential may be institutionalized these days because of the large number of players who already have a quick rating well below their regular rating. Here’s why:
Suppose a new player’s first event is dual rated (almost always the case for new scholastic players.)
His or her first provisional regular rating will be computed using the regular ratings of his or her opponents, and his or her first provisional quick rating will be computed using the quick ratings of his or her opponents.
However, because most players already have a quick rating that is noticeably lower than their regular rating, that first provisional quick rating is virtually guaranteed to be lower than that first provisional regular rating, thus perpetuating the differential.
Other factors that may have led to and continue to contribute to the differential:
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Differences between how quick ratings and regular ratings are computed. The only difference in the current formula is when a player already has a rating in the ‘other’ rating system. A quick rating is initialized as a provisional rating based on the player’s regular rating, up to 10 games, but a regular rating is initialized as a provisional rating based on the player’s quick rating, but at zero games. (This may be the only formula-based difference, dating back to previous ratings formulas, but it may have led to secondary effects, such as a player being considered provisionally regular-rated longer than he or she was considered provisionally quick-rated, which may have led to formulaic differences in how ratings for several subsequent events were computed as well.)
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A player with an established regular rating could have a peak rating based floor which affected his or her regular rating while his or her quick rating was still provisional (and thus not subject to a floor.) The reverse could also be true, but few players have an established quick rating before their first regular-rated event.
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Money prize floors and OLM floors are for the most part only put in for regular ratings, not for quick ratings, primarily because events that have high enough prizes to result in money prize floors are usually regular-only rated.
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Improving players who don’t play in quick/dual rated events will see their regular rating increase but not their quick rating. (This is probably the factor that accounts for many of the really large differences between quick and regular ratings.)
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During the first few years of dual rating (2001-2004), the USCF’s ratings programming required that dual rated events be entered in as separate regular and quick rated events, usually with separate event IDs. For the most part, the regular event got the lower event ID. Because of how the programming worked, when a new player played in a dual rated event, it was first rated as a regular event, then as a quick event. However, when the quick event was rated, the just-rated regular event was used to initialize the new player’s quick rating. (This also often resulted in a new player who had played in just one event showing up with a regular rating based on N games and a quick rating based on N X 2 games.) This programming limitation was eliminated in 2005.
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The USCF did not keep detailed records of corrections made to events before 2005. Thus it is possible that if a correction was made to a dual rated event from 2001-2004, the regular section may have been corrected but the quick section may not have been corrected (or vice-versa.)
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Other types of ratings corrections made before 2005 were not logged, either, so the effect this could have had on the quick/regular divergence is unknown.
Oops, Alex is right. It may not include an increment of more than 30 seconds.
Still not quite right.
MM + SS must be < 30 in order for the event to be QR-only in 2012.
So a G/5 event can have up to 24 seconds of delay or increment time.
G/5;d25 would be dual rated, just as G/25;d5 would be dual rated.
How an analog (ie, not increment/delay capable) clock would be set for those time controls is left as an exercise to the reader.
I’ll get right on it, I need more exercise. 
I’m thinking this will help my glutes.