Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
It's complicated. Again I don't know chess.com's specific parameters (and surprise surprise I can't be arsed to check) but on gameknot the first 10 games, you get a provisional rating that can fluctuate wildly in the range of like 800 to 2500 or whatever depending on the rating of your opponents and your results. It's basically designed so master level chess players don't have to grind their way up.

Gameknot's rating floor, I believe, is 800. Each player also has their own floor, which is -200 and then rounded down to a multiple of 100 from your rating peak, so my rating floor is 1700 since my peak is 1969. That means I can never drop below that rating, no matter how many games I lose.
Makes sense. What they probably do is start you at an "average" rating (whatever that is, let's say 1500), and the K-rating is very high for game 1, then gradually comes down to whatever is standard.