I noticed that my USCF quick rating is lower than my USCF regular rating. At first I thought maybe it was because I was relatively weaker at faster time controls, but it seemed like the difference was too large to be just that. This got me to looking at the ratings of everyone in my section (It was the open section, there was another section of sub-1200 and unrated) of my most recent dual-rated tournament. On average, the pre-event quick ratings of the 50-ish players in this tournament were 170 points below their regular ratings (and that even includes one player who never played quick before and was therefore given a provisional quick rating equal to his regular rating.)

It occurred to me that maybe I'm just in an area with local weirdness in the ratings, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Wesley So has the highest regular rating in the nation, but his quick rating is 166 points lower than his regular. The 100th best regular rating is 2474, but the 100th best quick rating is 2263, which is 211 points lower.

Although I know the player pools of the two rating systems are not identical, it would seem that the pools have significant overlap - all are USCF members who play in tournaments. Initial quick ratings are literally based on the regular rating, if the player was already regular-rated. And both rating systems appear to use the same [algorithm](http://www.glicko.net/ratings/rating.system.pdf) to calculate ratings.

But despite that, quick ratings are significantly lower, apparently by nearly a full class. Why are they so much lower, given the same algorithm and many of the same players? And, assuming it's desirable that the ratings be similar, what could be done to correct this situation?