Experts who appear as beginners

[Silene]

Self-rating has already mentioned, but here is my suggestion. A better way would be to modify the ELO system, so that a beginner only gains ELO, and nobody loses ELO to them, until they at least reach Apprentice level or perhaps (even better) something like 50 ELO plus. I don't see this is too hard to implement. Its not like ELO is some fundamental quality like energy, which can't be created or destroyed, only transferred! I mean it may seem its been created like that, like some crypto-currency, but I feel it should not break the system to introduce this change. After all, no one lose ELO below average level, so it can be done.

Yeah, that "fundamental energy-quality" is obviously not regarded and doesn't need to be. The whole K-Factor-Thing is also a disregardment of such a rule. Also when everybody starts at 0 ELO there NEEDS to be a way to create ELO ouf of nothing

So I want to throw in again my previous suggestion:

Another, milder, option would be to reduce K-factor for the higher-ranked player temporarily for games where they play someone who has a high K-factor - so that a loss won't hurt as much.

This would ensure that you gain/lose proper amount of ELO, if you lose to 100-ELO-player that is already 50 games in but only win/lose much fewer points if you lose to 100-ELO-player that has played only 5 games.

[frankenStain]

there aren't any upvote buttons here - so this ones seem to be good solutions, if this actually is a rampant problem

Another, milder, option would be to reduce K-factor for the higher-ranked player temporarily for games where they play someone who has a high K-factor - so that a loss won't hurt as much.

This would ensure that you gain/lose proper amount of ELO, if you lose to 100-ELO-player that is already 50 games in but only win/lose much fewer points if you lose to 100-ELO-player that has played only 5 games.

Self-rating has already mentioned[<- not this], but here is my suggestion. A better way would be to modify the ELO system, so that a beginner only gains ELO, and nobody loses ELO to them, until they at least reach Apprentice level or perhaps (even better) something like 50 ELO plus. I don't see this is too hard to implement. Its not like ELO is some fundamental quality like energy, which can't be created or destroyed, only transferred! I mean it may seem its been created like that, like some crypto-currency, but I feel it should not break the system to introduce this change. After all, no one lose ELO below average level, so it can be done.

[ufm]

there aren't any upvote buttons here - so this ones seem to be good solutions, if this actually is a rampant problem

Another, milder, option would be to reduce K-factor for the higher-ranked player temporarily for games where they play someone who has a high K-factor - so that a loss won't hurt as much.

This would ensure that you gain/lose proper amount of ELO, if you lose to 100-ELO-player that is already 50 games in but only win/lose much fewer points if you lose to 100-ELO-player that has played only 5 games.

Self-rating has already mentioned[<- not this], but here is my suggestion. A better way would be to modify the ELO system, so that a beginner only gains ELO, and nobody loses ELO to them, until they at least reach Apprentice level or perhaps (even better) something like 50 ELO plus. I don't see this is too hard to implement. Its not like ELO is some fundamental quality like energy, which can't be created or destroyed, only transferred! I mean it may seem its been created like that, like some crypto-currency, but I feel it should not break the system to introduce this change. After all, no one lose ELO below average level, so it can be done.

However, they cause more problems instead: ELO protection and rapid unfair boosting.
There are already a bunch of players of 300+ who only play against players of 200-.
And all of these suggestions promote opponent selection by highly reducing or completely eliminating the risk of rating loss.
Also, self-rating is prone to all kinds of abuse as already mentioned by robinzig.

IMO K-factor adjustment is the best thing we can have for now.
This actually happens not only in BGA, but in every platform using ratings.

[Silene]

However, they cause more problems instead: ELO protection and rapid unfair boosting.
There are already a bunch of players of 300+ who only play against players of 200-.
And all of these suggestions promote opponent selection by highly reducing or completely eliminating the risk of rating loss.

Not mine . If K-Factor get's halved for the stronger player (when playing vs. a high-K-Factor-player), that means risk of rating loss is halved, but his gain is halved as well. So instead of +1 ELO, he would get +0.5 ELO for the win. Which means he has to play twice as many games in order to gain the same boost. Having twice as often the chance for an upset-loss. And it's more effort. So it's probably making ELO-boosting vs. beginners more difficult.

[FSKFSK]

There really isn't any solution. There always will be people who played in-person before playing here. There also are people who are better at learning new games. As long as people aren't multi-accounting, I would say they aren't doing anything wrong.

It's probably better to just not take your rating seriously. There tournaments and arena mode if you want to be super-competitive. (and arena mode already filters out complete beginners, people with elo<100)

I'd played Castles of Burgundy once in-person, read some strategy guides, but then got lopsided wins against people who apparently didn't read them. Did I really do anything wrong? I didn't even realize I was going to win easily until I played a few games. By then, my rating was high enough that it didn't matter anymore.