Elo manipulation by turn based games

[OwnerOfTheIronThrone]

and with their minor inflated ELO, they'll give it all back on the next cycle of games.

A very long winded and practically difficult feat to accomplish for very little gain. More of a thought experiment rather than anything concrete.

I do not see this as a potential realistic abuse of the ELO system.

You'd play better if you didn't start all 10 games at once.

It's not all black and white to know whether you'll win or not. Conceding games is not generally a good idea, you always stand a chance. And you'll gain more and better experience in the games you lose.

I didn't specify it but I meant it as arena strategy. You end playing on your last cycle reaching peak rating before end of the season. You won't play anymore this season so you won't lose any points.

Also you seem to be assuming only weak players will do it thus system will mitigate their rating, but I meant it more as a mean between top players to gain couple points edge for one of the top places. Btw the primary reason that made me think about it is berserk badge. I am one of the best players at res arcana, yet I never managed to win even 20 games in a row for banzai. If was wondering if that is how people managed to do 50 wins in a row. As for the strength level argument I don't think it is a factor when someone is tryharding anyway.

[gmrsmrt]

I didn't specify it but I meant it as arena strategy. You end playing on your last cycle reaching peak rating before end of the season. You won't play anymore this season so you won't lose any points.

You cannot do it in arena. Once it's your turn in an arena table you cannot play any other table in arena neither turn based nor real time. First you must play your move then you can go to next table. My understanding is that it was made on purpose to avoid the issues you are pointing out.

[OwnerOfTheIronThrone]

I didn't specify it but I meant it as arena strategy. You end playing on your last cycle reaching peak rating before end of the season. You won't play anymore this season so you won't lose any points.

You cannot do it in arena. Once it's your turn in an arena table you cannot play any other table in arena neither turn based nor real time. First you must play your move then you can go to next table. My understanding is that it was made on purpose to avoid the issues you are pointing out.

That ia good to know. I suppose making the games assign result based on your rating when you started would be even more fair, since you can still surrender your losing games first.

[teallite]

You cannot do it in arena. Once it's your turn in an arena table you cannot play any other table in arena neither turn based nor real time. First you must play your move then you can go to next table. My understanding is that it was made on purpose to avoid the issues you are pointing out.

It's quite possible in Arena. Fist, turn restrictions don't kick in immediately. You can do enough turns in one game with a right timing. Second, with a right timing you don't have to worry about turn restrictions. You just have to play games that you are losing in sync with other players while playing the games that you are winning out of sync with other players. This way you can finish your losing games faster than your winning games even with turn restrictions. This strategy works best in 1 turn-per-2-days games, but can be utilized in all slow turn-based modes. I'm not sure that it can be heavily abused (looking forward to info from N_Faker), but it can give you a little edge.

[teallite]

Btw the primary reason that made me think about it is berserk badge. I am one of the best players at res arcana, yet I never managed to win even 20 games in a row for banzai. If was wondering if that is how people managed to do 50 wins in a row. As for the strength level argument I don't think it is a factor when someone is tryharding anyway.

Oh, no, this strat is not for Banzai badge, it's for ELO/EAS points. Someone can use it for Banzai, I guess, but mostly it's about 2 possibilities:
1. A very strong player dominates the competition (and maybe gets a lucky winning streak). It's certainly possible to be this good at least for some time.
2. A player is a newbie hunter. He targets Beginner/Apprentice level players and obliterates them every time. It's not as bad if used for the badge. If you look around, you'll see players who use this to get to the top of the leaderboards in all-time rankings.

[nik592]

Yeah, this was part of the reason for that change. In no time limit games you could exploit by just never finishing lost games, and some people were doing that (one of the weirdness you get on the forums are incredibly narrow viewpoint positions; we've seen a conspiracy theorist here you can also find a huge thread maintained by a very small minority of players wanting Elo to be returned as an option for no time limit games despite the really obvious reason it was removed).

If you're talking about the thread that wanted BGA to return the option of ELO in untimed games between friends, then I'm not sure what you mean. As I've said on that thread, if untimed games are limited to friends only, then either their friends are letting them exploit it, or they're using dummy accounts, which you can still use in timed games. If someone you don't know friends you and immediately suggests an untimed game, why would someone accept that? If they are a silly enough to do so and then bothered about being "stuck" in such games, it would only ever happen once, which is going give you a minimal effect on ELO as well. I can't imagine anyone who would repeatedly support that behaviour for someone they don't know (even in most cases for someone they do know).

Moreover, the suggestion to those of us who do want untimed ELO games back among friends was to "just use the longest time setting". Which is 100% exploitable in the way you're suggesting, if the other players at the table agree not to boot you. Again though, while I don't boot my friends when they go over time, if my friends were like, "yeah, I'm losing this one, so I'm just not going to play until it times out", I would boot them. I can't imagine many people would go along with it, especially not repeatedly. Otherwise, they are little better than a dummy account, which I suppose is possible? But unlikely to be widespread.

[ufm]

But the effect is quite minor - it might let you edge over to one of the medals (300 and 500 Elo) but it won't long term have any effect on your play.

No, this has been used extensively by a few players to claim 1st ranking in multiple games.

Can you provide us with some evidence?

Due to BGA policy I can't name them, but some of them are still in the XP leaderboard. Check the player game records.

[N_Faker]

But the effect is quite minor - it might let you edge over to one of the medals (300 and 500 Elo) but it won't long term have any effect on your play.

No, this has been used extensively by a few players to claim 1st ranking in multiple games.

Can you provide us with some evidence?

I won't. But if you are so inclined you may find a thread of someone that did this and documented it on the forum, I think about 2 years back.
And it appears that you and Robert believe this to only yield minor ELO gains because you haven't considered how to exploit this fully. There aren't many games in which a chain of a mere 20 wins won't catapult you to 1st place, and there is no limit to how many winning games one could stack up.

[RicardoRix]

Well there is a limit, you can't postpone things indefinitely. If you gonna win 50% of the time, then you'd need 40 consecutive games to try and manipulate 20 wins.

Sheesh.

I'm guessing you are also suggesting that reporting these players does not help.

You could supply a link to the games list. If BGA says that they're not cheating, and you're not calling them out by name, then we're just simply analysing game statistics. Can't see the harm.

[N_Faker]

I'm guessing you are also suggesting that reporting these players does not help.

It isn't against the rules. Or wasn't considered so before, at least.