Catan deducting 39 points ELO for loss

[Steve725]

A couple of time I saw people come 3rd in Catan and get - 30 and more ELO points, they had less fewer ELO than opponents from the start anyway, bug?

[euklid314]

No bug. I just looked up one of your recent 3-player games and give the following example:

If the first player got +15 points (because he won against 2 opponents) and the 3rd player got -30 points (because he lost against 2 opponents) this is due to the fact that these two players have different K-factors.

If you are a new player to some BGA game (first 20 games if I remember correctly) then you have a higher K-factor because the system wants to accelerate your path from 0 ELO to a correct ELO assessment. This leads to higher swings up and down within this 20-game period. After those 20 games the K-factor is reduced to normal.